No thoughts, only Trigun

A new episode of Tripod Maximum is published!

The Trigun Manga ft. The Trigun Ultimate Overhaul | Part One

Hear the ins and out of what it takes to produce a clear and cohesive fan translation of the Trigun and Trigun Maximum mangas. Special guests, D and Vulpine from the @trigun-manga-overhaul team, share their insights into scanning, art restoration, translation, localization, and more in this two part episode!

🎙️ hosted by: @museqmeg

🎧 Listen here!

Spotify

*cracks knuckles*

It's time to put my music degree and 20+ years of performing to fandom use. I'm gonna deep-dive into a music analysis of "Duet" and the care Orange put into animating musicianship.

Let's first look at the animation!

Nai and Vash are both correctly playing the notes heard and in the correct form. Here's an interview with Trigun Stampede's composer, Tatsuya Kato!

Kato:

"For Knives - There are multiple scenes in this anime where Knives is playing the piano. In those piano scenes we had an actual pianist play the piano, and filmed them using multiple cameras to create the motion data. His piece combines his beautiful frailty with his huge ambitions and powers. His touching yet fierce impression is expressed through the duality of the minimal music that uses both orchestral and digital sounds quite boldly. Also, the melody of the plants’ song is based on Knives’ theme motif, which allows it to make the son an epic expression of tragedy and destiny."

-- from the Bernardelli Times Extra of the Trigun Stampede BluRay

Let's look at the score for "Duet."

The piece is composed in a minor, starting with Nai on the treble clef staves. The tone is hopeful in its theme despite the minor key, and we get a prelude to the plant theme.

When Vash joins in on the bass clef staves, the tempo is more than doubled and we hear an "agitation" in Nai's lines. Vash is also a few octaves below Nai, miles away in pitch. Sound like their story?

Looking at Vash's upper staff--while Nai is "on" the beat, Vash is off the beat (see highlighted figure). Their melodic lines are also ascending & descending away from each other in contrary motion. The rhythmic figures &melodic movement is causing the dissonance you hear.

This continues throughout the piece, each of the brother's hands becoming their voices and ideals clashing. That auditory dissonance created in the music showcases their struggle. Nai's part is more frantic and urgent, whereas Vash is holding steady with the bass line chords.

I like to think of Vash's sustained bass line as a motif to the steadfastness of his beliefs and ideals. Being true to himself.

"I'm Vash the Stampede."

As the piece goes on, both right hands of the brothers swap the rhythmic dissonance. Nai now on the off beats and Vash on the beat. Nai's repetitive figure on the subdivided 8th notes holds that tension, while his left hand is having the argument with Vash's right hand.

What's also interesting is that while sitting side-by-side for the duet, the hands closest to each other are the ones having the "conversation." There's a small parallel octave moment where they are as close as can be, physically & musically.

The outside hands are the dissonance.

Something else to note on the swapping of beat placement--the twins are both changing the meter within the meter from common to duple with the figures & subdivision.

It all comes to a head with an accelerando & both brothers playing forte.

(Brahms Symphony No. 1 anyone?)

During the climax of the piece, Nai is reduced down to the triplet moving line. It's frantic and desperate. Like fear and running.

(Check out Shubert's "Erlkönig" to learn more about these types of motifs.)

Meanwhile, Vash is pounding out the bass line and the plant theme.

"Duet" comes to an abrupt end with no tonal resolution; ending on the dominant chord. The sudden ending is also breaking up the phrasing, leaving the listener jarred and expecting more. Unresolved. And that's truly where we're at with Trigun Stampede.

My interpretation of "Duet" is that it's much like a tone poem, telling the story of two brothers. Vash and Nai's story isn't finished, and I'm guessing that "Duet" is an unfinished piece as well.

My personal predictions is that, if Tatsuya Kato is the composer for Trigun Stargaze, we're going to hear "Duet" become a complete musical composition that resolves the story and conflict between two brothers.

If you'd like to learn play "Duet" and analyze the score, here's a pretty good transcription on MuseScore:

what pro ship actually is about: the belief that people are allowed to enjoy fictional thing however they want, as long as it's fictional and no one in real life gets harmed or harassed in any way, and as long as they tag their trigger warnings properly.

most pro ship folks I've come across are just "hey, you like this fucked up thing that is fictional? okay, cool. you do you, man. I myself don't even like this thing that you like, but hey, it's not real. and I trust that you know the difference between fiction and reality, so you do you. if it ever gets too much for me, I will just block or mute you and move on with my life, but that doesn't mean I think you're a horrible person in real life because of the fictional thing you like, it just means I'd rather not see or engage with this thing that can make me uncomfortable. I still want you to have fun doing what you love, and I still think you're cool as fuck. love and respect, dude"

meanwhile most anti ship I've seen are like "omg you like this fictional thing where fictional children are harmed??! Red Flag Red Flag. put this gross piece of shit behind bars immediately!!!"

and I'm just ????? I don't normally engage in fandom wars, but I think, as long as you don't harass anyone in real life and as long as no one in real life is in danger or is harmed, how you enjoy fictional things is none of my business. and I'm not gonna make any "call out post" where I encourage my followers to harass you because you like fucked up fictional things that I personally don't like or believe is wrong either.

I mean, from personal experience, I was exposed against my will to thing I didn't want to see from anti's screenshot of fanart or fanfic where they encourage their followers to harass this person whose fanart or fanfic, that was screenshot and spread by them, was originally tagged properly with all the trigger warnings so that people who didn't want to see it wouldn't get exposed to it. until anti screenshot it and flaunted it around in the name of being morally superior while also, at the same time, advocated for the witch hunt against someone who just wanted to mind their own business. so... the irony. lol

fandoms used to be more peaceful before Fandom Police starts their witch hunting, but it's a good thing we can just block these people and keep on enjoying our blorbos however we want to enjoy them.

And I said it before and I'll say it again: I would be more concerned about someone who claim someone else is a red flag because they create/interact with problematic content, than someone who DO interact with it.

Why? Because the latter can clearly makes the seperation between fiction and reality, but the former doesn't seem to be able to, which is concerning.

That being said, I am absolutely gonna continue to cosplay old and fat and I don't give a fuck

Oh no! The silly boy fell down!😨 Let’s help him reach the next city🥺

PLANT LORE MASTER POST - including Studio Orange Momocon and Anime North panels, previous interviews with Nightow, and Studio Orange staff twts.

Regarding the origin of the Plants, do you have any settings or story ideas?

Nightow: The Plants are something created by Earthlings. There are many stories about killing or challenging God, aren't there? So, I thought, what about a story where the challenge is being made? I wanted to make a story where humans, standing in the position of the creator, are bitten, so the Plants are made. Comickers Art Style Magazine, 2007.

The anime also made the towns out of stone and didn't show any wooden buildings, since it was a desert planet.

Nightow: That's original to the anime. I felt that something like a wood-production Plant creating paper and lumber would be fine. Stone towns gave a more desolate feel though, which I thought was clever. Trigun Art Book, 1999. Translation by @cerealandchoccymilk.

Watanabe confirms that Plants in Trigun Stampede created raw materials. Source twt.

Much more under the cut!

During a studio orange panel, I commented on how studio orange hired a science fiction author to write a "lore bible" for trigun stampede and asked if we would ever see it, and Watanabe said that as a creative animation studio , studio orange isn't really responsible for things like that (like publishing books), but he's been "hearing interesting things" and there "might be some kind of announcements"