Convenience is one of the major things that I run on personally. It's not that I will like something just because it's convenient to me, but I actually try to like it. To be honest with you it's getting a little more difficult picking out the good stuff. This is where the anime series Trigun comes into place. The show began running on cartoon network's television block a few years ago, and I (being the night person that I am) started watching it because nothing else was on since they had recently taken Inuyasha off the air when they began airing Trigun. Now I'll admit, the series was a bit difficult to get into at first. The whole idea of a wild west / sci-fi world didn't exactly sound appealing to me. It took a lot of watching, but eventually I became a big fan. Trigun is definitely a series on a level by itself.
Useful Vocabulary For Trigun
Double Dollars ($$) - The currency in the world of Trigun. I'm not actually too sure of how much each double dollar is compared to U.S. currency.
Planet Gunsmoke - The name of the planet on which Trigun takes place. The whole planet is desert, and water is often hard to find. This is not the human's native land though, as they moved there after Earth's resources were diminished.
Vash The Stampede - While this is the name of the main character in the series, the title refers to him as a merciless outlaw who levels entire villages and who kills women and children mercilessly.
Story
After Earth's resources have become too diminished for humans to continue to live on the planet the need to survive takes over, as humans leave the planet in search of a new home with fresh resources. One of the ships is named "Seeds", for it carries the frozen bodies of humans that are intended to help populate the new world that everyone is so desperately seeking out. Things don't go too well for the humans though, as their biggest hope is a planet covered in arid desert. Worse comes to worse, and everyone ends up landing on the planet, of course the only accident for the person behind the crash was that some of the humans managed to survive as the ships are forced to make emergency landings on the planet. This was about 100 years ago from when the series first begins.
Vash the Stampede is the most feared outlaw on the entire planet; the mere mention of his name will often send people running for their lives. Villages he passes through are left in rubble, and people are hurt. This is why the Bernadelly Insurance Agency has special concern for this fellow and for the trouble that he causes. The agency assigns two of it's employees, Meryl Stryfe and Millie Thompson to go out into the world and follow Vash to make sure that he doesn't cause too much damage. What Millie and Meryl don't realize though is that finding the legendary outlaw won't be as easy of a task as they expect. At first they find a few different candidates that could be Vash, but because of the $$60,000,000,000 reward on his head, there is a lot of trouble in finding the fellow through all of the people following him trying to get his bounty. When they finally find the real Vash they can hardly believe what the real outlaw is like, and it's not surprising that they question if it is the real Vash that they've stumbled upon.
The whole story isn't exactly obvious in the beginning, as Vash's past is revealed little by little in the beginning, but about halfway through the series you learn pretty much everything. I couldn't find any conflicting aspects of the story, and it really feels like the creators accomplished what they set out to do without too much confusion. The main element to the series early on seems to be the mysteries surrounding Vash's past and what not, but to keep your attention the creators do a very good job at feeding info little by little until you see the big picture. This tactic works well with this particular series, and at the same time it draws you in and forces you to have concern for the characters, and it even allows you to sympathize with a few of them.
The Main Characters
Trigun features some very interesting characters. The show itself focuses on several aspects of the people in the world of Trigun, but one of the main focuses is character development. This element is probably the main reason why I enjoyed this series so much.
