Trigun
Series out so far: Complete series is now availiable in boxset (from April 2009). Costs around £35 max - 8 volumes English dub & Japanese
Wikipedia Blurb:
Quote:
Known for its Space Western theme, Trigun is about a man named "Vash the Stampede" and the two Bernardelli Insurance Society employees who follow him around in order to minimize the damages inevitably caused by his appearance. Most of the damage attributed to Vash is actually caused by bounty hunters in pursuit of the "60,000,000,000$$" (sixty billion "double dollars") bounty on Vash's head for the destruction of the city of July. However, he cannot remember the incident clearly due to his amnesia. Throughout his travels, Vash tries to save lives using non-lethal force. He is occasionally joined by a priest, Nicholas D. Wolfwood, who, like Vash, is a superb gunfighter.
As the series progresses, more is gradually learned about Vash's mysterious history and the history of human civilization on the planet Gunsmoke. The series often employs comic relief and is mostly light-hearted in tone, although the tone shifts toward darker and more dramatic situations as it draws to a conclusion. It also involves moral conflict pertaining to the morality of killing other living things, even when arguably justified (i.e. self-defense/defending others).
As the series progresses, more is gradually learned about Vash's mysterious history and the history of human civilization on the planet Gunsmoke. The series often employs comic relief and is mostly light-hearted in tone, although the tone shifts toward darker and more dramatic situations as it draws to a conclusion. It also involves moral conflict pertaining to the morality of killing other living things, even when arguably justified (i.e. self-defense/defending others).
DT's Rating: 9/10
A little while back I finally treated myself to the boxset of the anime Trigun, which I had watched about 3/4 of but never finished. I throughly enjoyed watching it again, all the way to the end (crikey i'd missed soem good stuff! haha). Genrally i'm more into swords than guns, but trigun changed this opinion. I first went to it because I'd heard it was funny and a sci-fi (and sci-fi rocks). Really it's more of a sci-fi western, effortlessly mixing the genres and grounding it almost in a period of past history, while maintaining the technology of the sci-fi future and the innovative ideas of steampunk and fantasy. It's hard to describe, but extremly engaging.
The characters are excellent (and the quality of the english dub emphasises this rather than detracts from it). Vash is especially always engaging, extremely funny and very emotional. His various sidekicks and his enemies are all very well written, each with their own backstories. For such a funny and action packed anime it is amazingly deep - throwing up questions about human nature, morality and even a kind of religion and family value, while never detracting form just genrally being fun.
The art is excellent (though the anime was obviously done on a tight budget, making it a characteristic anime in animation style). You have to understand a few anime conventions (or at least enjoy them) because most of the humour is visual and way over-the-top at times, which some people might not find to their tastes.
Trigun never cheapens itself by finding easy answers to the intelligent questions it presents. The love interests - for example - are surprisingly maturely done and don't just go for the obvious attraction-to-boyfriend-and-girlfriend stage most films and cartoons take. Vash's refusal to take life is presented relaistically also showing the difficulties of trying to live in such an idealistic manner, and how it can crumble when argued against other more 'relaistic' lifestyle options in battle. Even grief is handled touchingly and maturely and I dare anyone not to cry when a certain character dies.
In short, for how goofy it can be, it's a very mature and extremly entertaining anime that never takes the easy way out of any issues it raises. I throughly reccomend it. 9/10
