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#disclaimer that this isnt meant as tristamp hate. i do still love that anime
orcelito · 1 year
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Hm
Something that kinda bothers me with trimax vs tristamp is the framing of Choice
In tristamp, it's framed as this whole big thing where he has to choose between humans and plants. "Who's side are you on?" Repeated over and over again, & he continues to not give an answer because he doesn't WANT to choose. Which in and of itself, I think this is narratively interesting, but like...
Then I think about what the big Choice is in trimax, & it feels kinda cheap in comparison.
Bc see, the Choice in trimax is over whether he should ever take a life. Wolfwood says it, Legato forces it, even fucking Nebraska Dad says it. Someday, Vash is going to have to make that choice whether he wants to or not. He spends over a hundred chapters running from this, REFUSING to choose one life over another, citing that all life is sacred... he really, truly believes this, and he really, truly wants to live by this.
But sometimes in this hell of a world, you really do have to make a choice. And in the end, he's forced to make that choice. One Time, he chooses to kill in order to save someone else's life. It happens only when his hand is really truly forced, but it Happens. He kills someone, and it nearly destroys him.
And we see this during the time where the earth forces have gotten the order to bomb Gunsmoke to combat Knives, Despite people telling them that they've got plans in motion to combat him without killing a great many people. Bc the people on earth many many miles away are more concerned with risk avoidance, so they're willing to accept killing a Lot of people in order to remove the uncertainty & risk to a great many more.
Zoom back in on Vash. He literally passes out from the mental agony of it & goes into a fever dream of all the people he knows that has died. The man he killed was an awful person, caused so much harm to both Vash and many many more people. Objectively, it should not have been a hard decision.
But for Vash, it was.
And that's what really gets me about it all. Vash is a staunch pacifist. He sticks to this despite people telling him over and over again to give up, to just accept that he has to kill people sometimes... And he eventually learns that they were kinda right in the end, but Even Still, after all is said and done, he STILL refuses to give up on any life he could possibly save.
This framing of the Choice is really, truly moving to me. It's a key part of what really made trimax Hit for me.
So tying it back in with tristamp's framing of choice... idk, it just feels kinda cheap in comparison. In trimax, Vash never really has any doubts about the plant vs human thing (aside from when he was a kid, post-tesla). He knows he's a plant. He knows a lot of humans wouldn't accept him for that. He knows a lot of humans would Fear him for that. But he still loves them and never once wavers in his pursuit for love & peace.
Overall, I just really enjoy the framing of moral questions in trimax more, I guess.
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