Trigun

"I'm just killing the spiders to save the butterflies." 1998 saw three popular shows going down the unusual route of combining futuristic sci-fi and cowboy-filled westerns as the backdrop to their story. "Cowboy Bebop" stands out as the biggest name amongst the trio, while "Outlaw Star" has all but faded into distant memory. Sandwiched between them is "Trigun", which made a big splash, but never quite achieved the evergreen status of "Cowboy Bebop". I'd heard about "Trigun" being similar to "Cowboy Bebop", but personally I don't think the similarities stretch much beyond the marriage of sci-fi and westerns settings. If anything, it's "Rurouni Kenshin" that "Trigun" sharea strong connection with, and I'm surprised that this connection doesn't get spotlighted nearly as often as the Trigun-Bebop one. Like Kenshin, Vash, the protagonist of "Trigun" , wanders from place to place, hiding his power levels under a goofy exterior; like Kenshin, Vash is also a stubborn pacifist, refusing to kill even those who try to kill him. Despite all of this, the ginormously misunderstood Vash has a $$60,000,000,000 bounty over his head, along with unwanted nicknames such as "Vash the Stampede" and "The Humanoid Typhoon". Luckily for him, his reputation might be fearsome, but no one actually knows what "The Humanoid Typhoon" looks like, and this allows him to move around more or less freely. Until trouble inevitably catches up with him, that is. The earlier portions of "Trigun" are episodic, and mostly starts off with two insurance companies employees Meryl and Millie going to a town looking for this "Vash the Stampede" fellow, intending to keep an eye on him and hopefully prevent him from doing massive damage to buildings and costing their company money. Of course, they would end up running into Vash without realising his identity, Vash would accidentally find himself in the middle of a big ruckus, and the town would go up in smoke. There are reasons aplenty why I shouldn't have liked "Trigun". For starters, I don't dig the art style - there are some impessive character design concepts, but mostly it just looked ugly to me. Also, a lot of episodes are formulaic, particularly the early ones. Then there's the comedy - I first watched "Trigun" in my budding days of being an anime fan, and back then the silliness of anime humour often got on my nerves. But in spite of all these barriers, I took an instant liking to "Trigun". Its writing is solid, and the show mixes comedy and serious business so effectively that I didn't mind its silliness; and in fact, the sharp contrast between goofball Vash and serious Vash really adds to the show. Still, there are times when the comedy goes overboard, like when Vash does his "love and peace" routine, which I find unbearable. "Trigun" undergoes a drastic change in the second half. The series shifts into a darker tone, and the episodic format changes into an overarching story about Vash's struggles against Knives, a figure re-emerging from his shadowy past. The bad guys up until this point had been weaklings, but now far stronger ones had started to appear, and the battles began to take on qualities not too dis-similar from those in the super power fighting genre. Though the elements are well executed, some viewers will prefer the lighter action/goofier mix earlier in the series. Personally though, I enjoyed the more continuous story and the more interesting battles. The second half of "Trigun" encompasses both the best and the worst of the series. On one hand, there's a lot more plot to be found, as well as some of the coolest characters in anime like Wolfwood and Legato. On the other hand, a lot of stuff were never fully explained; questions marks looming over things like the nature of plants (not those plants!) and the motivations and backgrounds of the Gun-Ho Guns are never resolved. Perhaps the aspect I liked the most was finding out more about Vash's past. His relationship with Rem was especially memorable, allowing insights into the major influence on his character, which is in turn reinforced as we see more of his actions and choices later on. At the same time though, this also relates closely to the aspect of the show I have the most problems with: the philosophy with which Vash - and to a lesser extent, Rem - approaches life, and in particular its contrast with that of the antagonist, Knives'. Knives isn't your average power hungry villain who wants to take over the world, or goes around killing everyone just because he's crazy. In fact, he's so rational that he makes Vash look incredibly juvenile. While Vash wants to save everyone, Knives reasons that to save the butterfly, you have to kill the spider. It's all well and good having a villain who speaks sense, but when the villain speaks so much more sense than the hero, when the hero has no comeback to the villain's words, then there is something fundamentally wrong with what the series is trying to say. What's also mightily frustrating is the inconclusive ending. True to his self-conflicting philosophies to the end, Vash takes a course of action that doesn't really solve anything in the long term. After all that, nothing really changed. It surely ranks up there as one the worst endings in anime. "Trigun" could have been a mediocre anime, for its formulaic format and stale story elements. "Trigun" could have been a great anime, for hurdling its potential stumbling blocks with awesome characters and superb execution of the aforementioned stale story elements. In the end though, it's held back by flaws in its story and philosophical ideals, and has to settle for being very good.

