i dont have any trigun mutuals so i'm just gonna ramble my thoughts into the infinite void of tumblr. and im sure others have touched on this same topic but
it almost seems like vash is getting softer with every new installment of trigun? like incredibly consistently and incredibly specifically.
let me explain.
i'll start with tristamp and work backwards; the tristamp vash we all know and love there is incredibly adverse to violence.
more often than not he ACTIVELY refuses to fight and just WON'T draw his gun. this post loosely counted the amount of bullets that he shot throughout all of season 1, and almost ALL of them (like to an insane degree) were dished out against knives, who vash knew was strong enough to take the hit.
the few times vash does draw his gun against a human in tristamp, it's as a blunt force weapon (against the badlads gang and livio, for example) or to disarm others/save someone with ricochet (like shooting the punisher before wolfwood can kill livio).
he just doesn't shoot people. at ALL.
then if we look at 98 trigun, things change drastically.
here, vash isn't afraid to hurt people a little if it means more will be saved in the end. of course he never kills, but he actually shoots people here. not only that...
he holds a casual, sarcastic conversation while pointing his weapon at people.
he constantly shoots at limbs to immobilize people, fires warning shots extremely close to peoples' vitals, and performs several very insane trick shots throughout the show to wound those with armor.
tristamp vash wouldn't even draw, but 98 struts around firing warning shots into the sky and singing about bloodshed for intimidation! i'm not sure there's a single episode where he doesn't shoot someone at least once.
...so what about trimax, then?
(PLOT SPOILERS AHEAD)
he is so. shockingly. violent.
of course he never kills. of course he's still trying to save people, but there's this anger in him that i was completely taken off-guard by reading for the first time.
tristamp vash is so soft he's painful to watch. 98 vash makes a heartbreaking effort to be as silly and nonthreatening as possible, constantly making himself out to be the fool. but trimax?
he's... literally grief-stricken and out for revenge. explicit revenge. he's angry and he's hurt and he lays his intentions out so clearly. he's making THREATS.
seriously:
hunting legato. HUNTING him.
it's not even a matter of drawing his weapon anymore. he does it constantly, and fires just as much. never to kill, but he doesn't joke around the way 98 vash does. the most he'll offer is a sunny smile to reassure others and nothing more.
i'm not that far into the manga, either. i'm sure there's countless more (and probably better) panels to convey this side of trimax vash, but i suppose it also says something that i've found so many panels depicting this so early on.
but the progression of vash's personality is fascinating regardless.
from a tortured, angry loner desperately trying to cling to his morals for rem's sake
to an equally devastated man who devotes himself so completely to acting the role of the fool
and finally to the sad, chronically depressed shell of a person in tristamp who refuses to so much as draw his weapon.
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in the last ep of the anime, i noticed that it cut out to the ending directly before vanitas could actually take noes hand, and i wondered if that was referencing what noe said about vanitas at the beginning.
Oh that's such a good catch! You're absolutely right anon, and I think we can take your idea even further than that.
I've talked about this in a previous post, but VnC's running refrain of Noé reaching for Vanitas's hand is really symbolic. Noé has saved Vanitas from literally falling multiple times, but their entire relationship is also one big metaphorical outstretched hand. Vanitas is "falling" down toward his inevitable doom as he self destructs via his revenge, and Noé is grasping out desperately as he tries to catch him and save him from that fate.
"That day when I didn't grab your hand" (which I assume, along with killing him, is what you mean by "what Noé said about Vanitas") might refer to a future event in which Noé will literally fail to catch Vanitas. But more importantly, it's a reference to the larger truth. By Noé's definition of salvation—in terms of preventing his death, Noé is going to fail to save Vanitas. No amount of reaching out can prevent his ultimate fall.
Within this metaphor, then, the scene on the rooftop after the amusement park can be summed up simply. It's the scene where Vanitas finally lets himself reach for Noé's offered hand.
I mean this in three ways.
The first way is the literal way. The scene ends with Vanitas reaching up to take Noé's hand and be helped to his feet. And despite the sheer frequency of Noé reaching out for or trying to catch Vanitas, this is only the second time we see Vanitas actually reach up and take Noé's hand to be helped of his own accord. The only other time is in the catacombs, right before he decides to tell Noé about Doctor Moreau for the first time.
In the catacombs, Vanitas taking Noé's hand works as a symbolic gesture of trust and an acceptance of Noé's help with the Moreau case. Noé has been forcing his help on Vanitas up until this point, staying up late by the door just to follow him out, but taking his hand is the moment that Vani starts to willingly bring him into the fold. The literal is never just literal with these guys.
