Trigun Stampede Studio Orange’s lavish reimagining of Yasuhiro Nightow’s classic manga, has made plenty of changes compared to the 1998 anime adaptation. However, even if you haven’t been keeping up with Stampede yourself, you’ve most likely heard one particular refrain reiterated by old fans coming at the new series: Where’s Milly? Meryl’s cheerful assistant known for her Amazonian height and massive machine gun was always a fan-favorite of the original Trigun cast. So her being excised from Stampede is naturally an immediate cause for consternation. However, the storytelling shifts resulting from Milly’s absence run even deeper than simply not having a popular character on screen, and reckoning with what those results are can reveal much about how Trigun Stampede’s priorities have shaken out as a whole.
One of the core cast in the original Trigun, Milly Thompson’s connections with the other main characters worked to reflect their personalities and journey. Her relationship with leading man Vash the Stampede was comparatively light, initially. The pair quickly establish a friendly, casual rapport to contrast with the more frustrated reactions Vash initially prompts from Milly’s other half, Meryl. Vash crashing into the pair’s proximity during any given dangerous situation they’ve all been thrust into regularly results in him and Milly exchanging a pleasant “Hello!” with each other. That contrast with Meryl is Milly’s primary role through much of the original Trigun anime. The duo’s work for the insurance company sees them both trading information regularly for exposition purposes, demonstrating their familiarity and experience in the field.
Compare this with the Meryl of Trigun Stampede. Now a fresh-faced journalist instead of a seasoned insurance worker, she’s teamed up not with Milly, but with a grizzled, gruff older man named, of all things, Roberto de Niro. So much about this take on Meryl has been rearranged to the point that she’s effectively unrelated to the original as a character now, and losing the linchpin of her partnership with Milly is central to that. Meryl no longer exchanges information in a world-building way with Milly, now she’s naive about the workings of planet Gunsmoke, necessitating Roberto expositing to her at seemingly every opportunity. And without Milly’s rapport with Vash to contrast Meryl’s initial brusqueness towards the Humanoid Typhoon, the relationship between Meryl, Vash, and Roberto feels much less dynamic.
The dynamics of the relationship Vash shared with Meryl and Milly in the 1998 Trigun anime worked to define his character over the course of the series as well. One of the most memorable scenes between Milly and Vash comes in the anime’s eleventh episode, wherein Milly explodes in anger at Vash over his apparent killing of a couple who were attempting to escape from a human-trafficking caravan. Of course, Vash’s attack turns out to have been a ruse, and the resultant resolution makes clear just how closely Milly and Vash’s pacifistic ambitions actually align. It doubles back to be reflective of how well Vash and Milly got along in their initial meeting, while also adding more layers to their methodologies. Without Milly to crystalize that ideological connection in Stampede, Vash’s association with the new duo of Meryl and Roberto feels incidental, even arbitrary.
The familiarity that Milly brings to relationships in the 1998 Trigun anime can be attributed to her strong sense of family. Her massive family of dozens of siblings she hails from, and her dedication to keeping in touch with them, spills over into affecting the other characters in the series. She inspires Meryl to write to her own family in the original anime’s fifteenth episode, for instance. Yet Milly’s most concentrated connection comes with the last main character of Trigun, Nicholas D. Wolfwood. The 1998 anime develops the implications of a romantic relationship between Milly and Wolfwood unique to itself, but potentially necessary due to much of Wolfood’s manga backstory not being available in the adaptation. His propensity for family is thus filled in via appreciation for Milly’s familial attachments. This defines Wolfwood’s own attachment to the other main characters in a way which persists through to the end of his story in the original anime.
Without Milly to act as a conduit for that connection, the Trigun Stampede version of Wolfwood’s relationship is another of mere incidence, and his dynamics with Meryl and/or Roberto feel nearly nonexistent. When Wolfwood’s foster brother Livio enters the plot in Stampede’s sixth episode, the backstory that defines the pair is not communicated for Vash or any of the other characters, but entirely to the audience. The resultant flashback is a frankly gorgeous visual setpiece, which delivers the most definition for Wolfwood’s character he’s seen in the whole show, but it’s entirely constrained to internal reveals. The fallout of Livio’s defeat simply being Wolfwood and Vash reiterating their differences in philosophy when it comes to lethal force.
It all ends up speaking to Studio Orange’s priorities with Trigun Stampede. Replacing Milly with Roberto lets them redefine roles and dole out exposition in a more blunt, immediate way. This in turn allots more time for showcase characters like Vash or Wolfwood to get up to those extravagant action scenes, or have backstories detailed via sequences like that indulgent Episode 6 flashback. It can feel like a frustrating shortcoming if you were hoping for the kinds of character connections which so regularly defined the 1998 Trigun anime, since it becomes apparent that Milly really was the glue holding that kind of storytelling together. But it ultimately seems there just wasn’t room for everyone’s favorite extra-tall wife in the more dizzyingly dense, concentrated approach of Trigun Stampede.