Trigun is another one of my "must see in your anime career" shows. The easiest way to explain why I believe this can be summed up by one name: Vash. Vash the Stampede is arguably one of the coolest, toughest, and funniest characters ever created. He's everyone's favorite superhero (even though he demolishes everything he gets close to). Vash brings forth something that I think everyone has a little in themselves, compassion. If Vash had a middle name, it would be Compassion. As if Vash wasn't enough for this show, they thought it might be a good idea to throw in a fantastic music score too.Tsuneo Imahori really hit the nail on the head with his work here. Great opening, great ending, and great background music throughout the show. I like some tracks so much that I often listen to them while exercising. Wolfwood, Meril, and Milly are great supporting characters. The constant bickering between them will trigger plenty of laughter. Not a ton of detail goes into their pasts, but enough is presented to satisfy the viewer. Animation is from the late 90's, so it's nothing crazy. It's great for the time period though. Overall, one of my favorite anime shows. Worth a watch no matter what type of series interests you.

(This is a spoiler-free review adapted for this site) [Synopsis]: Vash the Stampede (Onosaka, Masaya) is a legendary gunslinger with a $60,000,000,000 bounty on his head who has attained the additional title of the ‘humanoid typhoon’ due to the way he leaves a path of destruction in his wake wherever he travels. Because of this rampant devastation, the Bernardelli Insurance Society tasks Meryl Stryfe (Tsuru, Hiromi) and Milly Thompson (Yukino, Satsuki) to find Vash in order to evaluate insurance claims and attempt to minimize the damage. The story follows these characters across a desert wasteland as it quickly becomes apparent that Vash is more thana simple outlaw. [Characters]: Vash the Stampede, while an absolute ace in every category when concerning marksmanship, is also quite a carefree and kindhearted character. From the get-go it is revealed that the destruction that is attributed to him is actually the fault of the countless bounty hunters chasing after the reward for his head. With this in mind, he is perfectly capable of dealing out major damage with his signature revolver however perhaps his biggest character trait is that he always avoids killing his enemies – opting to disarm or at worst cripple them instead. This mindset, while at first a character quirk, becomes very central to the shows primary story after a turn in what could be described as the conflict of naivety. Vash occupies an odd dichotomy of personalities where he can be both silly and comical but gravely serious the next second. Vash’s past and the reasons for his preservation of life are explored fairly extensively and as the story progresses. Joining Vash on his journeys in the anime are the two insurance girls Meryl and Milly. While Meryl at first doesn’t believe Vash to be the legitimate ‘Vash the Stampede’ she eventually is convinced wheres Milly is much more certain after their first meeting. The two girls serve primarily as comedic characters throughout the show and their exaggerated reactions (mostly Meryl) are the source of a good deal of the shows comedy along with Vash’s antics. They are fairly flat characters and while they have emotions and serious scenes they feel fairly stunted on the development front. As the show grows more serious in the later episodes and the silliness of things is slightly phased out, they continue to tag along but seem to lack purpose. Lastly, Vash and company encounter a priest by the name of Nicholas D. Wolfwood (Hayami, Show) on their travels who at first fades in and out of the story intermittently but later becomes a more primary character. I would say that Wolfwood’s appearance is a marked improvement to the show as he is more complex and action-oriented than Meryl or Milly. He shares some qualities with Vash, comedic and otherwise, but is overall of the more serious characters in the cast. [Art/Animation]: As Trigun hails from the late 90’s period of anime it’s art and animation leave a decent amount to be desired in comparison to more modern shows. This aside, the character designs, primarily of Vash and his enemies, are very exaggerated however they don’t feel out of place in the world. The animation itself varies from episode to episode and naturally the more important action scenes are shown a little more love than others but overall Trigun is par for the course. The setting for almost all of the story is a desert wasteland and so there isn't too much exciting to work with in that regard. One of my major issues with the show actually concerns its art and animation as I have a problem with how it presents both guns and bullets in the show. Because dancing around bullets is both a good source of comedy and also a clear way to show somebody’s speed of movement in an action scene – a good deal of bullets end up missing… a lot of them. This is highly apparent in that Vash goes more or less unscathed for a good portion of the early episodes – both a sign of his skill but hardly an episode goes by in Trigun where Vash doesn't dart around screaming comically as a whole troop of enemies looses fire at him. So the problem arises in the over-prevalence of guns and the countless number of scenes where bullets seemingly accomplish nothing. When the show relies greatly on the threat of a gun in someones face (which happens multiple times episodically) it somewhat damages the tension and gravity of things when we are conditioned to think that the guns and bullets ultimately don’t mean much. [Story]: The show starts out feeling fairly episodic in nature – Vash travels to a city, he is pursued by bounty hunters or encounters a problem already in the city, action and comedy ensue and he moves on. This formula is used for the first 10 or so episodes and so Trigun can feel a bit slow to get into at first. The show picks up pace more than you would initially think it would and it also gets reasonably dark in comparison to its early far more comedic episodes. At the end of the day, Trigun is less concerned with with actual progression of a plot and more with the moral dilemmas associated with Vash’s lifestyle. Why does Vash cherish life so – and to what lengths will he go to uphold his near-pacifist ideals? The show attempts to drum up a discussion of morals by presenting us with a heroic figure who will stop at nothing to protect and help those in need but who will not take the life of his enemy. This very quickly becomes problematic for Vash and only becomes more so as the show continues – eventually becoming the main focus of the show within the ‘primary plot’. Trigun claims to harbor a moral message but in my opinion its a bit lost and unfounded amongst the action and comedy of the show – it pays close attention to Vash’s own morality but fails to bring up points for one cause or another with any real conviction; it is a little flaky in this regard. [Music]: The music of the show fits the setting well enough but isn't anything I would go listen to again after the show ended. As the setting of the show features primarily sand and frontier towns the music is evocative of a wild west environment but there is some sci-fi influence as well. [Final Thoughts and Rating]: I think that ones enjoyment of the show will rely heavily on whether or not one thinks that the show explored Vash’s moral dilemma adequately or not. The show has decent comedy in the beginning and reasonably interesting plot developments later in the show however because the show’s main focus becomes a moral one I think it should be held to that standard first and foremost. I would say without that moral intrigue, the show’s comedy and action would rarely outstrip anything else in those respective genres and so additionally so, Trigun relies importantly on its messages. Rating: 5 I will preface that my rating of this show is bias in that I am no great lover of the Sci-Fi western setting and that a more avid fan of that genre would be quick to give it a 6 or even as high as an 8 if they could overlook some of my more nit-picky qualms listed. The show falls short for me because as I have stated above, because it does not do anything exceptionally well and because its animation (by nature of its time period) is not actively beneficial to it, it appears overly reliant on what I would consider an ill-conceived or half-baked moral question. [Recommendations]: I think that anyone that jumps at the premise of a Sci-Fi western should certainly investigate this show as its setting and characters support the genre well. I would also recommend this show to anyone wanting to explore the more ‘classic’ anime as Trigun is very much one of the more storied shows in medium and is the point of many a conversation. To action fans looking for good gun-slinging fight scenes I would recommend this however admit that other shows probably hold greater potential in this aspect. Lastly, to those interested in the shows comedy – it has decent gag comedy at the beginning but because the show eventually discards many of these gags in favor of a more serious tone I would recommend a different show unless your willing to stick around after the tonal shift.

