From the Trigun Art Book (1998 Tokuma Shoten) pages 58-60.
Translated by sumire
Spoilers have been written in white text on a white background; if you want to read them, click and drag to highlight the area.

--DIRECTOR SATOSHI NISHIMURA INTERVIEW--

I'd like to begin by asking you about the period when you received the offer to plan the animated version of Trigun.

I think it was around June of last year. Madhouse gave me the offer, "There's this comic book; won't you direct it?" When I actually read it, I thought, "This is interesting!" I wanted to take the challenge. The offer must have come to me first. I think the call went out to the other staff members a month or two later. I think Mr. Maruyama (Producer Masao Maruyama) probably wanted to settle on a director first.

How did you first come to see the comic Trigun that was to be animated?

It's an insult to creator Yasuhiro Nightow, but the job offer was the first time I saw it. Until then, I hadn't known about it at all. Just looking at the pictures, I thought, Boy, the artist is going to have a hard time of it. With comics, you've got to draw a typical character with lots of detail. But when you animate it, however much detail you cut, I think you have to try not to let it become something completely different. I discussed that point extensively with Yoshimatsu (Character Designer Takahiro Yoshimatsu). Vash was probably the hardest in that respect.

Did you choose the character designs based on auditions?

Yes, I took the liberty of doing that. That was simply because of my lack of experience--to be honest, I couldn't judge clearly. Nightow's response to the audition was that Yoshimatsu's submission was the best. There were other candidates whose designs were closer to the original work. But from the very start, Nightow took the stance that the animation is the animation; the comics are the comics, so from the beginning, there was a very positive reaction to Yoshimatsu, who brought out a taste not present in Nightow's drawings.

Did the original creator Mr. Nightow have any concrete demands?

I don't think he really had any. The parts he asked me not to change were parts I had never intended to change. Rather, his stance was such that he took the lead in suggesting revisions to the characters.

What parts of the original did you make a point of not changing?

That would have to be the very character of Vash. His personality, his actions, and so on. At the beginning of the manga, Vash's personality had quite a bit of variation, so as we were establishing his character, we kept asking Nightow, "He's this kind of guy, isn't he? This is what he'd do, isn't it?" Even so, my own image of Vash kept coming out, so I think there's nothing to do but have people view it as another part that differs from the original. Ultimately, the Vash of the comics and the animated Vash are different, I think.

In the first few episodes of the TV series, doesn't Vash have a weakness for beautiful women? Was this your idea as director?

Oh, that was Mr. Maruyama's request. (laughs) In the comics, Vash seems like a stoic character, doesn't he. In the beginning, when the request for a "weakness for girls" came down from Mr. Maruyama, the main staff went, "Huh?" and everyone was resistant to the idea. But I adopted that idea and tried to think of an explanation that would reflect that part of him. When we were creating the character of Vash, his "non-killing" belief was important. His personal reasons for not killing are explained to a certain degree in the comics, aren't they. Taking it from there and reconstructing it in my mind, I came up with the answer, "He loves mankind." Certainly, he shouldn't be killing people--or animals--in the course of the story. If you think about it, I think you can make an explanation out of that interpretation. He's immediately friendly with children, and of course he has no prejudice against women, or, for that matter, men, either. I'd like people to think of him as "loving all mankind" rather than just being a "ladies' man."

Certainly, if you think about it like that, the principles behind Vash's actions become readily apparent.
You pushed back the first story in the comics and started the TV series with an original story. As director, what was your aim in doing that?

I wanted to define the character of Vash, and I wanted to show how guns, by their nature, had to be used. Guns are dealt with particularly frankly in episode three. Episode five shows just how much of a pacifist this Vash the Stampede is. Until that point, we absolutely never had him fire his gun, so episode five offers the insight that completely establishes his character.
Again, episode three is a somewhat serious story, so to me, you can't have episode three without episode two. If it was just episode one, the comedy parts wouldn't be right. Since episode three is a slightly more serious story, I honestly wanted one more cushion. Vash's comical side gets left behind as you move into the second half of the series. It's just that in Nightow-san's version, Vash's so-called "gag face" occupies a place of relative importance, so when you completely remove it, I think it changes the feel of the work quite a bit. That's why I wanted to leave that part in. All the more, because the first half is there, it helps the second half as it becomes serious.

Speaking of turning serious, the latter half of the series is hard even for the viewers, and the turning point is episode 12. When I asked scenario writer Yousuke Kuroda, I heard that you two had a falling-out over where to take the story as it goes into the Gung-Ho-Guns arc.

Yes, we did, although I think the on-air version puts an end to the matter. For Wolfwood's earlier appearances, some good scripts came out, and it was interesting. Knowing that Wolfwood would take a relatively important part in the second half, I wanted to make more stories about him.

I was wondering if they weren't easier to move as a combination with Vash as the clown and Wolfwood as the straight man.

It was Kuroda who said they were easy to move as characters. Compared to other characters, when Wolfwood appeared, the stories just rolled right along. For that reason, I think he's an extremely easy character to move. I had fun drawing him, too. And with his chest bared like that, he's pretty sexy. (laughs)

Sexy?

