The Rewatch

Trigun Episode 6 - Lost July

Sun, 24 Jun 2012 23:36:00 +0100

VIDEOGAMES AGAIN. Really need to get better at sticking to doing these. Anyway.

We open today in roughly the same place we left off last time. Vash is a hero, but the town still needs its plant fixed. Luckily, our bungling villains from last episode are worth a whole bucket of cash, so Inepril cashes in. Vash is technically the one eligible to collect the reward, but why take a small hill of cash when you can give it up for UNLIMITED SANDWICHES.

And if there’s anyone that looks like they could rustle up an S-rank sandwich, it’s her.

Well, now that his extremely badly kept secret is out, Vash has gained an entourage, consisting entirely of a couple of insurance girls. Meryl is pretty bitter and sarcastic about the reality of Mr. Stampede in the flesh, and sets to her self-appointed task of denying him the fruits of his heroism (in the shape of booze and hookers, apparently), and after he uses them as a human shield against a deadly assault, her pan of resentment starts to bubble over onto the cooker-top of murderousness.

A deadly assault indeed.

Thankfully, a plot arrives to distract her from riddling Vash’s body with tiny bullets. A trade caravan arrives, in possibly the most badass form of any trade caravan in any media ever.

SAND STEAMER CHUGGA CHUGGA WOO WOO

A behemoth, tracked landship shaped like a half-zeppelin, half-Jawa Sandcrawler. The people of the city are understandably excited to trade with the crew and passengers of this colossus of the desert, but they also know that there’s a Plant maintenance team on board, which will solve their rather desperate desertification problem. But this wouldn’t be quite enough of a reason for Vash to care, so the head engineer comes clad in some rather interesting attire.

The massive shoulder-puffs are actually shock-absorbers. Practical!

Before the real events of the episode start up, we get a little scene of Vash pouring a bottle of whiskey away in front of the broken plant, as if for a fallen comrade (FORESHADOWING), before our lovely chief engineer wanders up and uses her hypnoboobs to convince Vash to become her bodyguard. Also some dude following her has Terminator eyes. Meanwhile, our insurance girls are searching through bins for Vash. He arrives of his own accord, with Elizabeth (our engineer) following along, literally treating him like a dog (with Vash acting like one, complete with barking). Meryl is, again, less than impressed with Vash’s conduct.

I can’t keep posting every Meryl derpface, because my screenshot button will wear out.

Vash strikes out with ‘Liz, goes to his room, but senses something dangerous. Then a cyborg-rasta ninja (?) smashes through the window! I have no idea what the design for this guy is supposed to be.

Seriously, what the crap?

Vash obviously wins, with our Reggae-Reggae flavoured assassin leaping out of the now mysteriously repaired window, but not before he drops an explosive. Vash survives the blast, but he and his bed are blown out of the building. Elizabeth only then informs him that she swapped room numbers with him in the hotel registry, and that he has to sleep outside that night. This is disappointing.

Vash is so sad, his bed flies into space to try and cheer him up. It doesn’t work.

—-

GUITARS

—-

SRATIUG

—-

We return as Vash is mooching around while Elizabeth does her job. Apparently she doesn’t actually know how Plants work, but she does have a decent knowledge of how to fix them, sort of like someone who knows the precise button sequence to program their VCR, but without actually knowing what any of the buttons individually do.

(To everyone younger than me: a VCR is a device used to display moving images captured on ancient, magical black oblongs. Also for rewinding the oblongs so they can be watched again.)

Our ladies of insurance stride into the secure area shouting and crying crocodile tears (guess which is doing which), when suddenly A SITUATION OCCURS. Trouble in Sector 3, boss!

I can tell, because these unlabelled graphs and symbols are DANGEROUSLY HIGH.

Liz and Vash sprint off to fix things, leaving Milly to urge a rather sensible retreat from a possible Plant meltdown. When they reach the Vaguely Industrial Pipe room however, there seems to be someone waiting for them.

Hi, I’m here as a representative of “Limb-blades n’ Dreadlocks Quarterly”! Can I interest you in a subscription?

Vash once again makes quick work of our pseudo-Jamaican friend, but SHOCK: it was a setup all along! Liz is actually the one trying to kill Vash, and she tries to seal the deal by escaping the danger-zone, locking the door with Vash still inside. She reveals that her actions are the result of a thirst for revenge from when Vash first got his insane bounty, when he wiped the town of July off the map.

I’m guessing he used something bigger than that revolver he carries around.

