What is the Heart of Trigun Stampede? – This Week in Anime

This streamlined retelling of Yasuhiro Nightow‘s manga and the ’98 anime series veers into uncharted territory. One thing remains the same though: Vash is the emotional core.

This series is streaming on Crunchyroll and Netflix

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network.
Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead.

Chris

Nick, I’ve got it! I know how we can raise the funds to buy ANN back from Kadokawa, so we’ll finally be able to swear on TWIA again freely! All we have to do is track down and capture this dangerous criminal known as The Humanoid Typhoon, and we’ll be swimming in that bounty cash!

Nick

My god, it’s just crazy enough to work! Look at this doofus. Capturing him should be easier than stealing a Pikachu.

Exactly! And it’s not like he will be too hard to track either, his every move so far being chronicled in a currently-airing show called Trigun Stampede.


It might be wise not to underestimate things too much, though. This Vash guy has been around doing his thing since at least 1998.

Man, he must have had some major work done. You’d never believe this E-boy is that old.

That is, in fact, an actual plot point.

Vash may remain the same across the ages, but the same can’t be said of the anime landscape, which is the first of many factors that makes Stampede such an unusual production.

It’s a stylistic renaissance for the old space westerns. Cowboy Bebop got the modern live-action series treatment, for better or for worse, while Trigun here gets to be a fully 3D CGI anime from certifiable masters of the craft at Studio Orange.


Outlaw Star, as usual, gets ignored.

That may be for the best. Vash may have made out pretty well with his modern facelift, but I do not want to see a boy-band-ified Gene Starwind.

Talking about the pretty face on this production is the best place to start, given what excellent work Orange has turned in. It’s not just Vash’s adorable new style at the forefront of the aesthetics; everyone looks great. Meryl, in particular, has some Grade-A face game.

The move to a 3DCG production was certainly controversial, but since literally the opening minute of this thing, it’s been pretty clear it was the right choice. Orange here aren’t just flexing their expertise with character animation but is actively using their medium to make stuff I’ve never seen in a TV anime. It’s wild.

That episode one opening felt like something I should’ve been watching in a theater. It’s a big, explosive indulgence in space action which blows the load on some of the series’ secrets way earlier than the 1998 version. Yet you get the sense that Orange went with it anyway just because they wanted to animate the crap out of a sequence like this.


They’ve kept that up since, nary an episode passing without continuing the commitment to ostentatious setpieces.

It’s the perfect introduction to what Stampede is trying to be. The first anime was a slow build, introducing us to the wacky slapstick half of Vash’s character before gradually revealing the more serious pathos beneath. Here, we’re laying out some of the biggest mysteries right away, so we can dive as quickly as possible into the Human part of the Humanoid Typhoon.

Regardless of the year or animation style, Vash will always be the beating heart of Trigun. And as such, he’s the cast member most faithfully preserved from his old version. His haircut may change, and his robot arm may be more obvious, but the writing is committed to his pacifism and dedication to preserving lives.

There are two things you gotta understand and preserve about Vash to make him work, and they’re both in this one line:


Gussy him up and add all the cool tracking shots during action scenes, but if he isn’t the sweetest, dumbest boy alive, all you have is a ’90s cosplayer.

The first three episodes show that off in a natural arc of him interacting with the people where he’s staying. It’s distinct from the old show’s more fleeting location-of-the-week travelogue. And it might be for the best in illustrating Vash’s character and ideals since I don’t know that he’s established much of a dynamic rapport with Meryl and not-Milly.

Ah yes, the second most controversial thing about this show: they got rid of the big lady. Personally, I was never much of a fan of Milly, but I’m also not wild about the extremely generic old dude whose sole role is explaining stuff to the audience:

That’s the fairest way to approach the issue. Stampede is a very loose new adaptation of Yasuhiro Nightow‘s original story, but many changes, like that opening as mentioned earlier, work in the context of what it’s doing. So swapping out everyone’s favorite huge wife for the unbelievably named Roberto de Niro didn’t have to be a losing proposition, except they haven’t done anything with him save for dispensing exposition between action set pieces.