At the recording session, Nightow said, "Sexy--He's sexy," like he was excited. (laughs) Well, we didn't calculate it that far. Also, using Hayami (voice actor Shou Hayami)--up until then, it had been Milly, Meryl, and Vash going along together, and I had the idea of breaking up that dynamic a little. That's where we invited native Kansai-ite Hayami. In addition, there's the image of the kinds of roles he's played in the past. I wanted to use that, too, to break that image at the same time as he's thrown in with Vash and the others. Hayami was relatively important for arranging the characters. I wasn't expecting it to end up being sexy, though. (laughs)

Even in the first half of the series, even as you were doing gags and comparatively upbeat stories, you must have worked on gradually changing the nature of the characters and stories approaching episode 12.

That was largely due to Kuroda. In terms of leading to episode 12, original episode 11--I like it very much as an episode, and I'm proud that it's one of the most complete of the original stories.

The conflict between Wolfwood and Vash's way of thinking...

It becomes clear in that story. Or more than that, because it clearly shows the difference between the characters' way of thinking, when Wolfwood appeared in the second half of the series, it was easier to deal with the to-kill-or-not-to-kill story. I think if Wolfwood had just appeared in episode nine and then just "Okay, see ya!" you wouldn't have had the same tension.

His reappearance in episode 18 has a juicy feel to it.

That was very well done in Nightow's original. He said something to the effect that he didn't calculate it, but for their reunion in the Maximum arc, he spent a lot of time working on "Vash is this kind of guy; Milly and Meryl are these kinds of characters; Wolfwood is this kind of character." I thought that turned out very well. For that reason, in order to make good use of that in the TV series, I decreased the number of other stories from the Maximum arc.

In episode 24, Vash kills Legato. Vash, who up until that point, had lived up to his ideal of non-killing, kills someone for the first time. Had you decided from the very beginning that that was necessary to drive Vash to the very bottom?

From the beginning, I thought he probably would kill. In the planning stages with Kuroda before he wrote the script, we tentatively decided that he would. But in the middle of working on the storyboards, I worried quite a bit. The script had ended up having him do it, but as I was drawing, I kept wondering, "Is it really all right for him to kill someone?" I remember having a lot of conflicting feelings as I was working on it.

But on the contrary, because of that, the next story connected.

Yes. Somewhere in my mind, I felt that Vash had not yet given up in despair. Up until that point, Vash had done his utmost to live up to his ideals, and because he was this transcendent gunman, somehow he'd been able to come through. Things had always worked out up until that point, but ultimately we created circumstances where he could not act as usual, where he had to make his least-hoped-for decision--just once, we had to make him taste despair. And yet he persisted in the non-killing way after all. I thought that if he didn't, it wouldn't be in keeping with his absolute character. In that way, Trigun is a story of growth.

I heard that you had trouble with the final episode.

That everyone bullied me about the ending? (laughs) What shall I say... the first ending I wrote was unpopular with everyone.

What kind of ending did you think of at first?

At first, I was thinking along the lines of what would happen if Rem really appeared. It would have been Vash's fantasy, and I wrote a bit about how Vash would answer to her, but it didn't seem quite right, even to me. How did it go... Something like Vash goes with the vision of Rem and disappears, I think. I don't really remember.
In the last episode, his lines, taking off his coat, leaving his gun there--I don't think that was in the first draft. That part was added for the final version, to show that Vash the Stampede had matured, as a turning point in the workings of his heart. That was my aim.
I consulted Nightow over the telephone, asking, "What should we do?" and asked the other staff members, "How is it? How is it?" and all kinds of things--I paid attention to the reactions of those around me.

I'd like to ask you about the fight between Knives and Vash. Where did you get your ideas for directing "gun action"?

Shall I talk about "Hong Kong Noir"? I was aware of the way Hong Kong movies used guns, and that scene was sort of like a combination of all that--the idea of using guns in the most interesting way possible. The ideas mostly came from Kuroda. I only contributed minor details, like throwing the cartridges. But for the visual presentation, I was free to do as I liked.

It was a very powerful scene, more like hand-to-hand combat than a shootout.

I think that was emphasized by the deliberate absence of background music. I ran it by Kurahashi (sound effects director Shizuo Kurahashi), to whom I owe a lot, in advance, saying "I'm going to pull out all the stops in the last episode." (laughs) I had him add a lot of sustained gunfire when we dubbed it, but even with that, the sound wasn't enough. Apparently, Kurahashi had thought that music would be added. He said, "There isn't any music, is there." (laughs)

It's a gun action scene that will go down in animation history.

I'm extremely pleased that you can say that.

The first title was "Beneath This Sky So White." So did the ending also undergo a great deal of revision?

Yes, it did. The ending written in the script was also very different. The idea for the ending came from (mechanical designer Noriyuki) Jinguji. In the end, lots of second-wave migration ships were to come down from the sky. The migration ships were supposed to be white, so we gave the episode that title. I thought that was one meaning of it. According to Jinguji, it meant, "With this, one era of guns has ended." But everything that had come before that episode wasn't about making a statement on a gun-centered society. I more or less accepted that, but then I felt, "I'm sorry, Jinguji, I'm sorry, Kuroda, but in my heart, this isn't it."
So, what should I do? The answer is the way it ended up. The white ships didn't appear, so there was no point in having "white" in the title. So, it became "blue." Ultimately, the ending was drawn the way I imagined it.
I think it became the animated series Trigun, something different from the comics, and it was made possible by the staff I was blessed with.

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