In the ensuing chaos that resulted from more than a million people suddenly becoming homeless, Elizabeth’s parents died, leaving her to wander the destroyed city until she was saved by a mysterious man with bandaged arms. Anyway, all she knows is it was Vash’s fault so now he needs to die. Simple stuff. She tells some lies to the crew to get them to evacuate, and then sits back to watch the fireworks of a town’s only source of power blowing up with Vash inside. Except it doesn’t, because Vash does a little messiah trick.

And now on Nat Geo, we return to… The Plant Whisperer, with Vash the Stampede.

Vash strides out of the Plant, to the town’s jubilation (and Meryl’s affected lack of interest).

Elizabeth needs a showdown, and walks up to Vash, pressing a pistol to his gut, before Vash tells her that he has… AMNESIA, and can’t even remember if it was him that destroyed July, only that he woke up in the wreckage. Elizabeth realises that the mysterious man that saved her all those years ago is actually Vash. She is pretty disappointed that Vash is such a nice chap and not a murderous psychopath, and promptly collapses in a heap. Vash has a little wistful stare into the distance.

—-

SCENE.

—-

So, what did we learn today?

Meryl only knows how to solve social situations by shouting
Also she seems to have a disorder where strong emotions cause her face to turn into a rubber mask.
Vash is totally a sub.
Beds are grenade-proof, concrete walls are not.
Glass windows regenerate in moments if they’re not smashed TOO bad.
Hypocrisy is fine if you’re ~beautiful~.
Vash can be bribed with salmon sandwiches. (Actually, probably almost any food will do it)
Meryl is aged twentMMPHFPH [*gunshot*]

Next week, we get NEON, LAND-PIRATE AMBUSH and our first glimpse of Vash’s prime motivator.

Trigun Episode 5 - Hard Puncher

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 00:40:00 +0100

Damnit, this was meant to get written QUICKLY after the last one. I am terrible person. Moving on, we open on a scene of Vash eating a delicious looking (for SD, cel-animated 90’s anime anyway) steak while a child is whinging at his parent like an entitled brat. SUDDENLY BOUNTY HUNTERS, OUT FOR VASH’S HEAD. Vash is slow on the uptake.

This steak is way too tasty to be interrupted by a mere robbery

—-

TITLE CARD

—-

So, as you might imagine, this does not go well for the bandits.

I’m not entirely sure why they took their clothes off. #JAPAN

Using a variety of gentle persuasion techniques, shaming tactics and pinpoint-precise sticky-dart shooting, Vash gets rid of the invaders quick sharp. The café responds entirely reasonably by giving him a stack of pancakes (eaten in a single bite because ANIME MOUTHS), and then promptly pointing guns at him again.

We take a quick peek at the hill above the town, where our insurance girls have arrived on Vash’s trail. The town seems to be half-buried in sand, apparently from a broken plant. I believe this is the first mention really of the plants and how important they are to the daily lives of the people of this world. And then back to Vash.

I see things are going well.

The entire town has decided to pick up weapons and try and claim Vash’s bounty. Much sprinting and explosions ensue.

Meryl and Milly arrive and attempt to calm everyone down, but get stopped by an announcement that mission control is ordering a temporary cessation of pursuit. That’s right, this town that suddenly decided to attack Vash has managed to set up MISSION CONTROL in the 4 hours of time that the pursuit was happening.

It emerges that the town needs the bounty money to get the plant repaired, and in desperation, the mayor has roped in something moderately troublesome.

He seems like a hearty fellow.

This is the Nebraska family, a couple of extremely dangerous criminals that until the day before had been imprisoned with a total sentence of 700 years. Meryl is moderately unhappy with the risk that this move has incurred.

Oh man, looks like Meryl gets the derpface award this episode.

Then a little girl announces that Vash has been captured. Announces it 3 times. Using exactly the same words. In her annoying girl voice.

—-

GUITARS

—-

SRATIUG

—-

We return to see Vash striding into a saloon, downing a pint and then getting ambushed by a group of waitresses and cooks. They send annoying-chan off to tell mission control and then explain why they’re doing what they’re doing. A TRAGIC TALE. Vash responds by getting INTENSE.

Oh hey, a main plotline!

Quickly though, this lovely rendezvous is cut short when a fist the size of a minibus smashes through the front of the saloon.

ACTION

The insurance girls rush to the scene, finally having tracked down the real Vash, who is totally not going to be that goofball in the red trenchcoat.

Oh snap, it totally is.

Meryl has a little brainmelt experience as she struggles with something that Milly has known since episode 2, as Vash lays the saloon staff down like a cord of firewood. Just as he’s getting one of the last ones to safety, ol’ Gofsef (his actual name, what the shit) lets loose with his right arm again.

ROKETTO PANCHU!!!

