Trigun Stargaze

Episode 12

Here we are at the end… already? If there's anything about this episode that functions as an encapsulation of the issues I've come to have with Trigun Stargaze as a whole, it's that everything feels so damned rushed. While Trigun Stampede rattled along at a fair clip, Studio Orange's foot has been jammed hard on the accelerator pedal throughout the majority of Stargaze, cramming two entire seasons' worth of content into twelve episodes. I don't know who was responsible for the decision to attempt to adapt all seventeen volumes of Trigun and Trigun Maximum into 24 total episodes, but I don't think they were motivated by storytelling concerns. Frankly, Stargaze is a mess.

There should have been warning bells blaring when it transpired that Stampede's director and writers were all replaced on Stargaze, and the resulting changes were detrimental, to say the least. Looking back now, although most major plot beats from Trigun Maximum that were absent from the 1998 anime (because the story hadn't been written yet) were ultimately incorporated into this new version, they were either irrevocably altered or robbed of much of their meaning by the harried pacing.

Stargaze's final episode makes a relatively decent stab at Trigun Maximum's apocalyptic conclusion, yet in doing so smushes almost the entirety of the extra-length final volume into around twenty minutes of screen time. It excises so many details, including any characterisation of the people on the arriving colony fleet. Could it be something as simple as they ran out of money and resources to build new rigs for additional characters (note how any bit-players in the cast are animated traditionally, which sticks out like a sore thumb)? Was this always the plan, considering Stampede's final moments named-dropped a colony ship character from the manga who is conspicuous by their absence here?

This baffling decision not only smacks of both corner- and cost-cutting, it leaves the colony fleet as a faceless entity, little toy spaceships floating weightlessly in orbit for Knives to play with on a whim. At least their attempted fight against the monstrously ascended, now dragon-like Independent Plant looks spectacular, even if it lacks the more up-close and personal staging of the manga's version. The catastrophe where Knives dodges their Death Star-like beam, causing utter devastation on the planet below, remains thankfully intact and reasonably impactful.

The rest of the episode, though… I don't even know what to think about the sub-plot involving the Plants. Granted, much of the ambiguity about the Plants' nature springs from the manga, yet their liberation from Knives here may as well be due to magic as anything coherent. Somehow, Tesla is reconstituted. Sort-of. The rest of the Plants who I thought Knives had inadvertently killed just sort of… float away into space? With Tesla sauntering after them?

Vash and Knives also battle with both words and bullets in space, despite it being, you know, a vacuum where sound doesn't propagate, but that's probably the least of the series' crimes against logic and coherent storytelling. Knives crying out “Nai is dead!” at Vash's insistence on using his given name is stupendously corny, as is his sudden heel-turn. So Knives claims his motivation all along was to prevent anyone from crying? WTF? He didn't give a shit about any of his subordinates, as was clear in the last episode. He didn't care that he seemingly murdered all of the Plants when he failed to gift them sentience on his own terms. He also didn't care about any of the humans he killed by stealing their only power sources. He also went out of his way to make his brother suffer for the “sin” of fraternizing with humans. I don't buy it at all.

Knives prevents Vash from activating his Gate and pulling both of them into the higher dimension because he probably correctly guesses that this would make Vash ultimately miserable. Vash loves people and wants to be around them. Perhaps this was Knives ultimate realization about his brother's nature? I don't know, because the writing of this scene is so bad. It takes a very similar scene from the manga, but twists it in a failed attempt to fit Stargaze's new, muddled plot.

Also, the less said about Meryl playing piano to save the world, the better. What vague, lazy, metaphysical garbage. At least they tried to give her something to do in the final arc, which is more than can be said for her role at the end of Nightow's manga. Also, what's with the extraneous scene of Meryl interacting with not-Roberto? Is he supposed to be Roberto's brother or something? There's no explanation for this, nor much of a reaction from Meryl. Milly acts as little but comic relief up until the very end, though her farewell to Zazie the Beast is cute and amusing, at least.

Vash and Knives' fates are essentially ripped straight from the manga's ending, though Knives' last-minute sacrifice provides slightly more dramatic results, and an emotionally resonant return to the site of JuLai's destruction. If I can say anything positive about Stargaze, it's that it does sometimes nail those more emotional moments, which were swamped by unclear storytelling in the manga.

Finally, we're left with an amusing coda as Vash is reunited with his human found family of Meryl, Milly, Wolfwood, Livio, and Jessica. Ultimately, Wolfwood's survival didn't add a whole lot to Stargaze's story, other than removing the air of sadness and regret that permeated both manga and 1998 anime versions of Vash. Without that tang of bitterness, is it even Trigun anymore? Like a Mojito without the tequila, I wonder what the point of it all was.

At least it was pretty, I guess, which at least gains an extra star from me.

Rating:

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Trigun Stargaze is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.