Anime Midnight Matinee: Trigun Badlands Rumble I’m a huge fan of the original Trigun. I can confidently say that I’ve seen the first six episodes more than fifty times. I love the humor, the action, the gun fights, the characters, the whole dang anime! I even like the wonky animation of the series. In my mind Vash is one of the best main characters in anime history, and Trigun has one of the best endings of any anime series. Yup, that’s how much I love this anime. And yet . . . I’m sad to say that I actually have never seen the Trigun movie, Badlands Rumble. I heard about the movie a few years ago, but I didn’t know if it was an off shoot, or part of the original series and even when I looked into the movie, at the time it wasn’t available to watch on CrunchyRoll or other streaming services I had at the time. So I just kind of forgot about it. Well, while I was puttering around CrunchyRoll looking for movies for my matinee series, what should I find but the long lost movie I never got to see! Well, that oversight ends now. So is Trigun Badlands Rumble as good as the original series? Will it have all the laughs, the action, and the heart of the anime that is so dear to me? Let’s find out! First Impressions!First I would like to start with CrunchyRoll. Wow! It’s no wonder I hadn’t realized this movie was available, the path to get to actually watch the movie on CR is so bad, it’s just plain terrible. First you have to click on the series, then you have to click on the last episode of the series, then you have to click on the English version of the movie (at no point does it actually say that this is a movie related to the series, it just treats it as if it’s another episode) then if you have your account set to Japanese audio you have to confirm that you want to watch it in English even if you don’t, then finally the Japanese version of the movie will be available to click on, then you have to confirm again that you want to see the movie in Japanese even though your account is already set to Japanese audio! That was insane. I imagine most people that want to see this movie have never managed to navigate to it. CrunchyRoll, do better. Now For the Movie!I loved this movie! It was so good. Ten out of five stars! The animation is a little better than the series, but still stayed with the rough art style that I know and love from the original anime. All the main characters were there, not just Vash but our favorite insurance ladies Milly and Meryl, the background black cat, even Wolfwood came back from the dead to make an appearance. The scenery, the set-up, and the story was classic Trigun. I was smiling from ear to ear from the very beginning of the movie. There was action and hi-jinks, and crazy cowboy gun-fu throughout.This movie just brought back so many happy nostalgia feels! I really feel like this is a movie I’m going to want to watch over and over again. The StoryIn classic Trigun style, it starts with a flashback from twenty years ago when Vash interrupts a bank robbery. With his silly distractions no one ended up dying, but the town was trashed, Vash was blamed for everything, and the robbers that had turned on each other during the robbery, all got away. Then we time jump to closer to the present (but not after the end of the original series, because Wolfwood is still alive) and Milly and Meryl are sent to a city to inquire about an odd insurance contract. $$5 billion to protect a statue! Granted it’s a huge statue of the founder of the city in the center of town, but that’s still a lot of money for a statue. And even more alarming is that the statue has been targeted by the notorious robber Gasback, the same robber from twenty years ago that Vash had foiled in the flash back. No surprise, Vash is on his way to that same town on a desert ship train thing, where he meets a lovely lady gunslinger. The ship thing is also filled with rough and ruthless bounty hunters heading to the town for the bounty on Gasback’s head. One thing leads to another Vash ends up saving the lady gunslinger from a bunch or really scummy bounty hunters. After that he sticks to her like glue under the pretense that he’s smitten. And where is Wolfwood in all this? He’s playing bodyguard to Gasback! Gasback’s gang found Wolfwood dying from thirst in the desert and saves him, so as repayment, Wolfwood agrees to protect Gasback until he walks into the mansion of the founder of the city. With all the characters in place, the story is packed with silliness, drunken brawls, epic gun fights, clever heists, sneaky switchbacks, mustache twirling villains, and heart rending back stories a plenty. In the end all the baddies get what they deserve, the redeemable gunslingers learn to think of the big picture rather than their own petty revenge, and a few people learn the lesson that maybe taking the chance on doing the right thing isn’t so dumb after all. In conclusion!I absolutely loved this movie! It was so good. The characters I know and loved were in their best form, the new characters introduced for the adventure were interesting, and had depth, and the story felt like it was meant to be a movie rather than just a bunch of episodes sewn together. There were so many moments when I couldn’t help but smile or chuckle at just how good that scene was. And there were quite a few endearing little details that just made the story better. I will say one thing, this movie was definitely made with the intended audience being fans of Trigun. Though there was a little tiny scene that gave a very brief background to Vash, it really wasn’t much. I think if you weren’t already pretty well versed in the Trigun story, you would have a hard time following the inter-character dynamics and many parts of the story. But for Trigun fans, this movie is a must see! #anime #animeMovies #cowboyAnime #Japan #JapaneseCulture #movies #paranormalAnime #sciFiAnime #Trigun