Vash emerges unscathed again, and Milly says something which causes Meryl to have a REVEALING FLASHBACK where she realises that Vash has been skilfully saving their hides this whole time. Under a barrage of insults, Vash finally activates SERIOUS VASH MODE.

Serious Vash Mode is yellow, and is attached to his face.

The Nebraskas attempt to use the piled waitstaff as bait to get Vash to sacrifice himself. This does not work. 5 bullets deflect the DRILL PANCHU, the sixth hits Gofsef right in the ~~feels~~ arm stump, and the pain makes him go down in one hit. Everyone is amazed, even Meryl, who finally admits Vash’s identity to herself.

Papa Nebraska isn’t done yet, but he too is disarmed with sticky darts and twisty fingers.

Second, and if I remember right, final time this catchphrase is used. Girl kinda looks a little Tron Bonne-esque right here.

Meryl starts writing her report that they’ve finally tracked down Vash. And then the derpiness of the way things worked out just gets too much for her.

Two Meryl derpfaces in one episode? Dayum.

SCENE.

—-

SO, what did we learn today?

Plants are IMPORTANT (more of that next episode)
Meryl has as much of a rubber face as Vash does
Badassitude can be conferred on a goofball using special yellow glasses
Well, either that or Vash has stress-aggravated glaucoma
Vash has a smattering of French in his vocabulary, for no readily apparent reason
Yet more proof that villainy induces mutations in this world, as Gofsef is easily 40 feet tall.
The only qualification you need to become mayor is apparently a lack of common sense.

Anyway, next episode is actually a direct follow-on from this one, and involves a pretty girl and her team of giant-lightbulb engineers.

Trigun Episode 4 - Love and Peace

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 16:05:45 +0100

Right, this one is slightly closer to the last post. Let’s try to continue this trend. Actually, let’s not. If this continues in a linear fashion, I’ll be writing the ninth post before the seventh, and that’s some serious time-travel-grade shit.

Fair warning: there will be quite a few screenshots this time, so many good shots to take.

So, we open on Vash proving that he doesn’t actually walk everywhere, getting out of a hitchhike at a graveyard. Cheery business.

Cutting quickly, we arrive at the scene of pretty much the entire episode, a random bar containing the insurance girls and what appears to be a rich girl and her butler. The place has become a refuge from a sandstorm, and Meryl isn’t all that pleased with the situation.

Suddenly a deep-voiced moustache with a man attached draws a gun on the heiress. HOSTAGE TIME.

—-TITLE CARD—-

So, we have the situation: a moustache has taken hostages, a different moustache (this time attached to a man wearing a police chief badge) is outside commanding his men, and a third moustache attached to the heiress’ father arrives, understandably worried about the situation.

You can tell which one is the Earl. He has the larger moustache (status)

So there’s a load of very serious sounding hostagetalk and policebanter, along with implications that this nobleman is (or was) part of some shady business that the police chief is/was also a part of.

Then Vash flaps into the scene, oblivious to everything because his iPod was especially funky at that moment.

I’m going to have at least one ridiculously derpy Vashface per episode at this rate

His sudden appearance outside the bar causes the criminals to get riled up and shoot at him, but Vash has plot armour and cannot be harmed by their villain-of-the-week bullets. Still getting down with his bad self, Vash makes it into the bar.

This is one of them ‘locals only’ pubs, right? I’ll go then.

Long story short, Vash gets taken for an idiot by the criminals and is tied up alongside Meryl and Milly. After a short exchange where both parties blame the other for their recent bad luck, Vash spots his target. The heiress (wearing a dress) has been suspended from the ceiling. There is ample space underneath her. And she is helpless and wearing a dress.

WONDER VASH POWERS ACTIVATE! FORM OF A PERVERTED EARTHWORM!

Hi-jinx ensue, with our trussed O-jou-sama saying typical rich girl things about money, and Vash getting stomped on for being a creeper. Average hostage situation stuff that I’d imagine goes on all the time in such circumstances.

Meanwhile, outside, the sheriff reveals his master plan to save the day. The only thing that can stop a group of bandits is A GROUP OF WORSE, MORE MURDEROUS BANDITS (obviously).

In anime, some weapons are made of ice lollies. This is the only explanation for why you see so many licked knives, or as in this case, guns.

The earl decides to pay said mucho banditos to solve the problem, because he is functionally retarded and doesn’t think that the first thing this group of amoral, money-crazed, mass-murdering psychopaths will probably do once they have his daughter is take her hostage again.

Inside:

Vash hasn’t learned his lesson.

