Director Nishimura, Designer Yoshimatsu

Sakura-Con had the world premiere of the Trigun: Badlands Rumble film during the April 2-4 convention in Seattle, Washington. This is three weeks before the April 24 opening of the film in Japan.

Like the anime that came before it, MADHOUSE is basing the film on Yasuhiro’s popular Trigun manga. Director Satoshi Nishimura, character designer Takahiro Yoshimatsu, were both in attendance for the premiere, and hosted a Q&A session prior to the airing. You will all be happy to learn that the voice actors remained the same: Masaya Onosaka( Vash the Stampede), Sho Hayami( Nicolas D. Wolfwood), Hiromi Tsuru(Meryl Stryfe), and Satsuki Yukino(Milly Thompson).

The Q&A will be posted very soon, followed by a synopsis of the movie, hidden in a ‘spoiler’ tag.

****
T_T I just spent the last 2 hours typing up the Q&A and events prior to the movie release, and the F(*&*(^*^%##@@ work computer crashed…so it is gone. I’ll write it up again after I stop crying.

****

Here is the bare bone Q&A – later I will try to add the events prior to Q&A, impressions, etc.

Q: How are the characters different now, than when the anime first aired 11 years ago?

A: We tried to make no character personality changes at all-keeping them true to how they always have been. The movie is based during the series, and made to be able to be inserted at almost any point prior to episode 23.

Q: The art appears to be more reminiscent of the Manga – Was this intentional?

A: We wanted to incorporate tastes of the original artist into the appearance. There are about 6 cuts in the movie with the original artwork appearance (try to see if you can spot them!)

Q: Will there be any continuation after this? Trigun Maximum???

A: The more and louder your voices are heard, the more likely it is to happen.

Q: Why is the movie based during the series vs. following the end events of the series?

A: When the story was being decided, they wanted to choose to show the loved characters, Vash, Meryl, Milly, and Wolfwood.

Q: Is there a dub-sub project in the works?

A: Nothing is currently in the works, negotiations are in progress, but we think it is pretty much guaranteed.
((Sitting in front of me were the 5 Funimaiton! reps who were also viewing the movie for the first time, and they just chuckled at the translator when he made this statement))

With only slight further ado, the movie was then presented – a scene by scene write out shall be forthcoming.