Vash the Stampede
Vash is the most distinguishable character in the series, with his blonde spiked hair, rose red outfit, and his yellow/orange sunglasses. The first episodes portray Vash as a complete goofball who always gets caught up in things, but later on more of his true self is revealed. Despite what Meryl may believe in the beginning, Vash really is Vash the Stampede, and as much as she and Vash beat around the bush about it, they begin developing feelings for one another near the middle of the series. Vash is your typical perverted character who is reduced to a mere lap dog whenever a pretty woman walks by. Although he's quick to panic over little things, Vash is extremely cool and collected when fighting, and only during a battle can anyone really realize how strong he is. With doughnuts, women, and death being his only real weaknesses, Vash is a deep character with a unique style.Nicolas D. Wolfwood
Wolfwood is probably my favorite character in the entire series. This character is introduced early on in the series, but it takes a while before the character gets major screentime. Wolfwood is first met by Vash and friends in the middle of the desert just sitting down leaning against his giant cross. This character is a man of the cloth, but you wouldn't be able to guess this right away because of his outlook on life and style. Wolfwood is always out to make some money, and he does this by carrying around a miniature confessional and charging people to use it, but not everyone is willing to take the bait. The most distinguishable features of this character is his foul language and limp cigarette that always hangs from his mouth. Although Wolfwood has secrets of his own to hide, he often proves very helpful and his heart is in the right place as far as his beliefs go.Meryl Stryfe
As the mission given to her demands, Meryl must find Vash the Stampede and follow him around making sure that he doesn't destroy anything that the insurance agency she works for must pay for. Meryl is at first very cold and disbelieving of Vash in the beginning of the series, but after a while she starts to warm up to him, and even though she would never admit it she really likes Vash. Meryl travels with her coworker Millie, and although they don't always see eye-to-eye they are pretty much best friends. Meryl is the voice of reason character who also comes off as being a little cynical at times and devoid of any emotion besides anger, but this is only so that she doesn't open up to anybody. Meryl reminds Vash a whole lot of someone from his childhood.Millie Thompson
Millie was also an employee at the Bernadelly Insurance Agency that was assigned to track down and follow Vash the Stampede. Millie isn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but she has a good heart and that's all that really matters. Like Vash, Millie is extremely sensitive but at the same time she is incredibly strong and carries a giant stun gun everywhere she goes just in case trouble brews. One thing that Millie just loves is pudding. Although it's a little subtle, Wolfwood and Millie eventually become extremely close. Millie is the first of the two Bernadelly employees that accepts the facts about the goofy fellow actually being the Vash the Stampede. Despite being one of the more comical characters, Millie is one of my favorites in the series.Millions Knives
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/villains/images/8/8d/Trigun-Knives.png/revision/latest?cb=20131215002523 There isn't a whole lot about this character that you can say without spoiling the entire story, and so I will keep the description short so as to not reveal too much. Knives is Vash's twin brother, and like Vash, Knives is also extremely strong. Unlike Vash, Knives lives for destruction and wishes pain upon the human race because he deems them as worthless and selfish creatures. Obviously there are some major clashes of philosophy between Knives and Vash, and thus this character is deemed as the big villain of the series.
The Series In General
Despite first appearances, Trigun is an extremely deep series with many running philosophies. Keep in mind that you won't actually see enough to realize this until you are halfway through the series. First impressions are very radical from how the series actually is, and so you shouldn't make up your mind about it until after watching about 5 episodes. The flashback episodes do tend to get a little repetitive because they appear frequently around the middle of the series, but it's never to the point where I felt like the series implemented them enough to make the episode boring.
Trigun is filled with many "goofy" moments, and this is one of the major turn offs for most people that start watching it. Vash really is a funny character, and to be honest, the humor was the main reason why I started watching Trigun in the first place. To my surprise, pretty much none of the humor used in the series revolves around sexual innuendo, and in essence this makes the series feel more refreshing from others that do. The jokes pretty much revolve around two things; Millie's naiveness, and Vash's clumsiness and attraction to girls. One nice thing about Trigun is that the creators did just the right amount of contrasting between serious and humorous.
As far as most anime series go, I would say that Trigun is extremely refined. It's obvious that a lot of thought went into subtle matters like character interactions for example, but the big things were also worked on to the point that the plot feels extremely polished. Although action sequences are present in nearly ever episode, I still found myself getting excited to see the Vash go from goofy to serious as each fight broke out. The action sequences are extremely fluid, and nicely animated. Usually these scenes have a slight amount of humor interjected into them just to keep things on the light hearted side.
Animation is pretty standard, with character models being the best aspect of it all. Trigun's characters look slightly different from those of other anime series because it looks as if the artists took more time to input the character's personalities into their expressions. The backgrounds are mostly boring though, with desert scenery and stone cities being the major implementations. Colors appear to be slightly washed out, but it's the only problem I could find that actually bugged me at all.
Trigun is not for kids. The adult swim version is edited, but it still has a lot of violence and cursing. In fact, I would really only recommend the series to adults because the plot structure used will probably make the series a little difficult for young teenagers to completely understand. A lot of adults themes are present in Trigun, and the overall feel of the series makes it very obvious that this show was not made for children of any age, but rather for adults with refined tastes. Many people say that the show was influenced by Cowboy Bebop, and while this may be true, Trigun is superior to Bebop in my eyes.
Trigun is a series that's perfect for wasting time. Non anime fans will likely have a hard time finding anything to like in the series, but older persons will probably enjoy it. Definitely one of my top ten anime series of all time, Trigun is something that should not be missed.
