Trigun Stargaze

Trigun: Stargaze is by no means a bad show, but when compared with its previous season, Stampede, it just doesn't hit the same high points. The animation is still as impressive as it was in Stampede: being an almost entirely 3D-animated show, it really pushes its models to be as expressive, movements to be as fluid and environments to be as impactful as they all can be. The character designs work very well for the 3D medium and are neither overdesigned, nor too simplified. It's overall very pleasant to watch, although the cinematography is not as well thought-out as it was in Stampede. Scenes sometimes lingertoo long and sometimes jump from one setting to the next without proper continuity (especially in fight scenes), but these are exceptions, not the rule, for Stargaze. The musical score is fantastic and serves its job more than well. The writing is very hit or miss this time around, and is easily the aspect that disappointed me the most after seeing what Stampede had to offer. Some characters are very complex, even with little screen time, and leave a long-lasting impact, while other seemingly important characters are quickly turned into comic relief. The overall plot isn't horrendous or nonsensical, but pieces don't fit together as neatly as they should, characters don't act according to their established motivations and lots of threads don't tie up in satisfying ways. And then, the ending... In order to keep this review spoiler-free, I'll keep this brief and vague. None of the characters go through a full character arc. All character arcs are either already completed in Stampede or suddenly stop at a point where they feel incomplete. Characters change, but none of them grow in a meaningful way. The only changes are visual: characters have new outfits to show that they are no longer the same people as before, but aside from that, they still act the exact same. Newly introduced characters suffer from this the most. If you liked or even loved Stampede, you should still watch Stargaze, but don't expect another masterpiece out of this season. It won't be a complete disappointment, but it also doesn't have the same "wow"-factor as it did before. Still enjoyable, but unsatisfactory as an ending. ____________________________ My overall ranking: Characters: 4/10 Plot: 3/10 Music: 9/10 Visuals: 9/10 Overall: 6/10

(Spanish review on my list) Okay... I don't want to compare it to the original series, because we knew from the beginning that it doesn't have the same story as the manga or the old anime, so I don't want to compare them (but I do think I liked the original better). And even though most of the anime is quite good, it's nice to see that the protagonist is mostly honest about his convictions and always tries to resolve things through dialogue. Most of the time he can't convince them with words alone, and his companions usually end up helping him. So it's not a badthing that even though he's a character who could be much more "effective" at resolving things violently using his mystical powers, he ends up choosing his pacifist dialogue route. BUT in the end, the enemy is way too overpowered, and the fight in space threw me off quite a bit... it makes both the protagonist and the villain much less vulnerable. While it does resolve things through dialogue (which isn't bad), the fact that they were in space after losing the protection of the plants didn't quite convince me... On the other hand, everything turned out too well; there weren't any major losses, and everything ended quite happily. The only deaths were the villains and the psychopaths, so I do feel it lacked emotional weight for the character's moral development. Yes, he feels guilty about the indirect deaths, but none of them were particularly close, so that weight was missing... but it's not bad... the values ​​it tries to teach about coexistence with natural resources and protecting your friends and sticking to your principles even when the world is broken and tries to force you to commit crimes are cool. I do recommend it; I think it's a good anime, but don't compare it to the original. The CGI is quite acceptable. The last chapter ends with the phrase "Quo Vadis" and I think that represents very well what this anime wants to convey.

