Prefacing this whole thing with I’m a longtime fan of Trigun Maximum and the original 98 Trigun anime so of course I’m reviewing this from a different lens of someone who is new to the series. I was really excited for Stampede and really wanted to believe that it could be a faithful interpretation of Maximum, which is one of my favorite manga. I defended Vash’s redesign, I was cautiously optimistic even when they revealed that a Robert De Niro expy would be replacing beloved Milly Thompson, I encouraged people to check out the PVs, etc. I was far from resigned to Stampede being a bad adaptation by the time the first episode came out.
So with that out of the way, Trigun Stampede is an abject failure of an adaptation resulting from shoddy pacing, minimal characterization, and awkward narrative changes that did not need to be changed and were frankly better explored in the original manga, even when compared to Trigun 1998, which is another version of the Trigun story that barely even scratches the surface of Maximum’s story, and yet manages to succeed.
The reason Trigun 98 is a successor worthy of the Trigun name despite the numerous changes it makes to its narrative and world is because it doesn’t try to adapt Trigun Maximum’s tone; if Stampede were more confident in its own identity, it might have also succeeded in a similar way, but every time I tried to separate Stampede from Maximum for the sake of enjoying a new approach to Trigun’s narrative, it would rip quotes and scenes from Maximum but butcher their context entirely, which in turn made me look at my screen wondering: Why didn’t they just keep this the same as it was in the manga? Why bother pretending this is the same story when it clearly isn’t? Trigun 98 doesn’t do that, and that’s why it works and Stampede doesn’t.
The pacing in Stampede is weird to compare to both other iterations of Trigun. In the other two versions we are introduced to Gunsmoke/No Man’s Land knowing that Vash destroyed July, and yet Stampede decides to place July’s destruction at the pinnacle of its story. In the original manga run, this event horizon occurs when Knives forms a sort of mind-meld with the other plants and creates a giant ark to destroy the planet with.
Which again brings me to: Why? When we are introduced to Vash knowing he is single-handedly responsible for destroying a city and we see him being a goofball and promising not to kill anyone and going to insane lengths to ensure that doesn’t happen, it makes us want to know what happened and how we got here when Vash seemingly can’t even hurt a fly. The original manga already has a life-threatening event on the brink in the form of Knives’s ark, so why did Stampede flip this moment to being July’s destruction? By removing this quintessential piece of worldbuilding, Vash just kind of comes across as a random guy with some really bad luck.
That aside, this version of Vash is honestly kind of useless. All he seems to do is lecture Wolfwood and evangelize. The only moment he seems capable of standing on his own two feet is in episode 1 when he shoots down the rocks with a single bullet; that aside, all of his inhuman prowess seems nonexistent. Wolfwood, for all his trigger happy measure, doesn’t do much either–he just complains about Vash and follows him around. They hardly seem to be friends, much less equals who can stand on the same footing and trust the other to have their back. Wolfwood seems more like a jaded babysitter rather than a worn out hitman who ultimately decides to put his faith in one singular man who can make the impossible possible. Meryl makes a 180 from being a competent senpai-type into being a bumbling rookie who doesn’t even understand how plants work or what they are, and this makes her come across as a sheltered rich girl rather than a human being who is a little out of her league on account of being surrounded by literal superhumans.
# Moving forward this review will contain comprehensive spoilers for all of Stampede and Maximum, although not really anything beyond what isn’t already covered in Stampede’s 12 episodes.
If you have seen Stampede, you will know everything that I’ll discuss at length further, barring a few character changes that mean that things got cut or edited. If you have concerns, please click off the review now–and go read Trigun and Trigun Maximum! They are both pretty accessible now thanks to the wonderful team responsible for the Trigun Overhaul on tumblr and this is definitely the best way to experience the manga. If you liked Stampede, I can pretty much assure you that you will like Maximum all the more.
First off, the changes made to Elendira’s character are straight up transphobic and vile. In the original manga, Elendira is an adult transgender woman. In Stampede, her character is rewritten so she is a sort of “third” species of experimental human with a child’s body. Obviously, this fucking sucks. I won’t say Elendira is the pinnacle of trans representation in manga, unfortunately characters like Vash and Wolfwood still make low-blow comments about her, but she is still also a transgender woman in a powerful position that commands respect and authority. She’s also just a human being who happens to be trans. Rewriting this entire thing to basically explain away her gender identity as a side effect of her being a new genotype of human is cruel and disgusting and Studio Orange should be ashamed. Furthermore, I don’t know what the hell subtitles I was reading, but Elendira is misgendered in those to be referred to as a “he”. This is indefensible.
