Trigun #1 : The $60,000,000,000 Man Pioneer 100 minutes English/Japanese English Subtitles 03/28/2000

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I've written a few things in my life that I can honest to god say I'm proud of. The Armitage review for example. I've got scattered notes for the graphic novel I'm planning all over my school notebooks and laptop's hard drive. Hell, my evil Irish (and possibly robotic) Crime Theory professor gave me a 53 out of 60 on my essay and that ain't half bad when you consider a fifth of the class failed it AFTER the curve. So it's obvious there's something likeable about what I do. I mean, who can forget Pete and Korgath's compliments in the forum? There's nothing that'll make an aspiring writer out there feel better about his work than giving him props for something. Especially if you consider the fact that there's still over seventy of those dreaded "No picture" reviews floating around on the site. If you respect me even in the slightest, please, please don't read them. But the thing is, I'm NOT an aspiring writer, I'm studying to go into federal law enforcement, so it kind of makes me wonder what the hell makes me do a reasonably good job with things when my roommate writes the most absolutely boring newspaper articles I have ever read. Maybe it's the subject matter, I don't know. The point is that, no offense to him, I consider myself a better writer. Which is pretty sad because he's an English major and I fall back on profanity and sarcasm as a crutch every opportunity I get. So much so that I find myself having trouble getting into a good writing mood without cursing about someone's mother or making veiled references about anime character's sexualities.

 

So that got me wondering what Mister Yasuhiro Nightow thinks of his work, Trigun. I was reading over reviews on the site the other night while I was bored and realized that my Trigun ones were so atrociously bad that I -had- to commit some time to watching Mr. Nightow's work again just so people don't come away thinking my retarded rambling are indicative of the show itself. My only excuse is that the Trigun reviews were some of the first to be written up. I hadn't really discovered what "polish" was and it was some time before I would quit drinking. Plus you can't smoke in the office at work, and you don't know how to write until you've had a few cigarettes while you're doing it. So what DOES he think of it? I, personally, think he made something awesome. He took an idea that, while not completely original, wasn't cliched to death by seven other animes that contain chicks with bigger breasts. I have to respect the man for having a main character who's so seemingly perverted, yet at the same time, refuses to pander to the lowest common denominator by throwing in jiggling breasts and panty shots. There isn't a single one of either throughout the whole four episodes on this disc. And I think, because of this, this is one of the only animes I've ever actually laughed at. Vash's antics are so humorous because they're so benign. You have to admit that watching a tied up Vash scoot over to a tied up millionairess during a tense hostage situation and cheerfully say, "Hey, how's it goin'?" is a lot more funny than watching someone grab a woman's tits from behind and go "Honk honk!"** And his side comments like "Drepressing!" when trying to cheer the bummed out crowd held at gunpoint is just great.

 

But who is Vash? Or rather, Vash the stampede. In his own, slapstick words, "The man who will slaughter the innocent! Does the most evil of evil deeds with the price of $$60,000,000,000 on his head!" But he belies his reputation so much with his harmless overactive hormones and predilection for donuts that the people around him often have trouble beliving that he's Vash at all. After all, Vash is the guy that's going around destroying every town he goes through. Oddly enough without a single causulty at the sight of the disasters. That's where the two girls from the Bernardelli insurance company come in. Meryl and Milly have been sent to keep an eye on Vash. Much like other characters in the show, they're just as two faced as the rest. Easily capable of switching between weepy eyed victims. and badasses with guns. And I have to give credit to Yasuhiro for his scripting, because the change is absolutely flawless. He doesn't delve into the extremes we're so familiar with. You won't be surprised when the girls pop out in leather bodysuits because it never happens. They keep their dusters on just like everyone else in the show and we're happy for it.

 

Everything about Trigun is very...natural. It took me three viewings to realize that "Hey, this show must not have had a very great budget". Because the wider shots look like shit compared to the beautifully drawn close ups on the characters faces. Still, I challenge anyone to argue that the flat character designs aren't just as perfectly set as the enormously detailed ones are. The animation does "suffer" in points, if you want to call it that. But I wouldn't, I think everything in this show looks equally as good as everything else. It's all got its place. And I think Mr. Nightow thinks that too, because it's pretty obvious that's what he was going for, whether it was restriced by budget or not. It's not particularly deep, it's not really action packed, but it's clever and more over it often manages to be -funny-. Which is about the hardest criteria I have for watching anime. Something must just get lost in the translation because I don't often find comedy anime to be humorous at all. I think I really screwed this one up. I didn't break out the funny, I spent about five paragraphs talking about the show and managed to put in even -less- than I usually do about things. Stay tuned for the next review of Trigun, whenever it comes out, when I might make some mention of the, you know, SETTING or PLOT or something. I think I should start watching more bad anime, because giving out all these 4s and 5s makes me seem like some sort of huge dork.

**Unless of course, the person in question is me.