The second way comes when Vanitas tells Noé that he's "given up on making him do what he wants." As I said, Noé has spent the entire manga reaching out and trying to save Vanitas from his "fall." One major facet of that is his recurring refusal to let Vanitas isolate himself. He makes a willful declaration of staying by his side when Vanitas tries to dismiss him in the bell tower, and when Vanitas tries to cut Noé out of his life by the blade of a knife, Noé comes back with "I will never set you free." Vanitas wants, or at least claims he wants, Noé to leave him the hell alone, but Noé says no every time.
"Giving up on making Noé do what he wants," then, means that Vanitas has finally let himself accept that he wants Noé by his side. There's no more pretending he doesn't want his help or his presence. No more trying to shove Noé away every time he's upset. At least in this moment (though we'll have to see if he holds himself to it), Vanitas has admitted that he wants Noé and Noé's supportiveness in his life.
Mochijun even uses a flashback panel to be sure we know exactly what Vanitas means here. It's that important.
Giving up on trying to push Noé away is one very significant way in which Vanitas has accepted the metaphorical outstretched hand. He's admitting he wants Noé, and Noé's presence means the presence of love and help. It means the end of self-isolation as a maladaptive coping technique. Of course he's going to reach up and accept Noé's literal offer to help him to his feet in the same scene that he finally tells Noé he'll stop trying to get rid of him.
The third way is, of course, when Vanitas says that he wants Noé to be the one to kill him.
Now, this is not how Noé wanted Vanitas to interpret his outstretched hand. Unlike his loved ones, Noé does not see killing and being killed as a way to show love or to save someone. His offer of salvation is meant to be an offer to save Vanitas from his self-destruction. But Vanitas does not want to be saved that way. And given that the manga begins with the statement that Noé will kill him someday, we know that Vanitas cannot be saved by Noé's definition.
However, Vanitas does not share Noé's definition of salvation. I don't know if Vanitas himself could even put words to his personal idea of salvation. But we know from multiple examples that it can sometimes include the gift of a kind death to prevent a worse life. That's the kind of salvation he offers when he returns a curse bearer's True Name despite knowing that it will kill them.
I have a lot of thoughts about the kind of salvation Vanitas could find in Noé, but for the purposes of this scene, this idea of a preferable death is a big one. Vanitas would rather die than lose his humanity, and this is an extremely vulnerable thing for him. Saying that he wants Noé to kill him is, in his own way, accepting Noé's unspoken offer of salvation. He's saying "I want you to be the one to save me in the one way that I can accept."
Vanitas cannot envision a life for himself, and thanks to the way Luna's Mark is rewriting him, it's likely that a long life as his human self would be impossible even if he weren't suicidal. But though it's still not healthy behavior, his request for death is, in his own terms, taking up the hand that Noé has extended. It's a grasp for salvation by a man that cannot admit that he wants to be saved.
And that brings me back to your original point, anon. Because Vanitas reaches up for Noé's hand, and that is incredibly important, but in both the anime and the manga, we do not get to see him take it. The meaning of this depends on what definition of salvation you analyze the scene through.
By Noé's definition, we know that Vanitas cannot and will not be saved. As he says in the beginning, Noé is going to kill him someday. There will be a day when he will fail to grab his hand, and Vanitas will finally fall to the gravity of his doom. So in that way, it makes sense that even in the most optimistic of scenes, we have to cut away before Vanitas can actually take Noé's hand. He might be letting himself reach for it now, and that's a good thing, but Noé is never actually going to be able to pull him up. To show us otherwise in a scene so full of symbolism and foreshadowing would be a lie.
However, as I keep saying, Noé's definition of salvation isn't the only one at play. As much as Vanitas's death will not be prevented, the fact remains that he is still finally letting himself reach for salvation in some form. So perhaps we can cut away as soon as he starts to reach not because he'll never be saved, but because the thing that matters in this scene is the reaching itself. Noé has become a supportive constant in Vanitas's life. He's just reaffirmed that he won't change, that he'll continue to support Vanitas from beside him.
We don't need to see Noé take Vanitas's hand once he starts reaching because that is a foregone conclusion. It's Vanitas's decision to reach that needs the emphasis of being the final shot, because that's the heart of the moment.
