Pojo's Anime: Episode Reviews

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Episode 1: The Sixty Billion Double-Dollar Man


 The series opens with a scene of a desolate, hazy desert. A town appears in center view. The sun relentless pounds the area, glistening off the sign of a run down bar. The building has an old West feel to it, with a roofed porch at the front door. Inside, two mean speak of a terrible outlaw. A man with a $$60 billion bounty on his head. He kills women and children, and levels cities. He is Vash the Stampede. The Humanoid Typhoon.

 The bartender walks to the door carrying a barrell to be taken outside. Once he steps out the door the bartender stops dead in his tracks. He lets out a terrified wimper and then runs for his life. The remaining men in the bar turn their attention to the door. They hear the spine tingling sound of sharpening metal. Followed by what sounds like a chainsaw of some sort. Two of the men draw their pistols, fearing the worst. Suddenly a boomerang type object begins to spin towards the door. The entire roof of the bar is sawwed off. The two armed men peak up from the destruction and see a line of machine guns. They quickly vacate the area. The line of men armed with the automatic weapons of destruction open fire on the bar, and literally level it piece by piece. When the smoke clears, one man someone sits in the middle of the bar, unharmed. A man in a red trench coat.....

 The man in the red trench coat stands. He stands tall, long and slender. As he adjusts his glasses, the metallic boomerang returns to it's owner: a giant of a man with pig like facial features. The man in red draws his Colt-45, the sun glistens down the barrel as he draws it upwards and into firing position. Things look to get ugly, but before they can, the title screen appears......

 As we cut back to the show, several people are clearing away the rubble of colapsed buildings. They comment on how Vash truly is the Humanoid Typhoon. As if by some strange miracle, no one was injured during the mayhem. A man with a long brown coat is questioning the town sheriff on everything he knows about the man responsible. He is told the guilty party was a short legged man who wore a red. The inquisitive man in the long brown coat thanks the sheriff as he heads out the door. As he walks away, the sheriffs warns him to stay as far away from Vash the Stampede as he can.

 We cut to another bar. This one is a little more happy looking, despite the drunks who are slumped at varying tables. In this bar, we see a man playing pinball as a radio plays in the background. On the radio, details are given about the latest attack of Vash the Stampede, followed by western style piano music. Meanwhile, two women walk into the bar. They appear to be in their mid 20s. They walk right through the bar full of drunken men and right up to the bartender. The smaller woman pounds her fist on the counter and orders...........a banana sundae. The taller woman orders Ceylon tea. Of course, the men of the bar begin to give them a hard time. One of them even slams a table to the floor. The table slammer is put back in his place, however, when the tall woman's gigantic stungun falls from underneath her cape and on to the thrown table causing it to flip up and hit the man in the face. As the table slammer is carried away, they wonder if that tall woman is some kind of monster......

 The shorter lady begins to question the bartender about Vash the Stampede since she heard he was in the area. The bartender wonders how two innocent looking girls could be looking for the $$60 billion. They claim to be only on business. The bartender tells them that Vash supposedly left at dawn. The smaller woman then wants a description of the Humanoid Typhoon. According to the bartender, he is 12 feet tall and sports on mohawk haircut. He has a league of henchmen at his disposal, and is the worst kind of womanizer.

 The giant man with a mohawk is in fact looking for Vash as well. He is the same man who led the boomerang assault on the other bar. His henchman are looking for Vash, but it is Vash who finds one of them first. After knocking one of them out, Vash snags a few bullets from the now sleeping soldier of fortune. He recalls how earlier at the bar he had been out of ammo, and nearly paid for that mistake with his life. As he recollects that moment the other henchmen discover his location. He runs for cover, but one of them is on his tail. Vash cleverly fools him with a little misdirection, but even when he has the man in his sights henchman will not drop his gun. As Vash tries to persuade him to do so, the long eared mohawk man launches his metallic boomerang at both of them. Vash ducks in time, but the henchman is hit and hurt badly.

 The giant boomerang wielding man challenges Vash to shoot him with his "big" gun, but Vash denies claiming he hates the sight of blood. Vash is surrounded, so there is no escape. He is tied up and thrown against a rock. As the bounty hunters cheer and congratulate each other of their newfound wealth, the cry of an animal is heard fast approaching. They look up to see two women (the same two from the bar) standing atop a nearby hill with very serious looks on their faces. They walk up to the rather large bounty hunter and announce themselves to be agents of the Bernardelli Insurance Society. The smaller woman's name is Meryl Stryfe, and the taller woman is Milly Thompson. Believing this behemoth to be Vash, they promptly offer him a box of donuts. The bounty hunter seems puzzled by their sudden appearance, and asks what they are doing here. Meryl begins to answer him, but is interrupted by a lone gunshot.....

 The offender is the man in the long brown coat we saw earlier meeting with the sheriff. He claims he has finally found his $$60 billion prize. The man announces himself to be Ruth Loose, the bounty hunter known as "Constance Rifle". In an interesting twist of fate, Ruth believes the large bounty hunter to be Vash. The rumors apparently don't match. Once the large man's henchmen see the inside of Ruth's brown coat to be red, they think he is Vash. Chaos insues as the bounty hunters open fire on one another. Meryl, Milly, and the real Vash (they don't know its the real Vash though) take off from the scene. As the flee the site of the carnage, Meryl informs Vash that they were sent by their insurance company to put Vash under 24 hour surveillance becasue destruction seems to follow him everywhere. Meryl sends him into town to warn them about the coming danger as she and Milly head back to the scene of the crime.

 This time the girls are armed with a 30-pack of donuts, but the bounty hunters aren't buying it. They have stopped fighting, realizing their mistake. Believing that the girls helped Vash escape, they tie each of them up and prepare to kill them. Low and behold, Vash arrives just in time to save them. His entrance lacks heroic fortitude, as he clearly can not control the animal he is riding. He does manage to shoot the ropes down that are holding Meryl and Milly. The bounty hunters chase Vash down, and eventually corner him at a cliff's edge. The large bounty hunter hurls his boomerang, but Vash someone evades it by jumping straight into the air. He lands behind the large bounty hunter, presses his boomerang switch, thus leaving him defeated in a mechanical screeching mess. The henchmen run for their lives from the man who defeated their giant boss. Vash prepares to deal the Ruth, but the big man's boomerang does the job for him.

  Unfortunately, Ruth had a present for Vash that he left behind: explosives. They go off, sending an avalanche of rocks tumbling toward the town of Felnarl below. Later that day as Meryl writes her report to the insurance company, she and Milly discuss who the real Vash is. Milly thinks its the guy in the red trenchcoat (the real Vash) while Meryl can not accept this. Meanwhile, the towns people talk about what happened in Felnarl. The town was wrecked, but not a single person died. The episode ends as we see Vash walking off into the sunset.

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