Unfollowing ppl complaining about ‘pede as self-care.

Is it better than the ‘98 anime? Production-wise yes, Tri had its own charm but it was also a 90’s anime and has the errors and cost-cutting to show for it. It’s also completely divergent from the manga bc it was still serialized as episodes were coming out— it’s basically apples and oranges to compare (haha).

Do I think it’s better than the manga? Not really. Again, the stories are diverging— Stamp is borrowing more from Maximum proper and has the full context to mold as it sees fit. Yeah the pacing is breakneck compared to the manga but idk I think it’s fun, it’s different. I was getting a little hesitant during ep 6 as many others were but by the end I was into it. A chaotic situation where two lives are in the balance? And *Wolfwood* is the one who has to make the tough choices of stubbornly keeping them both alive? That’s interesting! I wanna see how that goes! Make him even more of a parallel to Vash, why not? It’s also not even halfway through the season yet and I still have no fucking idea if it’s one cour or two so who knows how it’ll all shake out. I’ll reserve my final judgements for when the full thing’s out and done, but it’s not replacing or detracting from Max in any stretch.

Do I think the manga had its own pacing issues? Hell yeah. Backstories get rewritten and details tweaked as it goes on, the EOM was a very late addition that didn’t get much time to be expanded on, nor it’s connections to other characters beyond direct A—B influence. The fight with Legato in general felt simultaneously drawn out and too short. I’d like to know a bit more about Domina and Chronica, kinda a big deal to know there are even more independents and not really considered as a new perspective to the conflict between the twins. The ending is incomplete on an emotional level. Why did we not get Vash’s reaction to the tree?? Nightow could have gutted me harder with an apple than he did with confetti and I can only presume he didn’t have the pages left to do so. But I still love it. It’s one of my favorites now, I shed tears and laughed and connected to it and a lot of cool people through reading it last year. It made me remember how much I love writing. I’d never not recommend it to someone just because *I* didn’t gel with the ending after sitting with it for a bit. Sum greater than the parts and all that.

To continue the first analogy: Stamp and Max are more like an orange and a tart. Both contain the essence of something but convey it and interact with you in very different ways— as is the nature of differing mediums. An adaptation will never be 1:1 with the source material because there’s specific things you can only do or convey through each one and tweaks must be made. How the gutters are placed and arranged on a comic page cannot be perfectly translated to a camera pan. I’ve wiped my hands of expecting “perfect” adaptations anymore, I just want the new thing to recapture and expand on the essence of what I liked about the original.

Stampede is fine so far. I like the music. I like the animation. I like the extra bits of character interaction and flavor we didn’t get from the other two. It feels *enough* like Trigun, and that’s good enough for me.

But this is all just my subjective taste. If stamp doesn’t gel for you, it doesn’t gel. I’m just jaded from a very loud minority that shit all over it the moment the trailers dropped bc it wasn’t the ‘98 Nostalgia Goggles version of Trigun they remembered half-watching on tv a decade ago and poisoning the well. There are valid things to critique, I personally just want to crawl back up into my hermit shell with the episodes playing on loop and daydreaming about having that new statue.

There’s three flavors of Trigun to choose from now. Pick the ones you like and have fun.