Trigun

 You haven't been listening to your heart, Meryl! You haven't been loving smart!

“Stop! You’re hurting him!”

So Meryl speaks when Vash is being dragged across the desert by car. I’ve surmised that dubs, in general, have gotten a lot better since the 90s.

And hey? She’s the spitting image of Rem? I definitely didn’t notice that before, if it’s even been there the whole time. Seems to be a lot of doppelgangers running around in these shows - - Rei being Shinji’s Mom, Hohenheim and Father being duplicates, et cetera. Actually, identity confusion of the Freudian Oedipal complex variety seems hella popular in Japan judging by these shows. EVANGELION, FLCL, even GURREN LAGANN to an extent, all had underage male protagonists suffering serious sexual tension with mother/big sister surrogates. I’m sure somebody, somewhere, has written a riveting thesis paper on the subject.

Speaking of the psychological undercurrents of this show, I wonder if Rem would’ve kept telling Vash to adhere to this code of theirs if she’d actually survived in the ship crash. It seems like something he was too young to properly grasp at the time and his understanding of its applications have been frozen ever since. I’m honestly not somebody who rages at the notion of a hero choosing not to kill, but the fact that Vash goes into anxious hysterics before, during and after his decisions speaks to this part of his psyche not being fully developed. That makes for even worse maladjustment considering he's supposed to more than a hundred years old.

Speaking of normal development and all that,  I’m getting the sense that Vash and Meryl’s potential relationship is going to be one of those old tragically unrealized romances - - and I’d say it’s more her fault. It’s the classic  case of a gal playing hard-to-get and actually turning the guy away.  If she’s really so out-of-sorts about him, slapping the guy when he finally show some (if maybe a little inappropriate) affection is a little counterintuitive. And, for all they, he's walking away to his death, now, and the more appropriate opportunity is never going to arise.

Watch this episode, “Live Through,” below and decide for yourself, then read my comments on the previous episode here.   

Tom Pinchuk’s the writer of  HYBRID BASTARDS!  &  UNIMAGINABLE . Order them on Amazon   here  &   here .  Follow him on Twitter:  @tompinchuk

" I wonder if any one have noticed, their an black cat in almost all Trigun episodes.

 CAT!!!

"

There was actually one moment in the manga when she gets put off and scared by him and his history. She sees a glimpse of his memory and all the fucked up shit about him and their "relationship" cools down pretty quickly(for a little while). 

 Just saw the Trigun movie last night. Nothing spectacular but it was a fun ride. Kinda like the Cowboy Bebop movie, it's basically a long episode. 

" Your point about Vash's ideology about not wanting to kill being frozen in time is very apt. I never thought of it that way. It's not like Vash has lived a normal life so his development would be obscure compared to what others would experience. 

" I wonder if any one have noticed, there a black cat in almost all the Trigun episodes.

" You do see a lot of contrary behavior in female characters as love interests. It's a popular theme in anime/manga that is called "tsundere". A girl acts as if she's not interested, but really does.

Look at the relationship of Misato and Shinji. I completely understand her reason, but I don't see how Misato thought she was helping a boy who felt like no one wanted him by constantly telling him to leave.

In the more standard manga/anime, brother/sister theme isn't treated very seriously and more a source of humor.

In one of the Code Geass Picture Drama episodes, Nunnally is listening to Shirley and Milly talk about what an impressive woman Cornelia is. The young and innocent Nunnaly doesn't understand that by impressive they were talking about Cornelia's body. So, Nunnaly asks her big brother Lelouch to train her to be as impressive as Cornelia. He wasn't listening to the girl's conversation earlier, so, he doesn't know the context of what they were talking about. He thinks she wants to be a strong-willed, intelligent woman. After it all, Shirley and Milly are standing there listening to Lelouch promise to train his sister hard to be a woman. From their perspective it sounds really inappropriate, but for Lelouch and Nunnally it's completely innocent. "  

 It IS a very Todd McFarlan touch. As I recall, he used to put spiders into all his SPIDER-MAN covers.