This review contains spoilers for Trigun: Badlands Rumble.
Back in the day, if you wanted fansubs, you had to look up providers in a big database which would show you which fans had what series and whether they’d ship internationally. You’d then send off your money to somewhere in America and about a month later, no more than eight VHS tapes would arrive in your mailbox.
That’s how it was and we liked it that way, dammit. It’s also how I discovered Trigun.
I’d heard the hype first (that’s how we knew what to order), but I was still surprised how much I liked it. I’m not usually a fan of the main character(s) in a series, particularly if they’re the good guys. But Vash was fun and whimsical with a dark side. He’s probably one of the more complex characters in anime and it’s difficult to get a grip on his personality.
Fast-forward ten years; I’ve moved to Japan and am now sitting in a charmingly shabby third-floor cinema in Shinjuku, waiting for the new Trigun: Badlands Rumble movie to start. Funny how life works.
The movie starts with Vash getting between a legendary bank robber named Gasback and his cronies, because he can’t stand any kind of violence.
Twenty years later, rumours suggest Gasback plans to target Makka City and so the mayor assembles the most unsavoury characters he can find to protect it. Milly Thompson and Meryl Strife are in town in their professional capacity as insurance auditors, and try to drive Vash out of the city, but he only wants to flirt with at Amelia.
When Gasback finally arrives, however, Wolfwood is amongst his entourage and it’s revealed Amelia’s plans to kill Gasback are based on more than just a desire to collect the bounty on his head.
[Note: Gasback, Amelia and Makka are my own romanisations. They may well prove to be wrong when official translations are released.]
They’ve kept the original seiyuu from the anime and, so it seems in some scenes, some of the ineptness of the animation between the key cels. That’s not really a criticism. Computer modelling is used extensively, but not in a way that made me think it didn’t fit with the rest of the anime, as I’ve seen in the past. The backgrounds are well-drawn and they often used interesting angles to tell the story. The character designs for even incidental characters are bright and varied.
Despite all this, I didn’t like it in the same way I did the anime series, despite the movie staying within the anime timeline. The key problem is the relationship between Amelia and Vash. They meet when he rescues her; he falls in love immediately and proceeds to follow her everywhere. He follows her from her hotel room into the streets and when she kicks him away, he nuzzles her legs. It’s too much.
The best scene is without Vash, when Wolfwood (wearing Vash’s glasses) and Amelia take the fight to Gasback. It just seems that Vash is always there to undermine what would otherwise be a strong character.
Is this movie at fault, or is it my memory…?
Cast:
Vash The Stampede: Onosaka Masaya
Nicholas D Wolfwood: Hayami Sho
Meryl Stryfe: Tsuru Hitomi
Milly Thompson: Yukino Satsuki
Amelia: Sakamoto Maaya
Gasback: Isobe Tsutomu
Cinemas:
Tokyo: Cinema Sunshine (Ikebukuro) and Shinjuku Musashino-Kan (Shinjuku).
For cinemas showing Trigun outside Tokyo, please click here
I used to watch this on Adult Swim back in the US… It was always Inuyasha, then Trigun. Or Inuyasha, then Cowboy Bebop.
Completely forgot about it, but it was a fun show to watch.
Although I’ve yet to write it up in my blog (so many posts to write, so little time!), if you’re looking for an anime movie, I recommend Ibara no Ou/King of Thorn. I saw it last night and it was fantastic.
I guess if you like Trigun though, the movie is worth it. I just wasn’t amazed like the above-mentioned film.
wow! this is cool, i never thought there will be a movie on this. i hope i can watch it too.
Almost certainly you’ll get to see it, depending on where you live. For those who aren’t in America (or Japan), it may take longer, but you’ll get it eventually. :) Good luck!
Yeah, I liked the Trigun movie, but I was a little disappointed and was hoping for quite a bit more. Anyway…
My main reason for replying here though, is my shock at your appreciation of the King of Thorn movie. They took a 9/10 manga and jail raped it into a 4/10 movie. In my opinion the Live Action abortion that Hollywood made out of the Dragonball series was better then the King of Thorn movie adaptation. They removed countless, important, key plot elements and replaced them with BS and angst, and the CG which makes up around 40% of the movie looks like a horribad episode of reboot. They even went as far as to completely re-write the ending, negating everything from Vol 4 onwards. I won’t even get into what they did to Owen’s character, that was just f#cking stupid. I realize you can only do so much with a movie as your medium, but this was inexcusable.
It was nothing less than a total insult to both the creator and the fans when some tool of a director says “A surreal scene that makes you question the sanity of the characters? Screw that. What the audience wants is angst and fanservice!”, and then proceeds to dissect the remaining plot into something meaningless and incomprehensible. The guy who directed this killed no less than 4 subplots in the interest of giving Owen more time to swagger invincibly around like some military twat. Also, for something with a movie budget, that CG was inexcusable. The art itself was clean and solid, but half the scenes are replaced with that awful excuse for digital animation and usually for no reason other than they didn’t feel like drawing it.
I say, if you liked the original story, stay FAR away from the King of Thorn movie and if you like a good anime movie, stay even farther away from the King of Thorn Movie.
I love it when I get replies like this, so thanks! (Just in case you can’t tell my intent on the internet, I’m completely sincere.)
First off, I’ve never read the King of Thorn manga. That usually has a huge effect on whether people like an adaptation. Thing is, I love tv series and movies in the ‘mindfuck’ genre (for lack of a better description). The kind of ones that play with what you thought you knew about characters and their reality. I also liked the anime Gilgamesh for that reason, although I heard that it had been seriously changed from the manga too (perhaps more so, since I’ve heard of more angry Gilgamesh fans than I have King of Thorn fans). Oh, and I also liked Fight Club and The Usual Suspects. I’m a sucker for a twist, basically.
Since I’ve never read the KOT manga, I don’t know anything about the subplots. I still say that, despite a slow start, the ending made it worth it for me. Can’t say fairer than that. :) Thank you very much for your comment!
Btw, if you have a blog with a KOT review on it, I’ll happily link to your post on my own review of the movie.
Hmm about Vash following Amelia around…My theory is that he KNOWS that *spoiler* Amelia is Gasbacks daughter from the get-go. Its not the first time he would use that key instinct of his. And even at the end Wolfwood mentions about Amelia’s age, and Vash just flakes it off. There’s multiple scenarios to this: A.) He’s just saying how young she is, B.) How Vash was flirting with her (though this is my least possible reason, since he just does flirting for show), or C.), my choice, That he knew who she was all along, by age and or/looks alike. I actually could tell by looking at them…but thats just me.
OH GOD Trigun makes me think… o_O
I remember Vash doing that in the series, but this time it seemed over the top. Something was off this time around, but it could well be my memory of the original.