26 episodes of a revolutionary anime that mixed comedy and drama flawlessly. This anime found great popularity in the U.S. and for good reason. Like Wings of Honneamise, it very thoughtfully combined religious themes and pacifism in a morality tale. The first half of the series introduces the characters, and may turn some people off by its silliness, but it makes sense throughout the second half. If the entire thing was completely serious, Vash's character development wouldn't have the same effect. The music is very subtle and gets the job done. It's not overly noticeable, and compliments the scenes quite well. I heard one of themembers of the band Black Mages composed the music. The music is very recognizable and memorable for how simple it is. The characters are extremely well developed and human. Vash the stampede is one of the most multi-dimensional characters created in anime. You may be constantly asking yourself questions about him. So is he a womanizer or a gentleman? Is he a killer or a pacifist? A goofball or a serious, stern person? All of it is very well developed and lets you know that Vash doesn't have just one side to him. His friend Wolfwood is also very multi-dimensional and developed. The animation and drawings in Trigun are not so great. They are in fact very mediocre, which is a shame. Many of the lines are drawn poorly, unevenly and the movement is often very choppy and of a low frame-rate (some of the episodes don't suffer from this, however). The lower quality animation is probably a budget issue, so it's a little easier to forgive. It must be extremely difficult to craft such a great series under so much pressure. However, it's definitely one of the greatest moral dramatic comedies I've ever seen. The last few episodes left an impression on me; the show has a very clear and valuable message that has staying power. If you are up for a nice 26 episode series to laugh and cry with, give Trigun a whirl.

Merchandise

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