Trigun
(Complete Collection)
(dr. Satoshi Nishimura 1998)
published in Empire No.85, Sydney, 2008
Spaghetti westerns have been an influence on Japanese cinema ever since Sergio Leone remade Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo into A Fistful of Dollars. Anime – by way of numerous apocalyptic wasteland sci-fi titles – has similarly embraced the spaghetti western. Trigun is definitely in such a terrain, with Vash The Stampede as a legendary gunman trudging across a devastated Earth. Its antique desertscapes contain many forms of futuristic technology, leaving the depicted world with an artificial and stylized veneer.
Yet while the landscape and its iconography is a bizarre mix – itself not unusual in most anime – the character of Vash is the most perplexing. The series veers from idiotic comedy to biting drama, with Vash mostly seeming to be a complete goof dressed in red leather and adorned with blonde spiky hair. This makes the first half of this 26 episode series appear not what it really is – until it becomes likely Vash is gripped by severe mental instability. The second half of the series withholds numerous protracted revelations to do with Vash, his non-human status, and the balance of life on Earth. Trigun is a slow unfolding of these mysteries, creating a long-arc journey that wildly yet credibly smoothes out this part-crazy/part-mournful mutation of spaghetti-sci-fi.
