Hey everybody. I’ve got 3 pieces of news for you in this weeks Update: the Trigun Movie Announcement, free epsiodes of Monster now online, and 20% off Dragon Ball on Viz’s Digital Manga App! (Bonus video from Japan this week: Cat Weightlifting.)
First up: Trigun fans rejoice! The big news this week is that the film Badlands Rumble is coming to theaters in North America this summer. Badlands Rumble released on April 24th of last year in Japan, nearly twelve years after the series first launched on TV Tokyo, and Madhouse Animation worked hard to produce a film that would be able to follow the success of the series. Fans of the dub will be ecstatic to know that Johnny Yong Bosch is reprising his role as Vash the Stampede.
They may be less excited, however, to know that no other voice actors from the original dub will be returning for this film. I’m not too worried, though, because we’ve got some great voice talent up for this film including Colleen Clinkenbeard (Soul Eater, Fullmetal Alchemist, Dragon Ball, Romeo X Juliet) as Amelia and Luci Christian (Soul Eater, One Piece, Ouran High School Host Club) as Meryl Strife.
Funimation has only released this about the plot so far: TRIGUN: popular sci-fi action anime series with the original storyline created by Yasuhiro Naito. The setting takes place in a remote planet of the near future. It portrays the life and actions of a wanted man named Vash, an extreme pacifist by nature bizarrely nicknamed as the “human typhoon”. Story and designs have been renovated for this animated film, so that not only fans, but people who haven’t read the original manga or seen the animated TV series could enjoy the work.
Since this is incredibly vague, allow me to fill you in as to what Trigun is all about! Vash the Stampede finds out that he has a huge bounty on his head, for 60,000,000,000 double dollars! Unfortunately, Vash cannot remember his alleged destruction of the city of July or anything surrounding the events that led to his being pursued by bounty hunters. Though armed to the teeth, Vash generally uses non-violence to save the innocent as he works his way towards finding out why he’s become a wanted man. It’s not the deepest story out there, but it’s a fun Sci-fi Western series, and the movie will probably be just as good (if not better for removing filler from the main story).
I’ll let you know more about the film as soon as Funimation releases more details. Until then, here’s the Japanese trailer for the film from last year. It basically introduces Vash as the wanted man with the 60 Billion Double Dollar bounty on his head, and lets us know that he’s back with all our favorite characters to face off against the criminal of the century: