*This Review Contains Spoilers*
Trigun is an amine created by Yasuhiro Nightow which was released in the Spring of 1998 and ended in the fall of the same year. Like most anime, Trigun was based of a highly popular manga series of the same name which ran from February of 1996 and ended in the February of the following year. The series has drawn in a large fan base worldwide and spawned a movie in 2010. Needless to say that Trigun is an anime that many people love and recommend to fans of Japanese animation alike. I on the other hand, can't share the same feelings that many people do when it comes to Trigun.
Trigun is about an outlaw by the name of Vash the Stampede a man with a bounty on his head worth 60 Billion Double Dollars (why they couldn't just uses dollars puzzles me, but it's nothing that takes away from the show) who for all intensive purposes, is wanted for blowing up a town. In his journey he is followed by two women (Meryl Stryfe and Milly Thompson) who are hired by an insurance company to follow the outlaw and make sure that his penchant for destruction is kept to a minimum, and a wandering priest (Nicholas Wolfwood). For an anime series spanning 26 episodes, I didn't expect the kind of longevity that you would get with shows like DBZ, Bleach, Naruto, or One Piece; and going into Trigun I didn't know what to expect from it. But as I finished the final episode I realized that even though I didn't know what to expect, I expected more from this series. A mixture of poor interactions between characters, rushed action sequences, and overly contrived solutions to problems plagued what otherwise could have been an exhilarating thrill ride.
I felt like the relationships that were made during the show didn't feel real enough. Everything seemed to be poorly pieced together just so it could fit properly and force the relationships upon the viewer. Vash and Meryl were fine examples of this; as was the relationship between Milly and Nicholas Wolfwood. Meryl, who obviously had feelings for Vash was a classic case of, "I like the main character of this anime so i'll act like I can't stand him, even though everybody know I like him except for him." Which became somewhat annoying as the series came to an end. Even though everything is going to hell and more than a handful of people die in each episode; Meryl can't seem to tell Vash anything. Then when things get to "real" for her, she will find ways to get out of the situation, mainly by hitting Vash over the head. I have the same feelings about the relationship between Milly and the priest Wolfwood. In the show they have about three of four scenes of interaction between them and the scenes themselves aren't long an meaningful conversations that would produce some sort of love between the two characters. Its not until one of the last episodes when they shove a ton plot and back story in your face, that the two actually begin to show actual romantic feelings. Then shortly after this, they sleep together. It isn't shown explicitly, but it's implied. I understand that 26 episodes isn't a lot of time to flush out long lasting and hard hitting character development. But I thought that characters who were in the show for all 26 episodes could have had better and more meaningful interactions with each other.
As far as the characters go, I will say that although their interactions leave more to be desired, I liked each character and grew somewhat attached to them. All the characters are unique in their own way and the show provides enough back story to shed light on their motives and why they handle certain situations the way they do. Although Vash is a caricature of every male anime character ever. (Eats a lot, innocent but kicks ass when he needs to, etc.) You can't help but like him, he's a likable character who lightens up some of the darker parts of the series. His back story is only given one episode to fully explain why he's here and why he is the way he is. Which is kind of sad because he is a very tortured character and his story isn't fully explained until the last episode. That makes sense I guess, but I wasn't sitting on the edge of my seat wondering where he come from or anything like that. I just wanted things to speed along and hurry up. Which isn't a good thing because a lot of the episodes are essentially filler, and in a 26 episode series that's not something that should happen often.
Milly and Meryl are...well... They're just kind of there. I like them, don't get my wrong. They provide a bit of comic relief and give other characters love interests. But they aren't very essential to the plot as a whole. It seems like if you took them out of the story, nothing would really change. In the beginning of the series they're able to handle themselves. Milly uses her giant rail gun thing, and Meryl uses her dozens of pistols hidden in her clothes to dispatch enemies. But as the series progresses, they become the cannon fodder that Vash has to save in every episode by getting caught by bad guys and held hostage. They could have done a lot more with them, but I think they fell short of their goal in this series.
Now, the last "main character" I'm going to talk about is also my favorite. Nicholas D. Wolfwood is by far the most interesting and most dynamic character in the show. Although he fits the "guy with a dark past" motif, I think that he was done well. He struggles with moral choices as well as his past throughout the show. He is as good as Vash when it comes to gun play, and his weapon (A giant gun-cross) makes him seem like a gun slinging bad ass, more so than the character we're supposed to be saying that about, Vash. His back story is touched upon in more than one episode and more things start to unravel up until the moment he is killed in one of the last episodes. Out of all the characters introduced, big or small. Wolfwood in my opinion was the most developed and meaningful character in the series.
This anime is based around violence and action. But the action in this show isn't anything to write home about. There are some cool ideas like the Gung-Ho Guns, Knives (Vash's Brother), and Vash himself that don't hit their mark. As a matter of fact, the villains in the show aren't all that great. Some of them are built up through their designated episode; some of them over an arc of episodes. They're built up only to fall, however. They raise hell and destruction at around the middle of each episode and are quickly dispatched in the last three minutes of it. Almost none of the Gung-Ho Guns last more than one episode. That might be to how much of a bad ass Vash is but it all seems rushed to me. Every conflict seems to be solved within a set time frame. There are a few episodes in which a conflict takes more than one episode to end, but those are few and far between. Every conflict starts the same way (Lets kill Vash) and ends the same way (Vash beats them) It's not an original way to handle things. Although in the last ten or so episodes each villain they fight kills a good amount of people, the people they kill aren't characters we've grown attached to. I'm not saying to go all "Game of Thrones" and kill every main character. I'm saying that to have some sort of long lasting impression on the view, you are going to have to do more than kill an entire village that was introduced within the first five minutes of an episode. That's all I'm saying.
Even though I have a lot of grips with this anime, I did enjoy it. The ideas that they tried didn't completely come to fruition, and some of the character interaction was a bit flat. I did enjoy the characters themselves and the charm they brought to the series. I think that perhaps if there were a few more episodes dedicated to character interaction, I would have liked it a little bit more I believe. Trigun, despite it's flaws is okay. Not perfect, not bad, just okay.
*Trigun Gets Three Double Dollars out of Five*
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