Trigun

Summary: >

In the future on a distant planet things have more or less degenerated into something similar to the Old West. One man who travels the land is known as the human typhoon: Vash the Stampede. Vash is a man with a 60 billion double dollar bounty on his head. You would think this would make Vash a nervous wreck, but he actually takes it in stride. After all how does a bounty actually reach $$60 billion?

Well that's what makes Vash a legendary gunman. No matter how many thousands of men try to kill him, no matter how minute the odds are of him escaping, and no matter how dire the situation, he always emerges without a scratch. Still that doesn't stop people from trying. But the results are always the same: the immediate area is nearly completely obliterated, Vash is still free, and somehow no one is killed...

So you can see how Vash would be an insurance companies worst nightmare. And actually it's such a nightmare that an insurance company sends two of its field agents to find Vash; NOT to apprehend him, but just to minimize the damage that seems to follow him everywhere.. And so Merril and Milly set off to find the one known as the "Human Typhoon". But once they found him he certainly wasn't what they expected. He's kind. He's cool. He's collected. And actually he's kind of a dork...

Still, good intentions aren't always enough, and Vash is soon going to be reunited with the very worst parts of his past. Is there any hope to cover the insurance costs?

Thoughts: >

I'm not sure why I decided to watch Trigun. I guess the artwork on the cover. But it was actually sort of unexpected what the title actually was. It looks to be rather serious at first glance, but upon watching it I actually found it rather funny. The thing I find interesting about this series is that it has this sort of cool factor to it (sunglasses + shiny gun = cool), but yet doesn't take itself too seriously. And that's what tends to give this anime its flavor.

So by this point you should be able to tell I enjoyed getting into Trigun. Then it started getting serious. My impressions from talking to other people is that they liked this part of Trigun as well. For me this really started rubbing on a sore point for me. I mean this entire start off as a comedy, then get switch to a drama half way through shtick is getting really old with me. I can't even count the number of anime titles that do this anymore. So it was about half way through when they started digging into Vash's past that this title sort of started to lose me, and had completely lost my interest by the end. I'm not saying this is a bad point of this anime, just that I'm getting tired of this same formula.

Characters were a strong point in this series. Vash is a likable character. Wolfwood the preacher who is introduced a few episodes in looks like the sort of throw away character introduced in this series, but he actually grows on you a lot and you grow pretty attached to him as well. Meryl and Milly are the two insurance girls who are I guess main characters but nothing ever really seems to revolve around them. It's actually sort of a disappointment because I think they could have done a bit more with the series if they focused a bit more on them.

The music also worked pretty well with this series and was of higher production quality than you would normally expect. And last but not least, it's fun to see where "the cat" will appear in each episode.

So my thoughts on this are that Trigun to me rates as average. If it had managed to catch my interest by the serious turn in the middle I would have enjoyed this title a lot more than I did, but that wasn't to be. I'd still say its at least worth checking out. The beginning of the series is certainly a lot of fun for those wanting a bit of action packed humor.

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