Trigun Stampede 07

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis

Wolfwood sends Vash to deal with the invading Bad Lads raiders while he tries to stop Livio. Vash runs into Meryl and Roberto, who’d been forced to take pictures of the raider’s actions. Meanwhile, Wolfwood tries to reach out to his childhood friend, who’s only thought is to catch up to Wolfwood. Vash returns and kills Zazie’s observer bug. Wolfwood shoots Livio’s facial, cybernetic implant. This causes Livio to remember what happened to him. As such, he shoots himself in the head.

Meanwhile, Bluesummers reveals that this whole plan with Livio and the orphanage is to get Wolfwood back into the fold. To that end, he activates an ion cannon on the Sand Steamer, which was originally a section from one of the crashed colony ships. Vash goes into what used to be the ship’s control room in an attempt to stop the ion cannon, which will destroy the orphanage. Vash uses the steamers grapples to slow the cannon coming into position.

Wolfwood and Vash stop the cannon from lowering correctly. As such, it fires, then flips back and explodes. As a result, Bluesummers’s vehicle nearly wrecks. Unfortunately, the Sand Steamer is still on course to plow through the orphanage. Wolfwood uses his drug to open up the steam engine while Vash goes to the Plant room.

With the Sand Steamer stopped short, Bluesummers and Zazie go back for “Double Fang’s” body. Meanwhile, Vash, Meryl and Roberto go to the Plant room. There, they discover the plant is a humanoid alien, reaching out to Vash. Further, Vash has the same markings as the Plant.

Thoughts/Review

Although I already knew Vash was a Plant from the previous anime adaptation, we get this information quicker than I expected in Trigun Stampede 07.

Ship Salvage

While it makes perfect sense that the Sand Steamer would be constructed from salvaged parts from crashed spaceships, it made no sense to me that the ion cannon even works. And yet in Trigun Stampede 07, that’s just what happened. Seriously, where does it get power to move, much less charge up? As part of a Starship, I can see the ion cannons being folded inside, to be flipped out when needed. But this mechanism would get power from the ship’s engines, and then to fire the cannon would take enormous power that could only come from the ship’s engines, right?

There’s a reason that the original survivors put tracks on this section of Starship, and then installed a STEAM generator on it. Ah, but there’s a Plant on board as well. Plants are used as power sources, so one could say that the Plant powered the ion cannon. But why? I mean, if you have a Plant, why do you need a steam engine? The Plant would seemingly provide more than enough power to move this crawler of a vessel. Further, on a desert planet, water would seem to be a precious resource. So why waste it on steam generation? And what the smeg are they burning to produce steam?

Why would the original builders of the Sand Steamer not disconnect the ion cannon? I can see why they might not remove it, as it weighs a ton and could be repurposed for additional storage of people or things. But otherwise, it makes no sense to leave something that dangerous in a fully functioning state.

Big Reveal

The big reveal of Trigun Stampede 07 is the nature of the Plants and that Vash is one. Naturally, as a fan of the OG anime, I already knew this. However, I don’t remember if any of the plants in the light bulbs (manga and OG anime) transformed into a humanoid form. I was actually thinking that was rather rare, and only Vash, Knives, and a few others (manga) had a humanoid form that looked human. This Plant looks alien.

That said, knowing that Plants are actually some kind of “alien life form” (we’ll see if this show follows the lore of the manga or not) really makes things dark in a way I don’t recall from the OG anime. This makes it look like the Plants are prisoners of unwitting humans. Meryl and company seemed surprised to see the revealed Plant, then more surprised to see Vash had the same markings. Maybe we’ll get more answers next episode.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

Sorry this is so late, but I’m so overwhelmed with work at the moment. No days off and long days to boot mean little time to do what I want. So with that in mind, let me wrap up my review of Trigun Stampede 07 with some final thoughts.

• As expected, Livio died, though I was wrong about the cause of death. I didn’t expect suicide, but when it happened, I thought, “Yeah, that makes sense.”
• What use does Bluesummers have for Livio’s body? Livio is a self-healer, but one would think a brain injury would be fatal. So in that light, I am curious as this Livio is nothing like his manga counterpart.
• The Bad Lads didn’t seem to have a purpose in this story other than (1) provide another obstacle for the heroes to face and (2) they were a thing in the manga and OG anime. In the OG anime, they had purpose.
• Animation still has uncanny valley issues with people movements at times.
• Roberto is a piece of work. I really miss Milly.

In the end, Trigun Stampede 07 attempts to overwhelm your senses so that you don’t question things. But I have questions, and maybe we’ll get answers to them. That said, I won’t deny that I was entertained by the episode, illogic notwithstanding.