We don’t see much of Livio, and I’m hoping he’ll make more of an appearance in the next season, but I have very little hope for his portrayal. His backstory is already exponentially changed from what we get in Maximum and his autonomy is reduced to be a crux for Wolfwood to fall back on. In Maximum, Livio has Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). Unfortunately, this also isn’t the best representation of DID in media, but there were ways it could have been interpreted in Stampede without just deleting this aspect of Livio's character. Anyway, in Maximum, the reason for Livio joining the Eye of Michael is because his alter, Razlo, feels that the only way they can be needed and appreciated is if they join the group. Razlo is an interpretation of a guardian alter; he kills a little girl’s dog and later takes over Livio’s body when a group of adults threaten to kill them, meaning Livio dissociates and then comes back to find his hands covered in blood without understanding what happened. Razlo wants to feel needed and wants Livio to feel needed as well, and they feel the Eye of Michael is the only place they’ll be accepted for who they are. For some reason, Stampede makes Livio’s entire personality revolve around Wolfwood, and he simply follows him to be later used as bait to further steep Wolfwood in guilt and obligation to the organization. In the original manga, the last fight between Livio and Wolfwood culminates with Livio promising to live for Wolfwood's sake; here we see Livio shoot himself in the head and fall off the sand steamer. This might be redeemed in S2, but it had me sitting there utterly confused about the path the story was taking.
For the record, this is what Livio and Razlo’s introductory panel is in the manga vs his appearance in Stampede. What happened here???? He's unrecognizable.
And of course, Livio, Rem, and Wolfwood are (once again...) whitewashed by the studio. At least Wolfwood isn't as pale as he is in Badlands Rumble, the 2010 movie, but geez.
Knives’s motivations are muddied by the changes to the twins’ backstory. In the original manga, Knives is the more outgoing of the twins. He is very naive and idealistic and excited to meet humans whereas Vash is more shy and unsure that they will be accepting of them. Knives insists that human hearts and their hearts aren’t that different, and studies up on human history including watching war videos, then still walks away from that believing that humans will love and accept the two of them. Manga Knives understands that humans aren’t as kind as Rem, and that being accepted will be a gargantuan undertaking of a task, but he is still eager to try. In contrast, Vash isn’t as willing to believe this. Already this is a marked change from their portrayal in Stampede where Knives is the more serious twin who prefers to be independent and on his own.
The plot revolving around their power differences as plants is a new addition too. Setting them up with a power imbalance from the get-go and establishing that Knives believes that Vash cannot protect himself because of his lack of special abilities inherently alters the entire dynamic. Manga Knives believes that humans will use them because they are humans and the only thing that human beings have shown that they are capable of is butchering other people and using other beings as tools for their own gain. Stampede Knives believes that humans will use him and Vash because they are–and especially Vash, because he has no special powers–weak. It might seem like a trivial change, but it completely alters their entire relationship. Where Stampede Knives’s motivations revolve around protecting Vash, Maximum Knives’s downfall stems purely from the discovery of Tesla.
Tesla is the name of the plant who was born before Vash and Knives. She was experimented upon and subjected to torture in the name of science, then died after a very brief and very unhappy life. This discovery breaks both of them. Knives promptly faints from shock and Vash goes on a hunger strike and declares that he hates humans, then attempts to kill himself. This is where Rem gives her “You have a ticket to the future, Vash,” speech–in Stampede she gives this speech to both Knives and Vash before she shoots them out of the escape pod. In Maximum, this speech is essentially what saves Vash from nihilism. Knives doesn’t get to hear and understand Rem, and he goes on to plot the Big Fall, his worldview and belief in humans entirely shattered.
Why change all this? It’s a perfectly adaptable plot point, it wouldn’t have even changed any of the pacing in Stampede, they already adapted Tesla and we see Knives reading what looks like the Bible (????? hello ????) as his equivalent of brushing up on human history. They just didn’t keep anything else.
Another Vash and Knives-centric change that seemed bizarre to not adapt is what Rem DOES ask before she launches them out of the escape pod: she requests that Vash stay with Knives. And he does. Vash follows Knives in all his delusion and grandeur for 80 years until Knives severs his arm and they split ways. In Stampede, they split up almost immediately because Vash is disgusted with Knives. Stampede Vash hinges way more of his morality on his personal sense of humanity, and for him to frankly just throw Knives away like that seems pretty out of character for a man who is so staunch in his ideals that he gets scarred to hell and back. It’s much more apparent in Maximum that Vash is quite the nihilist but that he is actively choosing every day to be kind and not succumb to the same hurt that Knives has. There’s no sense of this tumult in Stampede Vash’s psyche. To me, Stampede Vash comes across as a coward who can’t make decisions for himself.
>The final fight between Legato and Vash in Maximum culminates in Legato realizing that Vash is the same sort of nihilist as him. Where is this tension with Stampede Vash?