He has had a little more to do in recent episodes, mainly in motivating a character arc for Meryl. But that highlights how this pair of reporters could have been filled out more initially.

He’s honestly a very Hollywood character. The grizzled old man who’s seen it all and has no patience for his bright-eyed protégé. I guess this makes sense with how much this series emulates the feel of US live-action filmmaking. But also, you could replace him with a talking encyclopedia of Crazy Sci-fi Stuff and lose nothing.

You almost get the impression the show’s staff are in on it, given his funniest bit so far has been Maryl admonishing him for ruining a moment by over-explaining and talking over it.

There are at least flashes where he shows some personality. I liked the bit where he tells a spooky story to scare Meryl and distracts her from the heat of their desert road trip.


It’s still exposition but delivered in a fun rather than just functional way.

That one got me, too. It’s actually a good fake-out playing off what the audience has come to expect from Roberto. That whole episode’s like that, screwing with the audience as we’re working on parsing idiosyncratic timelines until that “Oh” moment when we mentally click onto the big reveal.

I figured out what was going on right away. Maybe it’s because I’ve been watching LOST for the first time, but something in the editing tipped me off.

Trigun Stampede and LOST both open with a plane crashing into the mystery-filled setting of the story. Coincidence? Almost certainly.

I’m just saying, Nu-Meryl is fun and expressive, but she’s no Hurley.

And even with that one point I gave it, Stampede isn’t operating at LOST’s level when it comes to dolling out surprising plot twists. Like in the episode that introduces Wolfwood, it’s abundantly evident that the stray kid the crew picks up is the one who sicced a giant sandworm on them. In that same episode, they give the game away that the firearm-toting father is in league with the bad guys.


The question is, though, is that even relevant to the priorities of Trigun Stampede? Because in that same episode, we get to watch Wolfwood use his giant cross-laser-gun to bisect a worm whale. That’s the important stuff here.

Stampede operates on a Fast and Loud mentality. It’s not interested in slowly doling out revelations. It’s here to get to the core of Vash’s superhuman struggle to save people in an inhabitable world and look good while it does that. Is that a less sophisticated approach to storytelling? Perhaps. But it’s hard to care too much when the music swells, and it throws the craziest sci-fi action I’ve seen in years at me.

Establishing early and hard that Knives is a man who hates arms.


Also, how laugh-out-loud perfect is it that this version of the guy named Millions Knives actually uses millions of knives?


The folks at Orange couldn’t resist, and I respect them all the more for it.

I’ve decided that’s actually how he chose his name since he was called Nai as a kid. One of his evil underlings said he needed a cooler name, and he just Violet Evergarden‘d himself. Then he killed that underling with his knife tentacles, which looked totally sick.

So many of the issues I take with Stampede’s pacing seems to be at the behest of Orange going, “Okay, can we find some way to work in a gorgeously animated sequence here?” Like even when this show’s just doing “regular” chase sequences, it’s some of the bounciest, bobbiest cartoon choreography I’ve seen in a while.


Only Vash could pull off an Akira bike slide on foot.

I understand why folks would take issue with the pacing, but it’s a fair trade-off for me. I can put up with a lot if a series can show me something I’ve never seen before, and the sheer breadth and impact of Stampede’s action fit the bill. I struggle to remember the last time a TV anime felt half as grandiose as Knives raining hell upon this isolated desert town.

Sometimes the anime’s desire to show off even intersects with the need for more intimate storytelling sensibilities. Like the episode introducing Wolfwood’s foster brother Livio, which does immediately launch into an expositional flashback, but one presented through this gorgeously moody 2D animation filter.

I absolutely loved that whole sequence. It’s gorgeous, at once a stylistic shift from the now-familiar 3D but perfectly in line with the overall direction. The choice to present it like a silent film also helps to make it feel distant despite its intimacy.


There’s a sense that for as important as this past is to Wolfwood, the experiments that turned him into a “monster” have left him separated from his own life, and we don’t start hearing spoken dialogue until The Bad Times starts.

