Trigun: Badlands Rumble

Vash the Stampede has a bounty of sixty billion double dollars on his head and kills nobody. Twenty years ago he ruined a bank job for a thief named Gasback. Now Gasback is returning to a town where there is a statue, a mayor and a great many bounty hunters. Vash ends up in the middle again. Satoshi Nishimura directs, from Yasuhiro Nightow's manga and the 1998 television series. The film was made twelve years after the series and tells an original story, working as an independent episode set inside the main narrative. Most of the voice cast was retained. The series' idea is still central: Vash's refusal to kill is presented not as a virtue but as a rule that constantly produces problems. Killing nobody does not make him a hero; it makes everyone's work harder and he pays for it. The action is markedly more ambitious than the television scale, mixing hand drawing with computer assistance. The town design keeps faith with the series' visual identity, a combination of western and science fiction. Who it is for: viewers who follow Trigun and like western flavoured science fiction anime. Who it is not for: do not start here, and the story is small on its own and adds nothing to the main narrative.