Trigun

I remember when I first bought Trigun, the man at the store told me, 'it's great, clean fun' and he was right. Trigun is something you can watch with people who have no opinion on anime, and fellow otaku alike. It combines alot of serious elements but with plenty of humor to supplement. It raises question on how people take fellow human life for granted and how much power one being should wield. All in all, I found Trigun to be something I could watch repeatedly and still find greatly stimulating.

The setting is in the future, on a desert planet with two suns, a little more than slightly reminiscent of the wild west in the past, except with advanced technology, and the disregard for human life seems to be the same.

Vash the Stampede is an outlaw with $60 billion double-dollars on his head. His reputation is known throughout, he is a gunslinger so great, logic can be put behind offering so much of a reward. Anyone who hasn't heard of him has been living in a hole for a very long time. But because of his reputation, and the reward, it seems somebody is always after him. Along with these 'bounty hunters', a bit of competition comes in the form of a few field agents for the Bernardelli Insurance Company. Their names are Millie Thompson and Meryl Strife, and their task is to assess damage created by Vash the Stampede, whether through direct contact by the outlaw or not, also trying to make it as little as possible.
As you delve deeper into the series, you realize the real intention of these 'bounty hunters' humourously called the 'Gung-Ho Guns', and the values held by this infamous outlaw.

Vash the Stampede is very intriguing and I find that I was really drawn in with his ups and downs in the series. He was easy to imagine as a real person, he had very human likes and dislikes(He loves donuts!). He very much likes to act childishly in the beginning part of the series, and even throughout the whole thing, but it decreases less and less, its hard to think anyone would define him as so dangerous and deadly.

Supporting characters Millie and Meryl are very similar and very different. Millie being the more womanly of the two(even though she was a honking gorilla!) and Meryl trying to remain the strength of the pair, those these roles were reversed plenty of times, its hard to ascertain what one would have done without the other. I feel these two grow the most throughout the whole series.
Nicholas D. Wolfwood is easily the favorite among most, and doesn't emerge till episode 8(there are 26 episodes). He is very mysterious, though he tries to present himself as a simple man with values we could embrace.

The villains are another strong suit of this anime, as there are plenty to choose from as the series goes on, but only a few on the 'heirarchy' worth noting, i.e. some villains are but soldiers for others.

The individual episodes also feature small characters in each that usually don't appear more than once after that, but all are very well developed for the amount of time they are given, and I have no problem remembering some of their names.

Lastly, the 'mascot' of the series is a small black cat, Kuroneko, who just about happens to pop up in every episode, it isn't given enough screen time to get annoying or interfere, which is uplifting.

I was very happy with the animation of Trigun, as it was very befitting of the setting. The designs for the characters, backgrounds, weapons were all top notch, and I especially liked the intro and outro of each episode. It isn't Trigun's strongest suit, but it is engaging enough to trust it with representing the story.

When the series first came out, on VHS, I was only able to get the first two volumes on english dub, and it wasn't terrible at all. Vash's english voice gives him much personality, and the dubbing is somewhat above-average. For volumes 3-9, I was lucky enough to get on dual-language DVD, and it was well worth it. The english voices are no match for the Japanese, but are still enjoyable enough with. Either way, if you can get Trigun subbed, great! And if you can't, don't fret, it's still worth watching!