02.06
Yeah, I’ll admit it. Until last week, I never saw a single episode of Trigun. And for that, I have no excuse. This is coming from someone who was addicted to Toonami and Adult Swim Saturdays since grade school. Certainly, you’d expect a kid who was raised on shows like Outlaw Star, Tenchi Muyo!, Yu Yu Hakusho, and Rurouni Kenshin to have at least seen the Humanoid Typhoon in action. But alas, it somehow escaped my radar. Therefore, it’s time to get rid of past mistakes by taking a look at the series about the $$60 billion man and the land of Gunsmoke.
If you match my previous description and never saw the show, then here’s this: Two insurance agents known as Meryl and Milly are trying to seek out and investigate the rampaging outlaw known as Vash the Stampede. Through their efforts, they locate a spiky-blonde man with a red coat, sunglasses, a love of food, and a penchant for pacifism. Initially laughing him off as just some random poser, a succession of mishaps with the law and duels with desperate civilians looking for bounty and revenge lead them to slowly realize who this gunslinger is. And seeing that Vash is doing good instead of the chaos he’s known for, Milly and Meryl join him on his journey throughout Gunsmoke, encountering glow-in-the-dark raiders, preachers packing pistols, cats, and all sorts of adventures. Oh, and then this guy called Legato shows up and makes Vash’s life a living hell…
Now if you read the above and thought “A western? Fuck that shit!”, then…
With that out of the way, Trigun holds its own pretty well. It has most of what makes a good show: likable characters, a pretty good soundtrack, cool animated scenes, the works. It utilizes the typical character archetypes (the “thou shalt not kill” protagonist, the gang of quirky minions, the misanthropic antagonist wanting to rid society of its pain by killing it, and the two onlookers caught through it all), combines them with surprisingly heavy Christian overtones (which are also surprisingly subtle, despite having a main character carrying a giant cross), and presents an enveloping mixture of action and symbolism. And given the setting and themes more typical for American works, it’s a perfect gateway for anyone looking to get into anime.
Then we get to the acting, which is some of the most natural sounding I’ve ever heard from a dub. Johnny Yong Bosch gives his all for one of his first voice-acting roles. From being silly to being somber, he absolutely masters playing Vash. Wolfwood has a well-done pitch that screams “sleazy, yet well-meaning”, which is a pretty good achievement for the guy whose previous role consisted of shouting “Super Shocker!” all the time. As for everyone else, they give fairly good performances. And due to the time it was being dubbed, there’s a bit of dissonance in hearing a large chunk of the Digimon cast here. But with how ubiquitous several of these actors have been in more recent dubs, especially the aforementioned Bosch, that’s not really much of a matter.
And since the show was made over twelve years ago, it’s quite interesting to watch it and see how it has influenced the stuff that came after. The coat and shades that Vash sports obviously foreshadow leads such as Alucard. The prosthetic arm and the flashbacks showing his childhood remind me a bit of Edward Elric. His Angel Arm makes him heavily resemble the main character from Saikano. And then you see how many other shows like Black Cat and Desert Punk clearly borrow many of Trigun’s themes, with the character of the former being almost exactly like Vash in terms of personality. It’s kind of like how Dragonball Z has entrenched its tone and style in most shonen shows.
However, the main problem is that the show just didn’t have compelling villains for me. Legato, while being perfect at being unsettling and absolutely antithetical to Vash, just doesn’t have much beyond that. I mean, we get little back-story for why he’s a misanthropic sadist, so it feels like he’s just evil for the sake of it. (Yeah, I know the manga is supposed to explain this, but the show’s still at fault for not including it) But for all my complaints, he still serves as a good villain. It’s just that the lack of in-show explanation kind of sullies things. But even then, Legato is still well-developed in comparison to the main villain of it all, Knives. While he has somewhat of a reason for being what he is, he doesn’t carry the charisma that Legato does. There just isn’t that much that differentiates him from other villains that go “EXTERMINATE ALL HUMANS! WE ARE THE SUPERIOR BEINGS!” And given his history with Vash, you’d expect someone more layered and detailed. Instead, Knives just feels rather one-note.
So that’s the series in a nutshell. Previously out-of-print for a while, FUNimation recently got it back to the shelves. The special features are non-existent, and the DVDs are pretty vanilla as they come, but it’s at a relatively decent price for anyone willing to try. But if that’s not enough to satiate yourself, there’s a film just recently made—called Trigun: Badlands Rumble—that’ll probably be released here in the near future, though rumors suggesting that the original cast won’t reprise their roles (which aren’t helped with how Nimoy gave a statement saying FUNi got a new guy instead of him to do Wolfwood) don’t bode well. And of course, there’s the manga—Trigun: Maximum—that’s readily available in your nearest Borders or whatever. Overall, if you’re looking for a show full of action that doesn’t talk down to you, watch Cowboy Bebop… but after that, watch Trigun.
Rating: 9/10
Originally posted on Wednesday, November 24, 2010.