#lost july

Heyyy I made some serious Trigun art for once ! I wanted to make some posters for some of my favorite episodes and even though I didn't make it in time for the twins bdays + July Incident I wanted to start off with Lost July.

Ngl I low-key wanna turn this into a print but idk if it would get nearly as much demand as it would take to warrant going through all that.... might just print it out just for myself.

Anyway I'm gonna yap about some of my feelings about Lost July below:

Integration AU: the July Incident

So, a few of the Gung Ho Guns have gotten reworked for Stampede, yes? To varying degrees.

Ninelives is apparently not a horrific flesh mech, Dark Souls boss thing, according to the end credits of episode 3.

E.G. the Mine just got a HUGE upgrade and didn’t get owned 3 seconds after he showed up.

Monev was an actual character with a fubar backstory and emotional impact instead of just Some Guy who trained in a basement for years specifically to kill Vash. (and Orange is SO EVIL for this)

Elendira is. *gestures futilely* There is so much going on there but yeah. She’s going to be terrifying once she achieves adult body and loses (drops?) the childish attitude. Also because of the whole Plant hybrid thing her nails truly are literally infinite sooooo.

So I have some thoughts about Hoppered the Gauntlet.

In Trimax, Gauntlet’s narrative weight comes from the fact that he makes Vash remember, which by extension makes US, the reader, understand what July really meant. Before that we had heard mention of it a few times as ‘a city destroyed in a single night’ and talk of there being ‘no survivors’ but we had no actual connection to it, and also no real idea if that was even true. But in Stampede, we saw July happen. We were there. So even if Vash’s memory is still shot afterwards, and he doesn’t remember Lost July, we the audience DO. So having the Dragon’s nest play out exactly the same isn’t going to have the same narrative punch in the gut that it did in Trimax. It can’t.

There’s also the fact that, given how we’ve met most of the major players in the story, or had them mentioned at least (hi Milly), it feels kind of Odd™ that we haven’t seen someone has emotionally impactful as Gauntlet yet.

Unless we have.

We saw with Rollo/Monev that Orange is willing to have the person’s regular name be one thing and then have a second Eye of Michael code name. I suspect that is going to happen with Gauntlet; either because EoM or because he has decided on his own to lie about who he was.

And yes, I do in fact have someone in mind.

I checked myself the translation there is accurate; the only change I would make is calling the gun ‘gaudy’ instead of ‘shiny’ but that’s not a huge deal. Also for the record, the original tweet is from Jan. 11, well before he makes his reappearance for the season finale. So when it talks about a ‘reappearance’, it is talking about seeing him again in July. Original tweet here, tweet containing the translation here.

I think Chuck Lee is going to be our Gauntlet. That he made it just far enough out of the city to survive, but that he was badly maimed in the process, and that his family didn’t make it. He’s the ONLY member of the military police with a unique design. He has an actual name, and the director himself tweeted about his backstory. His gun is so unusual that we would recognize it anywhere. Hell, I referred to him as ‘the gold gun guy from episode one’ when one of my friends didn’t recognize him immediately. His gun is so incredibly recognizable. Almost like we need to be able to recognize him by that alone, when everything else about him has changed.

THIS could be how narrative weight for Gauntlet is established in the Stampede universe when it can’t be done the same way as in Trimax. Taking a character who has, in a way, also been with the audience ALL ALONG, who was there with us for two pivitol moments, the beginning and the awakening, but who comes at it from such a horrifically different angle and bringing him back in such an agonizing way. Because he was very much in the wrong with his stunt at Jeneora Rock, but his rage over the loss of his family in July would be justified, even if we know it wasn’t Vash’s fault.

(Also, the IRONY of him ending up as one of Knives’s lackeys when Knives is the one that caused all of this? Damn.)

"Good night, sweet July." || A Lost July retrospective fanmix.

The rest is silence.

LISTEN: [SPOTIFY] Art credit: loyalty_0605

Scans of the “Monthly Satellite Times” newspaper insert included in the Trigun Stage 3 Laserdisc release!

Scanned and newsprint paper texture removed by me. Non-edited scans under the cut.

While condensing and rearranging the timeline of events between The Fall and Lost July is odd, it makes sense for the sake of being narratively clear what's going on. This show made me root for The Nabraska Family and Brad of all characters.

What I'm confused about is why anyone calls Vash the Humanoid Typhoon prior to July. It makes sense he'd have a bounty being accused of The Fall and some of Knives other actions, but the title specifically is given to Vash once he's been labelled a Human Natural Disaster by the Insurance Society, making all his actions not covered by their insurance. Meryl and Millie's job in the original is to follow Vash to verify if any damage done was caused by him.

That aside, with them changing how Vash lost his arm I'm most curious about how they're gonna handle Legato, since in Stampede he's never gonna get Vash's arm.

Above all else, I'm glad they reverted Vash to his personality separate from his depiction in the Pilot manga (Love and Peace from the '98 anime). The pilot is good, but it fundamentally changed how Vash acted to the point they had to rewrite his interactions with Meryl for 3 episodes in advance just to justify it.

Also they started Maximum in Lost July. It's only his jacket and Chronica being mentioned so far, but Vash's hair has subtly changed from platinum blonde to sand, and his eyebrows have gone to black. If they go full Maximum, well Knives will at least get a better fate than in Under the Sky So Blue (last episode of Trigun '98).