If you are someone who has previously watched/read Trigun, do NOT come into this show expecting it to be a beat-by-beat remake of either the anime or the manga. Because it's neither 💯 The show is essentially a prequel/reboot of the story (albeit is closer to the manga), so some characters are missing & there's a more than likely chance they'll be in the second season. It's best to come into this show open-minded and draw comparisons at the end of the show. Nevertheless, if the series is dear and beloved to you coming into this open-minded may be easier said than done, but I
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would still give it a chance if you can!
With all of that being said, the show is fantastic as something that stands on its own & it's already a personal contender for AOTY for me. Let's dig into why I gave the show such a high rating:
art/animation: 10/10
I admittedly did come into this show hating! I’m not gonna lie! I wasn't a big fan of Vash's design or most of the new characters designs (except for Milly! I think her new design was so cute). It's hard to replace the original designs they had, but I've warmed up to them. One thing that did intrigue me a lot in trailers was the animation. For some reason when I saw the trailers, I didn't realize Studio Orange was in charge of the animation. & when I found out, I figured it would be extremely difficult for them to mess this up. And messing up is something they did not do; They were cookin' up something devious behind the scenes. I was a bit hesitant to welcome CG coming to anime as a whole. But with shows like Beastars, The First Slam Dunk, Land of the Lustrous etc. I knew that it could be done right. We're still in what I would consider an early age for CG in anime, but I feel as if this show (either this season or next) will more than likely become a classic, if not a cult classic, that people in the future will have dialogue about when CG anime is brought up.
First, the environments in this show are gorgeous! cities/environments are either fully modeled in Unreal Engine or drawn, and textured from the ground up, so when characters interact with the environment it really feels like they live in it, because the environments are the same if not just barely higher fidelity than the characters. From a technical standpoint, they really, really, really, took their time on them. I wouldn't be surprised if that was where most of the time in development/production went into.
Secondly, let's get into the character art/animation. Studio Orange is a studio that's known for their technical prowess in 2D/3D and this show adds to their trophy list of accomplishments. If you google Trigun Stampede screenshots, the majority of them look like they're digitally drawn shots, & that shows how successful their character modeling/lighting is. It stays fairly consistently that well done throughout the show! Animation-wise, it gets even better. The performances you get off of these characters is something really special. I think the show uses a fairly even split of mo-cap shots and hand-keyed stuff, maybe even leaning more towards mo-cap, but with that you get these very unique performances with each character that show off their personality. With the use of 3D, it's easier to move around cameras, and this show uses that to their advantage. There are so many sleek & dynamic camera movements throughout the show, and it's truly a sight to see!
One of my favorite things they do with the cameras in this is making use of the cameras' depth of field. I feel like it's underutilized in anime in general, but it adds some pizazz to some of the shots in the show. My only complaints about the animation are that some of the background characters can look a bit scuffed, and some of the 2D animation used is a bit jarring, but it's nothing huge enough for me to dock off a point for.
When this first came out, there were many complaints about the "choppiness" that you can see in the show & that is a stylistic choice to be similar to 2D animation. Most anime that are out, if not all of them, are created @ 24 fps, and if you were to frame through your favorite anime, you'd see that they were also animated on 2s or 3s like this is. Generally, they're animated at a variable frame rate though, sometimes they can even be animated on 5s, 6s, which is essentially a slideshow. If they animated this on 1s all the time, it would look more "realistic" per say, and not as much like traditional anime. So, the choppiness is something that is a non-issue in my opinion, it just needs the viewer to eliminate a pre-conceived bias that a 3D model absolutely needs to be moving in ones like real-life or a video game. Again, since I think we are in the early age of CG in shows like this, it's change that I don't think some people are ready to accept, but with media like this, Beastars, Land of the Lustrous, Into the Spiderverse, Dorohedoro, etc. it's becoming more mainstream to stylize things this way.
story 9/10:
The main reason I’m docking a point off of story is that the anime can feel quite fast paced, and I would have to rewatch some episodes to completely get everything. With that being said, all the pieces are here to make a complete story.
Before writing this review, I read a lot of concerns of people who reviewed the series early in that there's no mystery. But as someone who has previously watched the series, why would the series be mysterious to you if you know everything that happens already? For a new viewer, which this series was aimed towards, there is plenty of mystery. Sure, you find out about Vash/Meryl/Knives/Wolfwood in the first few episodes, but you don't learn about certain secrets about Vash until the later episodes, you don't learn about his past until after that, you don't learn about his brother's past until after that, etc. Things are laid out to the point where you're fed hints, things that you may be able to infer about in the beginning, but you don't explicitly get an answer for things until you do, which is far later in the series. The OG Trigun was one of my favorite old anime, but I forgot a LOT (it's been a decade or so since I've watched it, never started the manga until recently) & I still felt I was learning a lot as the show progressed. There is no way I could've predicted what was going to happen in the final 3 episodes aside from a few key things, & even then, you would've had to have previous knowledge about the show to know about those things.
The overarching story is fairly airtight. An oversimplified non-spoiler plot is that Vash & co. head to the city of July to stop his older brother Knives’ plan. Sweet & compact. However, lore-wise there's much more nuance to him going to July to stop him. Is Vash going because he actually wants to? Why are Wolfwood, Meryl, and Roberto going with him there? Who/what is Vash, really? Who/what is Knives, really? The producer, Katsuhiro Takei, wanted to explore the origins of Vash in this series, and if that was the hypothesis of the show, then by the end of the show I felt as if it was a successful experiment.
music/sound 9/10:
The music in this show go crazy! The way that it comes on during key moments is also so meticulous. I’m not going to compare this to Imahori's goated OG soundtrack, but as something that stands alone for this world, I think it's stellar. I've already added a bunch of songs to some of my playlists in Spotify lol. it's mostly electronic, piano/string-based music which I feel like fits the world! There are a bit of western elements in some of the songs to fit that space western theme as well though, like whistles and harmonicas, etc. some favorites off the OST's are: Knives’ Theme (all versions), Drain Arm, Nicholas the Punisher, Meryl’s Regrets, Reckless Driving
Sound design is pretty good for the most part! I think the environments feel fairly immersive, the voice acting is incredible as well! Outstanding performances by the VA's (I haven't watched the dub so can't comment on that aspect, but the Japanese VA’s did their thang fr). Unfortunately, this section is why I docked off a point. I feel like some of the foley isn't the best and it really sticks out to me. For example, whenever blood splatters happen & they isolate the sound, it sounds cheap and corny to me and I can't ignore it! It’s not something I would call the show bad for, just something that I feel could’ve been executed better.
ending thoughts:
At the end of the day, Nightow granted this show his blessing. & while this is not always a good thing (I’m looking at the Tokyo Ghoul anime), bro has been live-tweeting every episode and is so ecstatic about it. As a creator to be that happy over a new rendition over something you hold dear to your heart is a dream come true.
Overall, I would give the series a 9.5/10! However, since I cannot rate half-points I am giving it a 10/10 because my positives outweigh the negatives.
Mar 28, 2023
Trigun Stampede
(Anime)
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If you are someone who has previously watched/read Trigun, do NOT come into this show expecting it to be a beat-by-beat remake of either the anime or the manga. Because it's neither 💯 The show is essentially a prequel/reboot of the story (albeit is closer to the manga), so some characters are missing & there's a more than likely chance they'll be in the second season. It's best to come into this show open-minded and draw comparisons at the end of the show. Nevertheless, if the series is dear and beloved to you coming into this open-minded may be easier said than done, but I
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