The changes to plant lore offer a strange further approach to dehumanizing a race that is already dehumanized within Trigun. Stampede posits that plants don’t have souls, so Knives wants to implant them with souls to make them “Independents” like him and Vash. Maximum does not have this. In Maximum, plants have wills of their own, but because of their nature they lose some of their individuality in favor of a higher sense of collectivism that sort of manifests as a hive mind that Knives later takes advantage of for his ark. However, plants all have their own memories and personalities, and this is referenced in later chapters in Maximum. Stampede wants the audience to believe that all plants are in-autonomous save for Knives and Vash and cannot do anything so Knives must free them by being plant-Jesus and implanting them with free will; Maximum suggests that there is something like a language barrier preventing humans and plants from communicating and finding a healthy, mutually beneficial relationship, then goes to show that this relationship is possible by introducing Chronica and Dominica, two plants who hold roles of command on ships sent from Earth. The after-credits of episode 12 name drop Chronica, so I suppose they’ll show up (again making me wonder why they didn’t just give Knives his ark considering this is what triggers Project SEEDS to travel to No Man’s Land in the first place). Again, Maximum’s plot is perfectly translatable into Stampede–they just didn’t for some reason.
>This panel highlights Maximum’s entire message. Note how it’s built on the backbone of communication and understanding. If plants don’t have souls or free will or any way to communicate, what is there to bridge? Can there even be understanding?
Roberto as a character is completely inconsequential to the entire narrative and that’s also without saying that they removed Milly (who is due to show up in S2, but come on) in favor of him. Right off the bat, using him to fill the role as a jaded senpai type is ridiculous as these are roles that are already filled by Wolfwood and Meryl respectively. Wolfwood continues to challenge Vash’s outlook and insist that he can’t keep going on this way while Meryl is the sort who tries to keep everyone in line. Dividing these traits up and giving them to a man in favor of introducing the audience to Milly Thompson, who has none of these traits and is a completely independent character with a very distinctive personality, is ridiculous. Roberto narratively serves zero purpose. You could remove him and split up his dialogue between Meryl and Wolfwood and it’d just make them be more in character than they actually are in Stampede.
Finally, hinging Meryl’s character growth on the death of a man removes anything that actually makes her interesting. In Trimax it’s clear she has things to learn, but she certainly doesn’t need any guidance, and she understands enough of the world and how to protect herself. Any interesting interaction with Vash, any fear she has of him, any desire she has to overcome this fear in favor of getting to know the Humanoid Typhoon, gone. Vash doesn’t accidentally traumatize her by psychically transmitting his and Knives’s past into her brain; Meryl doesn’t get to come to terms with the horrors humans are capable of and promise to make things better so that no one has to go through what Vash and Knives did. Instead she waves a gun around and then goes through a portal to mimic Rem in Vash’s mind palace to save him from utter mental collapse. There’s no weight to anything she does, especially when she’s standing next to Roberto who seemingly understands how the world works perfectly.
The Gung-Ho Guns are an inconsequential group; hopefully they will actually do something in S2. Legato Bluesummers, the only character who can actually make Vash debate giving up his moral code, does one thing of value and it’s retrieve Livio after he nearly falls off the steamer. He goes from being a terrifying villain with a crazy personality to a guy with blue hair. Gone is his dedication to Knives or his hatred for humanity; this Legato decries emotions where older Legato would probably scream and cry and monologue and break Vash’s arm in 3 different places before going completely apathetic a moment after.
One thing I did like is the addition of Knives actually having Millions Knives like his name suggests; the shots in episode 3 are really cool and easily a highlight for me.
The animation and fight choreography for Stampede are truly stellar. Facial animations are stunning. The way they animate Vash when he DOES use his gun frankly looks cool as hell. Light and shadow are translated incredibly. I loved how Orange approached his angel arm as well.
The voice direction each character has is really great; I felt each seiyuu embodied their character perfectly. I only wish they had been more in character! They did a great job with what they had.
I really like Stampede’s opening and I jam to it pretty often! The rest of the soundtrack doesn’t hold a candle to 98 Trigun’s though. Go listen to NO-BEAT, H.T. (98’s opening), Scattered Rain, and Philosophy in a Tea Cup...just to name a few of the stellar tracks on the 98 anime’s OST. Unfortunately, I can’t remember a single song off of Stampede’s soundtrack except for the opening.
It pains me to say it because I really wanted to like Stampede, but both Trigun anime fail as adaptations of Maximum. But where Trigun 98 comes short of adapting Maximum, it at least respects the characters, even if it doesn’t tell the same story, and ends up developing a distinct tone of its own that sets it far enough apart from Maximum to make it enjoyable as its own thing. Stampede wants you to believe it has the same tone and weight as Maximum, and then it doesn’t deliver on that, instead opting to make strange story changes that don’t make any sense.
You might think that my review is too clouded by my love for Trigun Maximum to appreciate Stampede, and yeah this is probably true--but to that I say, if you liked Stampede, you will love Maximum, and it deserves more love. So if you come away from this review angry at me, consider that there is another version of the story that is even better than the one you just watched, and check out Trigun and Trigun Maximum.
