Spam From Japan

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

Official site

Cinemas:
Tokyo: Cinema Sunshine (Ikebukuro) and Shinjuku Musashino-Kan (Shinjuku).
For cinemas showing Trigun outside Tokyo, please click here