Trigun: The $$60,000,000,000 Man or Boast in Quality

Trigun: The $$60,000,000,000 Man

© 1998 Yasuhiro Nightow / Shonen Gaho-Sha, Tokuma Shoten, JVC
Genre: sci-fi action (could be considered a western)
Length: 100 minutes (4 episodes) Audience Age: 13+
Opinion: A bit pricy for VHS, but still a solid buy.
This is a review of the dubbed VHS version.
Animation by Mad House.

To tell you the truth, I did not want to write this review so soon (I wanted to get my way through the alphabet and I just finished the numerals with "801 TTS Airbats"), but Vash the Stampede, "Trigun's" main character, keeps popping up in the overall site make up for this update because he is just so damn cool. This may sound like an immediate recommendation and I will eventually do so in the conclusion of this review. It just does not feel right to not go through the tale of how I came across this title, the show's plot, and all the other bull $$hit.

When you want to buy anime, and you do not know jack about this art form, titles with the Pioneer logo are usually safe bets. For someone who is just looking for a new series to start viewing, Pioneer's box art is so attractive that it is hard to resist buying their tapes/discs. This is how I came across Trigun (to further support my argument, I also came across "Serial Experiments Lain" this way). My dad is a big Clint Eastwood and John Wayne fan, and I guess this maybe hereditary, so finding out that this title was western/sci-fi, I soon became $25 poorer. Well, only at the financial level that is.

There seems to be an abundance of accidents on a futuristic desert planet and they all seem to be related to the "Humanoid Typhoon", Vash the Stampede, a gunman with a 60 billion double dollar bounty on his head. The Bernard Daily Insurance Society is taking huge losses because of this, so they feel that sending the short tempered and short of stature Marill Strife and the extra tall and extra dense Millie Thompson (reminiscent of the Lina/Naga pairing from "Slayers") to find and survey every action that this man takes to prevent future catastrophes. These two girls witness a lot of disasters in their search for the Stampede, but unless they are willing to accept that a clumsy, adolescent-behaved hero they keep running into is Vash, there mission is nothing more than a very expensive business trip with very poor lodging options.

There are very few flaws with this nearly irresistible sci-fi story. Despite the dark look the box presents, the first four episodes of this series are rather light and comedic. Somewhat simple-minded villains, an odd couple for side kicks, and an apparently clueless hero is used a lot in anime, but it really works well in this TV series. At some points, the plots become overly moralistic, but the high moral standards of Vash along with his humorous strategies and unnatural abilities make him one of the best heroes in all of the realms of Japanese animation. As for the technical qualities of Trigun, the art work is good and the soundtrack is a great mix of western (spaghetti style) background music and good old J-pop.

I should mention that the action sequences so far are not exceptional, but the gun play is rather clever. The fights are not John Woo clever, but I am sure that the quality will only improve based on what I have heard from those who have seen most of this series.

Trigun has promise to become a great action series and its comedy and main character almost make this title a must buy. Only those who have problems with slow development of characters that TV shows always suffer from and those who cannot get into sci-fi (the true weirdoes) may not be able to get into this series. It is pricy to collect the entire series, but so far it is a solid buy for those who want 100 minutes of virtually guaranteed entertainment.