Binary Stars

July 16, 2024:

Yes.

Thank you all. It’s been an honor.

brimstone; fire

Zacharie! I like giving him the bloated weird neck, I think OFF characters should be at least a bit grotesque.

Yugioh is about anti-fascism, it’s about the horrors of war, the crushing effects of class division, the foolishness of authoritarianism. It’s about the power of belief in community, in your friends, and in the people who believe in you.

And about half the time, it’s about card games.

Would you believe me if I told you this was a show about card games? 😂

This has always stuck in my brain because it's the first time we see Vash talk about a plant as a person, referring to the plant as a girl instead of "it" like the crew and assigning morality/emotions to her... and it's so interesting me that he's shittalking her as selfish. Whenever Knives talks about plants, he's seeing them as weak and defenseless and unable to protect themselves from humans; a lot of other talk/imagery around the plants in the manga centers on them as angelic, giving, kind. Vash is the only one who ever talks about them expressing things like fear, confusion, anger, and selfishness, which feels a lot more like recognizing personhood in them than reducing them to victims or angels.

IDK I think it ties into my general frustration when Vash gets flattened to being only ever nice, patient, or worst of all, naive. As if he's kind because he can't help it or doesn't know better, not on purpose. He's frustrated with his "sister"'s behaviour and how many lives it's threatening, and he also sees her as a person whose life an personhood are equal to theirs and wants them all to be okay. He sees the negative aspects of others, is fully aware of the consequences of his actions and the risks, and he cares despite, even so, regardless.

(Also seen in another light it's just funny. Like ugh I just wanted to enjoy my trip and then my bratty sister threw a tantrum and nearly blew us all up just because a JJBA villain attacked)

trigun98 dealing me the mortal blow of Silly Times followed by Heartbreak

though the implications of the changes are really interesting. i just finished episode 6, Lost July, so I got to see 98's version of events. in the manga, we get the detail that One Hundred Thousand people were caught in the explosion

100,000 people dead in an instant. he killed them, straight up. He Killed Them. the manga never shies away from this fact.

in the anime, they establish that it was One Million people caught up in it, but he didn't kill them. somehow, he absolutely destroyed everything, but No One Died.

though one million people stuck without shelter or resources eventually led to a similar result. lots of people died. but the key thing is that not EVERYONE died. in the manga, the only way people didnt die was if they just were lucky enough to be out of the city at the time. everyone in the city was obliterated.

i'm also fascinated by their decision to give him a wider span of amnesia. in the manga, he doesn't remember july, but it's a localized amnesia. he has no idea what caused the explosion, doesnt remember even Being in july, just remembers waking up in it. but he remembers the stuff preceding it, enough to know in painful detail every one of the 150 years he's been alive.

in the anime, if he doesn't remember anything prior to july aside from his "early childhood", what exactly does he think happened in the time since? does he Know he's over a hundred years old? which on that matter, when exactly did July happen in the anime? because in the manga, it starts up 6 years after & then spans to 10 years after (by the end of trimax), but in the anime we see this woman who was three years old back then, but is Presumably at least 18, probably over 20 years old. for simplicity's sake, maybe we could say she's ~23, aka it's been 20 years.

6 years to 20 years passed. that's an interesting time difference to set. it's a succinct way of letting the viewers know that Things Are Not Normal with him. earlier in the episode she says he's got no known age, which he doesnt try to contest, but the viewers could just assume that's the general confusion of his identity with the public's knowledge. we've seen Time After Time that a lot of people have no idea who he even is, up to and including confusion about what he even Looks like.

but then we see he looks the same between now and when this woman was a small child. some twenty years passed, and yet he looks the same.

adding in the moment of communication between him and the plant, calming her down... which ON THAT NOTE, earlier in the episode where he's up on the stand & he pours a drink for her and says "You were just tired, weren't you?" it was so Unexpectedly sweet. a moment of connection that would probably gain confusion for someone who doesnt know, but i had to literally pause it bc i was just. floored. by how sweet it was. we are sorely lacking direct interaction between Vash and the plants for most of the manga, so i really appreciated seeing him treat her with that kind of compassion. so, so sweet...

this episode also has me wondering what they're going to do for the next arc, since they Already had him do the Calm The Plant Down thing and Also had the reference of someone wanting revenge for July. will Neon still want revenge for July too? it would feel a little redundant though, so are they going to do something different?

i'm just gonna have to find out later :P probably tomorrow lol