天下制覇

Better than nothing I guess.

Impressions:

This strikes me as something that came a decade later than it should have. This is pretty lacking in production for a movie, epecially compared to the glut of other action movies that came out this year. And development. And sense. The whole thing feels like maybe a thirty minute episode that is rather unfortunately padded out an extra hour. Amelia in particular suffers from them hiding her connection to ongoing events the whole time, only to reveal them in the most inane and convoluted way possible. "The secret my mother couldn’t tell me was… an electric glove! Also, blah blah daddy issues." Uh, okay then. If you completely removed her, the movie would be more or less the same, just about 30 minutes shorter and 85% more sensical. It’d at least remove that awful scene where Vash is yelling at her not to use a shotgun near the plant while there’s a guy one car over with an RPG. The plot and characters weren’t anything special to begin with, but at least they were consistently presented and fit the mood of the series. I’m pretty sure Amelia was just tossed in because someone thought that the movie had to have some melodrama, but then they reached the end of the movie without actually getting to it so had to toss in a few flashbacks that… added nothing really. Meryl and Milly were also never even tangentially related to the plot.

The action wasn’t horrible either, but definitely not that good and the final showdown between Vash and Gasback was over in an unimpressive 10 seconds. The random drunken barfight was far more visually interesting. Unfortunately though, the choregraphy and direction throughout were mediocre at best, even compared to the TV series. Far too much of it was just shots of people firing guns while the current alpha male stood there as the bullets whizzed harmlessly past them. Gasback had it especially bad, going from having his own magical bullet shield and being able to snipe grenades out of the air to being unable to hit the broadside of a barn. 

Where the movie really shines is all the incidental work. I loved the random crazy bounty hunter designs running around in the background and the small attention to details like a hooker getting excited to see someone going into a bar, noticing that it’s a woman (Amelia) and going back to the street corner. There’s a lot of stuff that diehard fans will squeal in delight over too, such as the multiple black cat sightings and a few other callbacks. On the other hand, I think that Hiromi Tsuru (Meryl’s VA) has gotten even worse over the years. Ouch.

All in all, it’s not a bad movie, but it’s eminently missable unless you’re already a rabid Trigun fan. Just be aware that it’s not going to tell a particularly compelling story, add anything to the series as a whole, or be anywhere near the visual treat that the other major movies this year were.