—-

GUITARS

—-

SRATIUG

—-

We return to the criminals having a spot of tea and engaging in some light conversation about the weather. Only kidding, they’re throwing glasses around and talking about extortion. They hear a rumour over the radio that Vash the Stampede is in town just as an armoured vehicle arrives which they presume is their requested escape vehicle.

It is not their escape vehicle.

The ultrabandits quickly pull what I like to call the ‘Pyroteamkill Manoeuvre’, driving their armoured car directly into the front of the building, then leaping out and proceeding to shoot all of the guns. All of them. Also they spend their time chuckling like tickled babies. #WhyIsThisEvenATrope?

Cover is taken.

Vash takes some pro-active action by bicycle-kicking the heiress down from the rafters using his trusty boot-knife. Milly and Meryl have managed to wriggle over the bar, along with the lead moustache of the first group of criminals.

One of the second group decides that if their target isn’t going to die willingly, he’ll get his chucks by torturing the butler instead. Vash immediately loses his derpface and gets all heroic. And then doesn’t shoot him. The bandits can’t believe their luck, and raise their guns, when Milly breaks out the big guns.

That is a massively oversized non-lethal alternative.

Through a series of events, all the attacking bandits are knocked out or otherwise temporarily disabled. Vash quickly lets us in on a little of his pacifist philosophy, and then we get to hear the TRAGIC BACKSTORY of why this whole situation happened in the first place. Our proud earl and his loyal sheriff were once murderous banditos themselves, and our first batch of criminals are the surviving children of the townsmen slaughtered when they took ownership of the town with violence.

Vash leaves the bar and relays the criminals’ new demands. Bostalk (the earl) is forced to comply after realising that his jig is more or less up.

Unhappy moustaches.

The deal is: the daughter goes free, but the father has to have a pistol duel with the head bandit to satisfy said bandit’s thirst for vengeance. Being a pacifist, Vash is sad that this is how it must be.

But after it emerges that the earl is hit, not in the heart, but the shoulder, the mood of the scene changes.

It’s an emotional rollercoaster that lasts all of 5 seconds.

Just as moustache the first says he’s going to turn himself in, the real villain of the piece (ol’ baldy the sheriff) reveals himself, openly admitting in front of everyone present including several other lawmen, two reputable insurance company employees and the daughter of the richest man in town that he intends on using this situation to grab power.

Quickly disarming everyone, the sheriff revels in his new found (and you guessed it: extremely temporary) status as KING OF TOWN. Vash grabs of Meryl’s attention with just his eyelids, and then psychically requests backup for his upcoming pants-on-head insane rescue attempt. At least, that’s what I can gather from the fact that he just looked at her and blinked, anywho.

Uh, teacher?

Distracting everyone for one second with a question, Vash then tackles a lawman to the floor. Meryl uses THIS distraction to reveal that her coat is made of guns.

There’s like, 50 holdout pistols in there at least. What the shit?

And then she proves that although she’s an insurance clerk for a day-job, her main passion is apparently being the world’s greatest female run-and-gun crackshot; disarming all the corrupt lawmen with expertly aimed weapon shots. Vash has a little chat with the sheriff.

Just a friendly chat.

Vash and Meryl team up to destroy the sheriff’s badge (THE SOURCE OF HIS POWER, NOW HE IS HELPLESS), and Vash forces the sheriff to repeat his catchphrase that we are just learning and that only turns up in a few other episodes.

All together now:

RUVU ANDO PIISO

Aaaaaand… scene.

GUITARS

—-

So, let’s have a look at what we’ve learned here:

Fighting fire with fire is totally the best idea ever
Meryl is the world’s foremost authority on handshots
50 small guns strapped to the inside of your overcoat in no way negatively effects your acrobatic manouevres
Some weapons are DELICIOUS
There are two types of crying ;_;
Murdering, from the first person perspective at least, is HILARIOUS
If you didn’t have a moustache in the old west, you weren’t shit

Anyway, next episode is about giant cyborgs and marker pens.

Trigun Episode 3 - Peace Maker

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 10:59:00 +0100

Whoops, this was meant to be written at most 2 days after the last one, but VIDEOGAMES

Anyway, today we open on episode 3 with I believe our first view of a plant (not that kind, the giant-lightbulb power plant kind). These are INTEGRAL TO THE PLOT, so it’s nice to see that they turn up so soon, before we get any idea that they are in fact [REDACTED FOR SECURITY REASONS].

—-

GUITARS

—-

We open with a dude trying to bum a drink in a bar. He gets thrown out and a gun pointed at his face. Totally reasonable and not excessive in the least, eh?

