Publisher: Funimation (USA)Format: Region 1 and 4 DVD, NTSC, Japanese Dialogue with optional English dub and English Subtitles.
Length: 90 minutes
Production Date: 2010
Currently in Print (as of writing): Yes
It seems rather strange that 12 years after the end of the “Trigun” TV series that movie version comes out. And it’s not a reboot. It has the exact same designs and colour palette as the TV series. In fact it is set between a couple of TV episodes. Yasuhiro Nightow’s “Trigun Maximum” did only finish a couple of years beforehand, and they have been planning this film since at least 2005. Still the fact it is not a reboot is rather curious. Would the fans still be around 12 years later? I note that the movie’s premier was at AX in the US in 2010 and a fair chunk of extras on the disc deals with the US, so one would think the producers had their eyes on the English speaking market. The film didn’t do too badly at all in its home country. It managed to obtain the 14th spot upon opening in cinemas, on a pitiful 10 screens.
The film is pretty much a typical “Trigun” episode. Some 20 years ago Vash manages to stop a group of criminals from killing their boss, Gasback. In the present day, Gasback is out for revenge on his former cohorts. All of them have prospered in the intervening years, but one by one, Gasback has destroyed their livelihoods. The last of his former associates is Cain Kepler, who is now the mayor of Macca City. Cain is more than aware of his fate and has sent out a call for bounty hunters to claim the $$300 million double-dollar bounty on Gasback’s head. Naturally Vash steps in to sort things out. In the middle of this we have Milly Thompson and Meryl Stryfe turning up in the city to report on the risk of insuring Cain’s gigantic bronze statue of himself which is valued at $$5 billion double-dollars. Add in a female bounty hunter named Amelia who seemingly has a score to settle with Gasback, Nicholas D. Wolfwood as Gasback’s bodyguard and of course appearances by Kuroneko.
I really think if you ignore some of the more overt CG effects, you would be hard pressed to think this is a 2010 film. I mean it really, really looks no different to the 1998 series. The cast are the same; Masaya Onosaka (Vash), Hiromi Tsuru (Meryl), Satsuki Yukino (Milly) and Sho Hayami (Wolfwood). The studio is still Madhouse and the director is still Satoshi Nishimura. It even looks the same. You could swear it was cel animation with it’s very, very muted colour palette. I’ll readily admit I was hoping that not much had changed from the original TV series. I suppose most fans were too. Well they certainly got what they wanted. Certainly I was expecting the film to open with a bang. Certainly it does to a degree, though not much of a loud one. I really wish the opening was more exciting than the one presented here. I understand it was essential to the plot, but I sort of wonder why a bigger opening wasn’t created. The other thing which I noticed is how slowly the story seemed to creep up on you. There are lot of little subtle hints to the bigger story being told. It really looks like not much is going on, then wham, you realise you’ve up to your neck in plot all along. The other thing I really noticed with this film was that “GUN×SWORD” really, really ripped off this show something bad.
While many of the reviews of this movie are rather negative, I found my experience to be much more positive. Yep, most certainly this film is made with “Trigun” fans in mind, but seriously, does that matter? What matters to me is that there is a good plot and a ton of great action sequences (make that some really outrageously fun and well-choreographed action sequences). I didn’t really expect much else from it. I really think reviewers (mostly of the so called “professional” kind) are expecting way too much. For me it story of reminded me of how great some anime show where back in the 1990’s and why I got into anime (or maybe that’s just nostalgia creeping up). It most certainly isn’t the best movie released in the last couple of years, but it’s a whole heap of fun, and not a lot of anime made today seems to be about to be as free and loose and entertaining and fun as this film. I read one forum post on this movie which stated that “The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya” was much better feature. Would you really prefer to watch that bloated bore fest or this film? Seriously? Actually I think I might like this film a lot more after a repeat viewing, but for now I’m going to give it a rather respectable 7.5 out of 10.
Remaining Backlog: 25 months (it's much easier this way than listing the number of discs).
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