In the manga, Vanitas reaches up, and we cut to the sunlit sky. This whole scene, in addition to the running thread of reaching hands and salvation, has an overarching symbol in the end of the rain. Vanitas and Noé's horrible fight was in the storm, the rain patters to its end as they make up, and the sun breaks through the clouds as they reaffirm their pledges to one another and Noé re-offers Vanitas his hand. It's simple but effective pathetic fallacy.
So to that end, Vanitas reaches up to take Noé's offer to help him stand (reaches up to take some version of his promise of salvation), and we cut to the sunlit sky. Noé has brought the sunlight back as he offers his hand to Vanitas. Joy and light and hope return as Noé's love for and desire to save Vanitas are reestablished. Then Vanitas reaches toward that light, and we cut to the sunbeams to make sure you know just what he's reaching toward.
This works well for the end of a story arc! The weather symbol has been a constant throughout the whole amusement park arc, so of course the chapter that marks its end has to be capped off with an image of the clouds breaking. It's a closing note that pulls together Vanitas's reaching for salvation, the weather symbolism, and 55.5's general tone of relief.
Meanwhile, the anime switches things so that we see the sunbeams first, and then Vanitas reaching for Noé's hand is the final shot of the whole entire show. And for once, I actually really like this little change! The manga's order of images works well as a resolution for its chapter and its story arc, but the anime's version works really well as a possible end for the story overall.
The VnC anime may or may not ever get another season, so for the foreseeable future, Vanitas reaching for Noé's hand is the end of the show. This gives that shot a lot of emphasis. In fact, it kind of makes it the meaning of the whole thing.
Noé spends the whole anime reaching out and trying to offer a hand of salvation to Vanitas, and the final shot of the whole thing is Vanitas letting himself reach up to take it. We don't end on the shot of their clasping hands, but the shot of the reaching, because Vanitas's decision to accept some form of salvation is the thing the whole show has been building towards. It's the decision to reach up that makes the whole story.
So though they go about it in very slightly different ways, the manga and the anime are still both making meaning out of the simple act of Vanitas reaching. That's the core of the whole thing.
And overall, though I've framed "we cut away because Noé won't actually be able to stop his fall/grab his hand" and "we cut away because the decision to reach is the important part" as two opposing interpretations, I actually think their co-existence is key. Vnc's whole story is a conflict between Noé and Vanitas's definitions of salvation. The tension of their relationship isn't "will Noé find a way to save Vanitas from death?" (He won't). The tension is "will Noé find some other way to save Vanitas before his death?" and "will he be able to recognize that alternate salvation as salvation if/once Vanitas claims it?"
VnC is a story about a doomed man who might in some way be saved. Chapter 55.5 cuts away before we see Vanitas actually take Noé's hand because he is doomed to fall someday and not reach that hand when it matters most, but also because the thing that matters in this scene is that he decides to reach up at all. Vanitas is going to die, so any hope and optimism in his story must make peace with the doom of him. His healing from his trauma and accepting love and help happens while he is hurtling rapidly toward his ending. That's the beauty and the tension of Vanoé's relationship (and the beauty and tension of VnC as a whole).
So to answer your question anon, yes. We cut away before Vanitas reaches Noé's hand because, as we're told in the beginning, he will not ultimately reach Noé's salvation. But at the same time, the whole point of the rooftop scene is that Vanitas does want to accept some kind of salvation, and he just might manage do it. It all depends on how he can be saved.
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Randomly thinking about how angry the way Winter is treated in the narrative makes me
They show the real Winter and acknowledge who he actually is JUST to once again present him as the mean stuck-up prince??? HE GOES THROUGH SO MUCH DEVELOPMENT IN WINTER TURNING JUST TO BE SHOWN AS THE SAME OLD 'ANGRY RACIST STUCK UP PRINCE'???? IN THE NEXT BOOKS LIKE WHAT. TUI. PLEASE. I KNOW THAT WE AREN'T SEEING IT FROM HIS PERSPECTIVE, SO WE DON'T KNOW WHAT HES THINKING BUT. HE BARELY CHANGES AT ALL... LIKE AT THE END OF WINTER TURNING HE REALIZES THAT THE WINGLET IS HIS TRIBE AND HE CARES ABOUT THEM MORE THAN A RANKING AND A FAMILY WHO (mostly) DOESN'T LOVE HIM. THEN IN THE NEXT BOOKS HE'S BACK TO THE SAME OLD 'WINTER'. TUI.