TITLE CARD

It’s the insurance girls! Discussing what they’re going to look for this time (SAME THING WE LOOK FOR EVERY NIGHT, PINKY: VASH THE STAMPEDE). Also Milly makes a quip about how peaceful the town is. It is possible that Milly is cursed? Quick appearance by Vash, closely followed by Meryl’s absolute certainty that Vash couldn’t be such a brainless idiot.

So, our drunkard manages to collar Vash for a drink, accusing him of bumping into him (he’s got that stereotypical ‘delinquent’ voice and manner, too #animestereotypes)

With how flappy he is, sometimes I think Vash might be my spirit animal

He also gets vomited on.

Aaanyway, drunkie hints that he’s intimately familiar with guns, just before Vash says he’s looking for a gunsmith named Marlon and the barlady mentions that Marlon’s now a drunk. Vash manages to put two and two together like a reasonable 5-year old, and loosens up towards his erstwhile drinking buddy.

That is pretty damn loose right there.

Anyway, the insurance girls at this point are trying to warn the mayor that his town is in danger of a Vash attack, which he laughs off as preposterous (are we sensing a theme here?)

Then this chucklehead turns up:

He seems cheerful! This will absolutely end well.

So Vash and Marlon the drunk get thrown out of the bar for being drunk, I guess (although it looks like Vash is faking it), when they run into the insurance girls. Milly tells Vash that they’re on patrol, looking out for Vash (but not him, because Meryl doesn’t think he’s Vash, and Meryl is the senpai here, damnit). Vash and Marlon stagger off to continue drinking.

—-

GUITARS

—-

SRATIUG

—-

We return to find Vash and Marlon having worked their way through an entire liquor cabinet of booze. Marlon makes clear his view of the world being a harsh karmic system where helping one person harms another before passing out.

Vash immediately stops acting drunk (HOW COULD HE NOT BE DRUNK AFTER ALL THAT!!! PLOT!!!) and has a quick flashback to when a tailor was telling him about Marlon. Within said flashback we cut to a scene even farther in the past (technically known as ‘Flashbackception) where Marlon’s TRAGIC HISTORY is recounted.

While he does appear to be immune to drunkenness, the mighty Vash still gets the sickies after a booze-up.

We cut to the morning after, Marlon wakes up and notices with some puzzlement that Vash’s gun has been left on his worktable, just before a disembodied voice of panic says that Vash the Stampede is attacking the town’s armoured delivery vehicle. Except that it’s not really Vash (obviously), it’s Mister Cheerful from before.

Honest, my this gun is totally not just compensating for my tiny, tiny… eyes.

Our friendly local insurance girls have been roped into carrying bags of money from the armoured car to ‘Vash’s pimpwagon, and start to lament that they didn’t bring any doughnuts this time. Meanwhile, Vash looks on, plotting out his ideas for how to resolve the situation. Marlon tells him to let it pass and keep his nose out, for everyone’s safety. Naturally, being a protagonist, Vash ain’t havin’ none o’that shit.

I wonder if anyone as ever cosplayed as Bin-Lid Yojimbo Vash…

His grand plan basically involves using his James Bond-style bootknife to puncture the tire of their getaway car, and then bluff the living shit out of them with his finger.

JIZZ IN MY PANTS

Due to his insane bravery (or perhaps his infectious insanity), pretty much the entire town basically pulls out handguns and faces down the 4 robbers. This is probably the reason they don’t have a sherrif, even for a western-themed hellworld, that is an extremely well armed populace. Smiley decides to play his trump card and HENSHINs his gun from a large, but vaguely plausible machine-gun into a ridiculous 9-barrelled, flame-decal’d impossibility of a weapon. And then Marlon pulls the old ‘My Finger is a Gun Behind Your Head’ trick on him, and he freaks and runs off with his extremely camp purple umbrella.

Then the entire town has a piss-up.

Also, Vash turns into a Terrence and Phillip character.

While searching for the toilet, Vash gets ‘held-up’ by Marlon, who gives him back his gun, fixed to the best ability of a now ex-drunkard gunsmith. Then Vash throws up all over the bar’s outside wall.

As we close, Vash is once again striding off into the distance, this time with the insurance girls close on his heels, Meryl protesting all the while that they’re totally not following him, they just happen to be headed in the same direction. #notfoolinganybody

—-

GUITARS

—-

So, what have we learned today? Well:

Aluminium bin lids will stop a hail of bullets (why doesn’t the army use them as body armour?)
Even if every member of your entire town has a loaded handgun on them, rumours will stop them from protecting themselves.
Being a legendary gunman doesn’t preclude having noodly arms.
Whatever caused the post-apoc situation of the planet must have also caused the occasional evil-causing deformity, ‘cause damn if most of the villains so far haven’t been pretty grotesque
It is possible for two men to drink what looks like over 30 bottles of liquor by themselves over the course of one night and not die.
Kuroneko-sama is some kind of teleporter, or possibly a cat with the superpower of Omnipresence, because here she is again:

They see me rollin’…

Next episode is ‘LOVE AND PEACE’, in which we learn about Vash’s extremely flexible fingers.

