‘Trigun Stampede’ Review: How Does This Reimagined Classic Anime Hold Up?
Trigun Stampede brought us back to the world of Vash. But is this remake worth the re-watch, or should we just stick with 1998’s Trigun?
I got into Trigun way back in 2001, and I got into it. By which I don’t mean that it was my favorite show (it was), or even that I both cosplayed and LARPed Meryl (which I absolutely did; if you remember me from Otakon LARP 2002, say hi!). What I mean is that for just about a year Trigun was my entire personality. Eventually, it stopped being my everything and I switched up hyper-fixations, but the series always stayed important to me.
A few years ago bought the rest of the manga that I had never finished collecting and brought a little red beta fish for my office named Vash (I worked in insurance for a bit, that’s the whole joke.) I generally continued thinking fondly of Trigun. But in that “this thing was important to me when I was young” sort of way.
All of this backstory is to say that when Trigun Stampede was announced, I was immediately drawn in. Sure, I was dubious about the art style and the fact that it was a reboot sort of, and the lack of Milly Thompson. But I was never not going to watch it.
How does a twenty-years-later reboot of a classic anime hold up? Was Stampede worth the watch? Or should we all just re-watch the ’98 version? Well…
The Good
As I said, I started episode one with a healthy level of apprehension. By episode six or seven I was right back in it, and by the finale, I was pleasantly surprised the entire season. The show has its problems, sure, but overall, it’s good.
I think what I was most impressed by was how they updated this series. 1998 Trigun was very edgy. At times it was downright cruel between bouts of goofy antics. In contrast, many things about Trigun Stampede from Vash’s hair to the music choices were softer. The world wasn’t softer, and the series antagonist Knives was probably the most brutal we’ve ever seen him, but the show doesn’t just tell you to be soft and kind, it shows you.
The other thing Stampede did that I loved was it utilized much more of the manga than the 1998 series. This is in part because, by the time 1998’s Trigun would wrap up, the manga would still be running for almost another entire decade. There’s a lot of content there that never made it into the original twenty-six episodes because it just didn’t exist yet.
This means that entire characters are introduced in Stampede that fans of the original series may have never heard of. There’s depth to the story that manga readers have known about for years now, but returning anime fans may not have. And while the original made Knives into a pretty flat evil-for-the-sake-of-it sort of villain, in Trigun Stampede (and the manga) it’s hard to say that he’s wrong. Sure the wanton murder is a bit much, but he has his reasons for being as mad as he is.
Does this make for a Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood-style reboot that follows the manga and answers all of the prayers of fans? No. Instead, it fleshes out whole characters, the world, and the story while giving Trigun a much-needed facelift to make it a potable anime in 2023. And something I’ve noticed is how this reboot has brought new fans to the original show. People who hadn’t seen 1998’s Trigun are watching Stampede, falling in love, and watching the original, too. Which feels like a marker of huge success to me.
The Bad
In modernizing Trigun, they, unfortunately, lost a few things that made the show special to many fans. The western style is nearly nonexistent and the soundtrack isn’t nearly as unique. Don’t get me wrong, I like the opening song and it’s already on my Spotify playlist… but I own multiple official CDs of the original’s soundtrack, and I can’t say I feel that strongly about Stampede‘s soundtrack.
The art style is also not my favorite. That videogame-inspired 3D animation is fine, but it always looks like the people are made out of sacks of flour just a little bit. And while the art in stills may be gorgeous, in movement it doesn’t always feel like the rendering computer understands how people move. It’s just a little wrong, a little bit uncanny valley.
And then there’s the unforeseen consequence of the style; all of the characters look very young. They looked like adults in 1998, and I’ll see fanart of Stampede‘s character designs in different styles and they’ll look like adults. But in the anime itself, everybody looks like an adorable middle-schooler.
As far as the story goes, it took me a few episodes to get into Stampede. Maybe this was different for people who weren’t comparing to the original, but the first few episodes felt like they were speed-running the series to get to the good stuff sooner. Which, in retrospect, I’m pretty sure is exactly what they were doing. The second half of the season I was very into however… with the exception of episode 11 which was just very very strange, and I have a feeling, quite polarizing. In the end, they stuck the landing. But if a show hard a steep getting-into-it curve, it can be easy to scare off potential fans before they get to the good stuff.
The Rating
This is a hard show to rate. On one hand, I think that how they managed to adapt the manga in 2023 is perfect. Five out of five, no notes. But that’s not all there is to it. There’s also the adaption of the 1998 anime and making a show that good on its own merits.
Overall, I liked Trigun Stampede a lot. I loved seeing Livio and Tesla finally make it into animation, and I loved seeing Knive’s story and trauma laid out. But the animation style didn’t feel like Trigun or even like anime all of the time. Instead, it felt like we were watching a video game with a very, very long cutscene. And while they polished off some of the edges to make room for nuance, they polished away some of what made Trigun Trigun. It’s sort of like when Disney remastered their first few classics so much that they removed some of the original animation lines and as a result made Cinderella’s dress look a bit like a blob.
But in the end, I enjoyed Trigun Stampede and it made me want to experience the 1998 version and the manga again. And I know I’m not the only person revisiting 1998’s Trigun right now. Frankly, I bet more people would be reading the manga as well, but for some reason, the publishers are dragging their feet on that republishing.
Did you watch Trigun Stampede? What did you think of it? Will you be revisiting the 1998 series or the manga? Let us know in the comments!
Love and peace, adventures!
