Van is a man made entirely of spite moving through a world that keeps giving him reasons to feel it. The show wraps a tired revenge plot in a Western that refuses to feel like anything else on TV, mixing gunslinger standoffs with mecha that feel like they belong there. Wendy arrives as an accident that becomes the actual story, and by the time you realize Van's been changing the whole time, the show has already changed what you came for.

Van wanders a desolate world with a single purpose: find the man with a claw for an arm and kill him. That man murdered his bride, and revenge is what keeps him on the road. His path crosses a timid girl named Wendy in the town of Evergreen, where bandits are after the treasury and her brother has been kidnapped. When the city begs for help, Van refuses. It's not his fight. He walks away. When he runs into the same bandits later, they push him far enough that he turns on them for his own reasons, and he learns they are tied to the Claw Man. His sword, a metal sash that snaps straight, can also call down a giant robot. Wendy, carrying her brother's engraved gun on her back, joins him on the road, to his annoyance. Their shared hunt leads to more outlaws, a mysterious woman called Carmen 99, and mecha duels with a Wild West feel.