Trigun Episode 2 - Truth of Mistake

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 15:15:56 +0100

GUITARS

—-

Back in the game. OK, Episode 2, slightly less… comprehensively broken down than episode 1.

We open as someone in shadow is having a shoot-out with a moustachioed man. His moustache is ridiculous. You are meant to think it is Vash he is shooting at (it is not, Vash doesn’t do the ‘getting shot by some random dude’ thing).

TITLE CARD

Today marks the first appearance of a common theme: one or more of the main characters striding into town on the brink of exhaustion. Also additional doughnuts.

—-

The insurance girls find Vash working as ‘Vash’, a fake Vash bodyguard to scare would-be assassins away from an extremely wealthy water-baron (POST-APOCALYPTIA, YEAH). A couple of interesting things in the guy’s sitting room: A gramophone playing a warped-ass record, a nice visual cue of several things, but mostly that the world is in a very bad state of repair even for the hyper-rich; and also apparently he keeps a beautiful young heiress behind a red, velvet curtain? What?

Vash seems impressed. Meryl is not impressed with his impression.

The girls volunteer to also become bodyguards, in the hope that the person Vash (or ‘Vash’) is there to scare off is the real Vash (Man, it’ll be nice in a few episodes when all this ‘Nobody knows what Vash looks like’ stuff is done), but get roped into servant duty instead.

Meanwhile, Vash is makin’ peepin’ plans:

This is my kawaii face.

We discover a couple of things from this little scene: first, that Marianne the rich heiress is attempting to deceive the household in some way, and second, that Milly is INTENSELY gullible. Marianne is spotted by Meryl, leaving the water baron’s room (INTRIGUE).

We have a dinner scene next, with Marianne making some pointed remarks about water and leaving, and Vash lying about peeping in a highly convincing way, after punching himself in the face. By this point, after having seen Marianne sneaking out of the water baron’s room, everyone should be convinced that she is the shooter. Everyone except the actual characters in the show (though Meryl is probably suspecting something right about now).

—-

GUITARS

—-

SRATIUG

—-

Aaaaand after the break, we get definitive confirmation that it’s Marianne as the shooter. Vash tries his goofy best to sound profound in an attempt to impress the lovely blonde, also doing his Bishie Vash face.

She distracts him with an attempt to prove his valour, and escapes. When it turns out to be the insurance girls, and Marianne has disappeared, the three go to investigate. They find pretty damning evidence, leading everyone except the rather smitten Vash to the correct conclusion.

NOT MARIANNE SHE IS BEAUTIFUL SOUL

In a brief chat where Vash is reeling from Meryl’s righteous indignation about Vash’s peeping ways, a SECRET EXIT is revealed. This turns out to lead to a giant underground cavern where the water baron is conducting his NEFARIOUS SCHEME of freezing all the water of the local water source into ice and storing it, thereby decreasing the supply in a basic display of raw, unfettered CAPITALISM.

Marianne is now wearing a red policecops uniform. IT ALL FALLS INTO PLACE. That evil moustache was hiding not a misunderstood businessman, but a perfectly understood businessman.

Marianne is juuuust about to get assassinated, when Vash flaps into the scene like a ragdoll on a paint-mixer. The proof that Marianne is a good-un makes Vash rather pleased.

No, wait, actually this is my kawaii face

Vash does his Matrix thing, dodging a bullet, before remembering that he should be goofy at all times, lest people learn his SECRET. He manages to dodge an entire clip of bullets while leaping around like a loon, and apparently disarms the disreputable water-magnate.

Guns don’t kill people, magnates do (summon the stampede, woop woop woop)

This quickly becomes a bad idea, as the stray bullets disrupt the ice generator, and the whole place goes up in smoke/water.

Cut to the morning, and suddenly the town isn’t looking quite so dry.

Home, sweet flooded crater-town.

The group looks down on the town, offering some optimistic words, before Marianne manages to get some romantic FORESHADOWING in. Vash once again strides off towards the horizon, lamenting how he would have totally gotten in that ass if she wasn’t the po-po.