I've seen people calling Winter 'nasty mean racist man' HAVE YOU READ THE BOOKS. DRAGON RACISM WAS SO RAMPANT IN THE BOOKS.... LIKE ALMOST EVERY CHARACTER HAD A MOMENT WHERE THEY WERE BEING THE DRAGON EQUIVALENT OF RACIST. WHICH OBVIOUSLY, ISN'T GOOD, BUT TO JUST PIN IT ON WINTER??? WHAT??? HIS HATRED OF NIGHTWINGS WAS FUCKING DRILLED INTO HIS BRAIN GROWING UP, HE GETS PAST THAT AND LEARNS TO NOT BE DRAGON RACIST. HE REALIZES 'OH FUCK. MAYBE THE THINGS MY SHALLOW HIERARCHICAL SOCIETY TAUGHT ME AREN'T TRUE'. DID WE READ THE SAME BOOKS, WHERE APPARENTLY, NONE OF THAT HAPPENED?? MEANWHILE DARKSTALKER, THE FANDOMS 'PRECIOUS MISUNDERSTOOD BABY' TRIED TO COMMIT RACIAL GENOCIDE BECAUSE HE HAD AN ABUSIVE DAD WHO HAPPENED TO BE AN ICEWING??? (And when Winter is upset about this he is treated as unreasonable by the guy who KNEW WHAT WAS GOING ON (Qibli) )
I've been a Winter defender for so long, surrounded by a fandom who mostly hates him and now that I have emotional intelligence since I'm not nine (no offense to nine year olds 🙏) and I have a place to ramble where I'll be listened to I can finally defend my angsty ice dragon I will absolutely do so. This stupid ass garbagefire of a series has meant so much to me over the years and I'm passionate about so many of these characters. I adore Winter so much, reading through the books for like the 50th time is so amazing, like I used to immediately hate moon because she was called a Mary sue, Qibli because people find him annoying, Kinkajou because she was the 'annoying one', but now I love all of those characters. I can see traits of all of them in me, and they mean a lot to me. Turtle's anxiety, Qibli's Sociotropy, (needing to be liked by everyone) hypervigilance (I've never seen people talking about it, and to see it represented in my favorite book series makes me feel seen.), fierce loyalty, Winter's guilt, self-loathing, desperate desire to please his parents, Moon's social anxiety, nervousness, and love of reading, Kinkajou's desire to be a dragon others notice and remember.
This turned into a rant about a completely different thing I'm so sorry, I'm not even done I have so much to say about these guys
Please don't let this flop I poured my heart out about this book series for children
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As someone who knows a good amount of the FNAF lore but kinda doesn't give a shit about it anymore, I dont understand when people say the FNAF movie was just lore fanservice. I thought the plot was fun and established its own rules and stakes rather well, and I found myself engaged by this Mike's struggles. And it's different from the Mike of the games (the last time I checked) and I'm happy they went with a protagonist who would better fit a movie's plot structure than a never-ending series of teasing games.
I know stuff like Vanessa being Afton's daughter is kind of a lore revelation I believe, but it was also a good twist in the film and made her compelling. I'm kinda fucked up over characters who have loyalty to people they know are monsters but don't know what to do with it. And I'm also happy af they didn't pull a Vanny (as fun as she could be), she just got to be normal and conflicted.
Other than the 2000s b-list kids movie conflict with the evil aunt - which honestly is corny in a good way - my only gripe with the story is that WHY Afton did the murders isn't established. He didn't get enough time to be a villain me feels, especially for how obvious the twist is, but like how often do murderers get good backstories in cheesy horror flicks? Atleast he didn't go on a tirade about remnant, the weird ass sci-fi magic the series brought in past "souls can haunt things" is wack to me, and I think from the film you can just extrapolate that he wanted power over his victims or somethin'. Which, I mean, is a common motivation for serial murder.
The movie is very cute and corny for what it is. Sometimes I wish it leaned into its melodrama more, but it's very fun. And it was worth it for the puppets alone. Speaking of the animatronics - I adore the characterization of them in this film, the biggest draw of them as horror mascots was always the mix between being kid-friendly but fucked up and haunted. Them being sweet to the lil sister and just wanting to play with her even if it meant murder was fun as hell. Personally I would've enjoyed seeing the kids also interact with the original personalities of the CHARACTERS of the animatronics, like forcing the machines to do their old bits even though they're in a horrible state. Driving home how decrepit and devoid of life the place these poor kids are trapped in is, yet they still just want to have fun and enjoy the silly cartoon animals. Stuff like that is what draws me to the aesthetics of the series honestly.
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