TRIGUN STAMPEDE
a review by DrFlapJack
a review by DrFlapJack
One thing that I've heard some people say about Trigun Stampede is that it's good if you accept the fact that it's trying something new rather than just being a regular adaptation, but I think that's kind of silly. That's like saying it's only enjoyable if you pretend that it's not supposed to be Trigun. It's perfectly reasonable for fans of an old anime to expect the reboot to have the same sort of appeal as the original. Maybe Stampede really is a good anime that's separate from the original Trigun identity. But if that's the case, then why bother using the Trigun name if you're not going to be faithful to what made it so memorable in the first place?
But I'm getting ahead of myself. The creators made it very clear from the beginning that this wouldn't be a direct adaptation of the manga, and that's acceptable in theory. After all, the 90's anime and Trigun Maximum are vastly different takes on the same premise and themes, yet both are equally amazing in their own ways. Stampede will be fine as long as it is faithful to the spirit of Trigun, the fundamental elements that make it so special...
I absolutely adore the way Stampede is animated. The high quality animation is undoubtedly the high point of the anime, and it allows the series' signature over the top action to reach its full potential. Unlike the fights in the 90's anime, which were mostly composed of both sides barraging each other with copious quantities of lead until one of them gets hit, there's a higher focus on hand to hand combat(though there's still plenty of bullet barrages). It makes the fights easier to follow, and the fluidity and bounciness of the CGI animation certainly helps a lot as well. However, it's not the action that impresses me the most, but the little details in the characters' mannerisms and facial expressions that make them seem so full of life. The animators put a lot of time and effort into making everything look as perfect as possible, and their hard work payed off big time.
The most creative episode in terms of animation is episode 5, which is punctuated with a series of flashbacks of Wolfwood's past.
OG Trigun was a spaghetti western where the gunmen have access to futuristic technology, whereas Stampede is a sci-fi that takes place in the desert, if that makes any sense. The new art design has a sleeker, modern look to reflect this heavier focus on the sci fi elements. It has that generic cyberpunk quality to it, but it's consistent at least. As far as the character redesigns go, I'm pretty conflicted on them. I understand that the creators made them more conventionally attractive by modern standards to lure in a younger audience, so I can't blame them. But the fact that the original characters weren't flawlessly pretty was what made them so charming and distinctive to me. I liked how scruffy and old fashioned they looked, because that really conveyed the fact that they've lived their whole lives in a hostile desert full of outlaws. Whereas new Vash, Wolfwood, and Meryl don't look like they belong in the wild west, they look like hipster fashion models.
Like many viewers, the moment the reveal trailer for Stampede came out, I had one burning question on my mind. "Where's Milly?" And from the moment I learned that Roberto De Niro was her replacement, I was determined to hate his guts. Yet despite my preconceived resentment, Roberto ended being a pretty alright character, if not very memorable. Meryl is a rookie reporter in this continuity, and she takes on Milly's job as the inexperienced assistant while Roberto inherits the role of the responsible veteran. So even with Milly gone the duo's dynamic still works, more or less. I could even say that Roberto is a boon to Stampede, as its iterations of the old characters feel strangely immature and inexperienced. He has the world weariness that the new Vash and Wolfwood are lacking.
Trigun's greatest strength is its colorful array of compelling characters. No one is ever as simple as they first appear, and a big part of the joy of experiencing Trigun is getting to know them little by little. In this adaptation, these same characters have been reduced to their most basic personality traits and behavioral patterns. Meryl still chases after Vash for her job, Vash still refuses to kill anyone, Wolfwood and Vash still squabble over their differing outlooks on life. The characters mostly act the way you'd expect them to, but it's all so hollow. Those surface interactions are all you really get, and this lack of depth means that much of their behavior comes across differently than intended. Vash's steadfast idealism seems closer to naivete; Wolfwood's pragmatic caution appears to be callousness; Meryl's dedication to her job looks more like childish stubbornness. Let me compare two similar scenes from both anime adaptations to show you what I mean.
In episode 9 of the 90's anime, Wolfwood gives a pair of hungry children two of his few remaining energy bars, showing us that despite his cynicism and proclivity for violence, he's a compassionate person at heart. This ties into a core theme of Trigun, which is the idea that you can't judge a person as totally irredeemable because everyone has the capacity for good inside them. People are more complicated than just black and white. In episode 4 of Stampede, Wolfwood gives a piece of candy to a child, an action that mirrors his establishing character moment from the original show. Yet later on in the same episode, it's revealed that Wolfwood only performed this act of kindness to trick Vash into trusting him, which flips the meaning of the scene on its head. Instead of a display of his hidden depths, it instead further reinforces the idea that this version of Wolfwood really is exactly how he seems: cold and untrustworthy. This is just one of several times in Stampede where a scene plays out so differently from the original material that it changes its meaning, and no longer fits into Trigun's overarching themes as a result.
The most egregious fault of this adaptation is the fact that it's far too short and paced way too quickly. There's no time to contemplate the philosophy of pacifism, spend time with the characters, or do much of anything at all. It seems that the writers tried to follow the manga more closely than the 90's adaptation did, which was a mistake because of how much longer and denser the manga is than the anime. Stampede pulls plot points from all throughout the long run of Trigun Maximum, then haphazardly rearranges them with no regard as to when it would make sense for them to happen. To put it into perspective, this anime is only 12 episodes long, and it adapts elements from the 8th volume of the 14-volume long Maximum series. No matter how much you rewrite it, you cannot cram that much manga plot into 12 episodes without losing almost all of the important context and details. Consequently, many of the most significant moments of the series are out of place, lacking in emotional weight, and unceremoniously abrupt. As stated at the beginning of this review, diverging from the original plot is not always a bad move, and it can work extremely well if done right. But the way it's done in Stampede ends up making the story disjointed and less impactful.
To be honest, my biggest issue with Stampede is that it's unclear what audience it was made for. Many of the potentially divisive changes made, such as the more fashionable character designs, seem to have been made in order to appeal to an entirely new audience. Yet the hurried, jumbled pacing of the plot indicates that it's meant for fans that are already familiar with the source material, which shouldn't be the case if it's intended to be accessible to new viewers. This confusion is pretty much inevitable when you attempt to modernize an old story. Modern anime has evolved to the point where molding an old anime to fit the new standards is like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.
A story is a bit like a puzzle. It has a lot of different pieces that all fit together to form a complete picture. If you remove some of the pieces, or replace the pieces with ones from a different puzzle, or put some of the pieces in places where they don't fit, then the picture won't be complete, and it won't be nearly as pretty to look at. Can it even be considered the same picture when such vital components of the whole are absent? Despite my gripes, I honestly don't think that Stampede is a truly bad anime... but I don't think it's a good adaptation of Trigun either.
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