—-

GUITARS

—-

So, I think that was a lot more readable than the last one. Pictures are nice I suppose. Right, things we learned here:

Milly will believe any goddamn thing you tell her, because she has the social nous of a 2 year-old
Vash is a horny 13 year-old
Meryl is surprisingly good at creating professional-caterer level meals
It is possible to freeze a crater-full of water into a stack of ice blocks no larger than the average house.
Trained police officers don’t know better than to try and shoot someone using an arm with a bullet in it.
Apparently is is possible to leash Kuroneko-sama. I imagine that the next episode will not have the people who leashed her. NOBODY TRIES THAT SHIT AND LIVES.

Next episode is a tale of redemption and garbage cans.

Trigun Episode 1 - The $$60,000,000,000 Man

Sat, 02 Jun 2012 21:40:00 +0100

First things first, let me get this out of the way: Trigun has an AMAZING intro sequence. Before the mandatory j-pop BS that took over all of anime opening sequences a little before, but completely after the year 2000, anime was allowed to have BOSS AS FUCK intro music. Trigun is an excellent example of this. Also, noted is the grainy, textured feel the animation has. Cel animation, RIP.

GUITARS

—-

Anyway, with that out of the way, let’s get down to business. (To defeat the Huns.)

The series opens with generic cowboy movie barflies playing cards and talking about a monster named Vash, a criminal worth an insane amount of money having just demolished a nearby town. Immediately the viewer is a little bit “Haaaaa, he’s right there, I just saw the intro, that red jacket is very visually distinctive”. Well, they would be if they had time, anywho. The entire bar quickly gets annihilated by a giant boomerang and 86 thousand bullets (I counted).

The sign for the bar appears to have protected the man in the red coat, who calmly walks out with his tiny, yellow beatnik glasses and pulls a pistol, then the camera pulls away and shooting is heard. The first impression we get here is: OH MAN, THAT DUDE IN THE RED IS PRETTY COOL.

We switch to a man, possibly the mayor, in the recently destroyed town, telling a bounty hunter about the situation, and how even though the town is rubble, nobody was killed. Bounty hunter then exits, having received a rough description of Vash that appears to correspond to the giant with the boomerang.

Knowledge of the truth of things obviously makes this immediately apparent that it’s a case of mistaken identity, but remembering that this series was first broadcast in 1998 (adapting a manga from a short-lived magazine), many people would legitimately have believed that the giant was Vash and that the main character dude in red was something else. This is especially plausible as the giant appears in the intro (despite only actually appearing in this one episode).

—-

AAAANYWAY.

The next scene is another bar (IT’S A WESTERN, CAN YOU TELL YET), where we meet another series mainstay. I am of course, talking about Kuroneko-sama, the black cat.

Also the dude with the pipe has some serious jaw issues

Oh, and two insurance company representatives, I suppose.

Meryl and Milly stride in, all serious like, glancing around with suspicion at the leering generic western barflies, approach the bar and promptly order ridiculous, dainty desserts. All of the barflies fall over in classic anime style, with legs and arms poking up from between the upturned tables.

The barflies make some ‘comments’, which are swiftly interrupted by Milly’s enormous stun-gun snapping its leather sling and slamming to the ground. The lecherous gents make a hasty exit.

This is pretty much the first non-super-cereal thing to happen, and paves the way for the rest of the episode to get goofier as time passes.

The girls ask after Vash as well, and get another erroneous description, different from the last one.

—-

Next we catch up with those gun-toting dudes and the man in the red coat. Red has managed to evade the bandits, and gigantor is not happy about it. Apparently though, they can’t find him because he’s buried himself completely, and ambushes one of the bandits as they search for him.

We’re given a quick flashback as to what happened when the camera panned away at the start of the episode. Red’s gun is empty. He immediately transitions from badass to goofy coward and runs the hell away. Cue amusing evasion tactics.

Eventually, Red is caught by his own kindness and the bandits begin to celebrate their big win. And then the insurance girls arrive.

Believing the giant to be Vash, they approach with comedic trepidation, Milly cowering behind the much shorter and less physically imposing Meryl (quickly establishing their relationship as well as a good deal of both of their personalities). They present a gift box of doughnuts as a peace offering, but are interrupted by the bounty hunter firing a warning shot. He announces he is here for Vash, confusing the hell out of Red.

—-

GUITARS

—-

SRATIUG

—-

We come back to all parties bantering and slowly becoming more confused as to who exactly Vash is. Both the bounty hunter and the giant become convinced that the other is Vash and start to FIGHT TO THE DEATH, while the insurance girls cheese it, with Red hot on their heels. And helping himself to their doughnuts.

They reveal that they’re essentially in the business of risk mitigation, and are tracking Vash to try and prevent some of the disasters that occur when he is around. They rope Red into warning the town about the fight between giant-Vash and bounty-hunter Vash, and turn back to fulfil their duties. With more doughnuts.