This review is written by two people; my partner's at the top, and mine (account owner) at the bottom. -- Much like a lot of people circa 2023, I watched Trigun Stampede and really enjoyed it. Looking back on it, it was pretty rushed and some things didn't make sense, but keeping up with it weekly was very fun nonetheless and it made me check out the very good manga that is trigun maximum. I was very hyped for the second season of this show I liked, three years later and it is finally here! It is not very good. Trigun stargaze is technically very pretty. Iam pro 3d animation in anime and that’s what studio orange excels at. The characters are expressive and the action scenes get to rule from time to time, with the dynamic camera action and all. I also think the show knows how to use light and color very well, orange sand contrasting with a bright blue sky is a beautiful view. The problem is everywhere else. Trigun Stargaze carries the same problems of its predecessor: it is compressing a lot of plot into very little screentime. While stampede had the benefit of being something new and unfinished, stargaze has the burden of making sense of all the dangling plot threads and character arcs from season one and it drops the ball fabulously. While it only sticks to the original plot vaguely -- doing it beat for beat would be impossible in such limited time -- it still tries to cram as many manga characters as possible and adds new ones, making the story feel very weightless with all these people that simply do not matter. Studio orange also dropped the ball with its divergences from the canon. I am usually not against adaptations doing something different from the original but this was so… boring. It wasn’t even bad choices like making everyone get heterosexually married at the end. It was just a bunch of "fanservice" moments one after another that felt very safe, like preaching to the choir, and doing nothing interesting with it. If you’re going to kill or save a character unlike the original story, you gotta have a reason why besides “the fans would like it this way”. This season felt extremely directionless. Nothing truly hit the way it was intended (and you can tell how they intended us to feel with the melodramatic score at key moments) because they were rushing plotlines without any rhyme or reason. The biggest sin of this show is making me not really care about the most important characters to the story, aka the protagonist/antagonist duo of vash and knives. How do you fuck up this badly to make a story about codependent twin siblings who are at opposing sides morally not compelling at all? By focusing 1/12 of the show on a trumpet guy that has no relevance after his episode I guess. Trigun Stampede is pretty and I am glad it made me check out the original manga, but Stargaze just feels like a let down after I engaged with such a good story in the pages. If you are like me, you are probably already mad for watching it or decided to skip it. Can’t blame you for it! -- I truly feel nothing about the show, and that’s a shame, because it really could’ve been something special. I’ll be brief, because my partner up there is going to have a much more nuanced review than I will, and I truly felt very little for this show. Trigun Stargaze is a very poor followup to a show that I thought was medium to medium good when I was watching it. Orange’s punchy, one of a kind, explosive 3D animation is on full display here, and that’s the only good thing I have to say about Stargaze. The whole story felt like things were happening because the plot demanded it. It felt like we were just moving along to the next episode, the next plotbeat. Entire characters are introduced for the sake of giving Vash something to do, and that’s not great. More than that, the show is a love letter to the original Trigun in the worst way possible; it is the letter from a fan that clearly cares a lot about Trigun’s cast, more than it does the actual story itself. There are no stakes or tension, because nothing too bad is allowed to happen to the cast. It is fanservice heaped upon fanservice. Things happen because things were popular in the original, and because the fanboys and fangirls writing this series just wanted everyone to be happy. There is very little real friction in the way of Vash and Pal’s wacky hijinks through the desert, because things that should carry weight carry little, because no one really suffers too hard. At the very least Meryl and Milly are given *slightly* more to do here compared to the original series, but that’s pushing it. If your beloved characters aren’t stuck in character development purgatory, they’ve been bastardized to hell for the sake of, you guessed it, more fanservice. I’m not even a fan of the original Trigun, so while this fanservice was heaped upon my plate, I just felt bored. There was nothing here driving me to connect with the characters, because I thought their issues were either poorly explained or poorly developed. I didn’t love Stampede, but I wasn’t nearly this bored. I simply felt no connection with Trigun Stargaze, and for any anime, that’s a fate worse than death.

I don’t know who had the brilliant idea of planning only two seasons of 12 episodes each for a 16-volume manga, but hey, clearly that didn’t work out very well. I mean, Stampede it's great, even though I recognize it’s not perfect. It’s what introduced me to the world of Trigun and made me fall in love with it in the first place, so I’ll always have a lot of affection for that season! Stargaze, however, leaves a strange taste in your mouth from the very first episodes. I feel like at that point they tried to bring the most important elements of Trimax into the remake,but didn’t have enough time to develop everything properly (again, several manga volumes condensed into just 12 episodes), so the season ends up feeling like a disjointed compilation of important moments from the original material. These are scenes that might even work on their own, like in TikTok edits, but together they fail to tell a decent story. It’s all so confusing. The new characters don’t really add anything meaningful to the story, and the existing ones have had their development completely stalled (some even feel like they’ve regressed). Vash and Knives come across as caricatures of themselves here, which genuinely made me sad because they’re two of my favorite characters of all time. To be fair, the animation remains wonderful, with visually stunning fight scenes, and there are moments that truly warm fans’ hearts. But overall, the season feels weak and superficial, and it definitely doesn’t deliver the conclusion that *Stampede* deserved.