It’s a way more effective way to deliver plot and pathos than having Roberto blurt it out during a spare moment. And it works because even though Livio only just showed up in the story a couple of minutes ago, by the time the flashback finishes up and we come back to the fight with him, we’ve got a real sense of him and Wolfwood’s underlying tragedy.

It’s funny just how much of this show’s runtime is dedicated to Wolfwood. Like you could argue at least 30% of these episodes have focused on him and explaining his whole deal in contrast to Vash. With how sidelined Meryl and Roberto are, you’d be mistaken for thinking this whole show is a VashWood angst fic.

I might accuse them of overplaying it, as the baddies’ plan here is to dial up Wolfwood’s angst by crashing a land boat into his orphanage.


But again: Not like we come to Trigun Stampede for subtlety.

Now that you mention it…does Legato ship VashWood? Aw man, now we gotta cancel him for shipping problematic age gaps.


Y’know, as opposed to all the human experimentation and torture.

If this dude shows up at your door on a Saturday morning, don’t listen to him. He’s trying to read you his latest AO3 submission.

Now I understand why this whole story arc revolves around a ship and a canon cannon.

Come to think of it, maybe that’s why Milly’s not in this show. Nobody wants to hire her after they found out she was in a relationship with a minor in the original.

The cynic in me does wonder if excising Milly was in service of removing an obstacle to the Vash/Wolfwood angle. I know that was a big draw of the series. And as you said, Stampede seems dedicated to focusing primarily on those two.


Vash even gets his fully indulgent flashback a couple of episodes after Wolfwood’s, though it could be more stylistically ambitious.

It’s less ambitious, but grounding helps flesh out who this particular version of Vash is. Nu-Vash is undoubtedly dedicated to his brand of pacifism. Still, there’s a particularly guilt-ridden bent to it, as if he feels personally responsible for any pain around him, and this episode shows how that subtle difference manifests.

The 1998 version of Vash pointedly spent a lot of time just wandering, trying to find how he could help people and live up to the ideals he inherited from Rem. But Stampede, true to its more expedited approach, has Vash in the past pretty quickly locked into that Something Only You Can Do philosophy and found strong job satisfaction in fixing plants.


It’s bluntly satisfying and heartwarming, and it does that dope thing where it waits to drop the episode title card until more than halfway into the episode because these guys always ooze style, no matter what they’re presenting.

It also makes the messiah metaphor around Vash even more upfront, what with traveling the desert and performing miracles.


They at least didn’t name either of his new followers after the Apostles, unless there’s a Book of Brad hidden among the Dead Sea Scrolls.

What would a ’90s anime revival be without weird appropriation of Western religious iconography?

I’d like to know what it says that this generation’s vision of Anime Jesus looks like he could guest feature on a BTS song.

That speaks to the overall agenda of Trigun Stampede. Many anime of this era and ilk garnered a reputation for being more style than substance (maybe not necessarily Trigun itself, but dang if that ain’t Outlaw Star all over). And while Stampede does have substance, it exists at the behest of Orange packing in all that style.

It’s a severely streamlined re-imagining, for sure. It cut away all the wacky goofing from the first anime for a faster, more in-your-face story. Yet, in exchange, it’s brought Nightow’s Mad Max space desert into motion in ways the first anime could never.

It’s genuinely going in a different approach from a different direction than the original. And that’s something the critically-biased part of me can’t ever complain about. And it can’t be overstated: Style over substance can’t be all that bad when said style looks this good.

I don’t need a remake/reboot/whatever of Trigun, but if we’re getting one, I’m glad it’s doing its own thing. It’s much more of a rollercoaster than its predecessor, but luckily I god damn love rollercoasters.

It may not be worth the full sixty-billion double-dollars, but following Vash in Stampede so far has been worthwhile in its own way.

He’s worth enough for us to buy back the F-word, that’s for sure. Now you go prop up a big cardboard box on a stick with a string tied to it, and I’ll lay out a long trail of M&Ms to slowly lure him towards it. It’s the perfect trap!

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