Apparently they both figured out that the other isn’t Vash, string the girls up ready for some traditional wild-west romance (bondagerape?) but are interrupted with the wildly flailing reentry of Red on an out-of-control horsebird (They are apparently called Thomases?). An apparently errant bullet frees the girls, and Red flaps off like an overwound, elastic-band-powered helicopter, dodging all the bullets that come his way.

Cornered next to a cliff, Vash acrobatically knocks both fake Vashes out (with part of the cliff giving way, destroying the thankfully now empty town), then throws the girls a thumbs up while laughing like a goof. Meryl is convinced that Red can’t be Vash, Milly is less so.

We close on the insurance girls filing their report, and the rumour mill continuing to turn about how Vash destroyed another town, and Vash walking off into the metaphorical sunset.

—-

GUITARS

—-

So, what did we learn here?

Red is definitely Vash, making the floppy-eared giant and Milly the most intelligent people in the series so far (apparently due to the bounty hunter being alive, the giant is also an expert negotiator?)
Vash is a complete goof, except when he isn’t, and also except when he looks like he is.
Despite being enormous, and apparently capable of hefting a colossal, gatling-gun-like weapon around with one arm, Milly is pretty dang timid (for reasons which I believe are related in a future episode)
Kuroneko-sama is the most important character in the series.
Cel animation is waaay rougher than even the lowest-budget of modern CG animated shows, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
When you get shot at, scoot along the ground like a crab to confuse your attackers.
Doughnuts make the best bribes.

Well, this post turned out a lot longer than I thought it would. I will probably not do a blow-by-blow of next episode, see if I can restrict myself to the important parts, but no promises.

Trigun - What I remember

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 18:36:24 +0100

I figure if I’m going to go back through series I have already watched, I should probably first make a little post about what I remember of the series from last time, so I can make a comparison after the series finishes again.

For me, Trigun was one of the first full anime series’ I ever saw, in around about I want to say 2005. A heady time, being my first year of uni, and therefore first year away from home. Also, because it was my first year of uni, the workload was pretty light, so I had a shedload of time to kill in between my classes.

Needless to say, I watched a whole shitload of anime.

So then, Trigun. A series with an almost awkward split between slapstick comedy and serious action, and a similarly dual-natured protagonist: Vash the Stampede. Chased through the wilderness from town to town by the employees of an insurance company, desperate to keep him from causing too much damage, Vash is one half adorable, child-like jokester (at least on the outside) and one half hardened gunslinger who refuses to take a life, even at risk of his own.

Let’s see, then we’ve got the insurance girls, only one of whom I remember the name of (Milly, the tall one with the giant stun-gun), the errant priest/also a gunslinger whose name escapes me, and then a whole host of villains, both one-shot (for most of the first half of the series) and recurring (starting mid-way through if I recall correctly). One of those villains is possibly the greatest anime antagonist ever to grace the screen, one bad-ass psychic nihilist named Legato Bluesummers, who sounds like he should be a saxophonist, but that job is taken by another villain.

So, the key moments in my memory, without making too much reference to specifics at least are:

First episode - introduces the three main characters and their motivations
Introduction of the preacher
LEGATO BLUESUMMERS APPEARS
The Gung-ho Guns are all “I’M A MONSTER OF THE WEEEEK” for about 10 episodes or so
LEGATO’S MASTERSTROKE
FINAL SHOWDOWN with MAIN ENEMY WHO ISN’T AS GOOD AS LEGATO

So yeah.

Let’s see how that goes, I suppose.

What is... The Rewatch?

Thu, 31 May 2012 01:01:33 +0100

Well, I decided that since everybody else I know is tumblring to a lesser or greater degree, I should probably try and get some things down on electronic super-paper as well.

“But what about?” I hear you ask.

[PAUSE FOR AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION]

Well, since there’s no way for me to hear your strident pleas for information (note, do not use the ask for this, I am making a joke, can you tell?) let me just assume that you did ask that, and I will now answer.

The Rewatch is a little experiment of mine where I take TV series (most probably anime because of their generally sequential nature and in most cases limited duration format) that I have already seen, probably some time ago, and subject them to a critical rewatch (or re-view, ha-ha) while noting my thoughts and such.

Honestly, I don’t know how this will go, but I’m going to give it a reasonable effort, if only because I should really be using more than just the WASD keys on my ‘board on a regular basis. Makes them feel wanted.

So, as soon as I get around to watching and writing about it, the first series I’m going to cover is that classic of the over-saturated post-apocalyptic-space-colony-western genre: TRIGUN.