Name; Trigun

Produced by; Madhouse Studios

Genre; Western science fiction

Based on the original manga series by Yasuhiro Nightow,

Trigun is not a story about the characters, I think. Now saying this might sound weird, but hear me out. Some stories are about characters. Adventure stories are like that a lot of the time, following the character and his conflict and his personal development as a character. Trigun is a different kind of story, Trigun is about ideas, and that is what I’ll be discussing in this article, Ideas. These ideas only really show up late in the series, so expect some light spoilers.

The most obvious thing about Trigun that simpletons like myself are inclined to jump out at are the strong christian themes present in the anime. The series isn’t particularly subtle about it either. I first figured that christianity might be the slightest bit relevant to Trigun when Wolfwood, a traveling protestant priest, started shooting people with a giant cannon in the image of a crucifix. But it’s also obvious just by looking at Vash. Vash the stampede is a strong Christ figure, and the series reflects that with the themes and concepts that come up. The story of Jesus is mainly about what he taught, his position in relation to god, and his death. Jesus taught about love,  peace, and respecting your fellow-man. Vash goes around the world doing what he considers to be right and just. Jesus is considered the holy lamb of god. Pure and innocent, even born immaculately, without the “taint” of sex. The irony is that while he is innocent and good, he was also abused and was crucified by people who unjustly hated him. Vash is similarly portrayed as childish, and innocent. But he also has a reputation for being a wanton murderer despite being a pacifist, and has received not a small amount of damage to his body under his coat in his attempts help the many people he meets on his travels.

He's innocent, thus he's good

Does this look like a man without his reasons?

Sacrifice is the strong element here. What separates good characters from capital “G” Good characters is just that, sacrifice. Being good shouldn’t be an easy task, in my opinion. What separates heroes from regular people should be the fee of entry. This makes Vash a much better protagonist in my eyes. The concept of goodness and heroics is, at its heart, about sacrifice and giving something up for whatever you believe in. Good stories are about characters that develop. They gain something that they didn’t have before, but they should also lose something. Who is a more compelling character; Ed Elric from Full Metal Alchemist, or Monkey D. Luffy from One Piece? They are both idealists, they are both in command of some mystical power, but the interesting difference between them is that while they both have strong convictions towards certain things, I think that Elric’s perspective is more interesting because you can why he believes in those things. It carries a much more satisfying emotional punch to actually look at him rip his arm off to save his brother. Luffy however…simply doesn’t have that drive behind him. Yes, he has goals, motivations, and reasons behind those goals and motivations, but you would never say that he has any particularly good justification for believing what he believes.

Thinking about it some more, yeah. I think that Vash the Stampede IS a good protagonist. I think that the Christ-figure allegory is a little played out, but he does serve as a strong allegory for what a good person really is. Someone who takes the pains of others upon themselves and focuses their efforts on making the word a much better place. He wonders throughout the land with the goal in mind of making everyone happier than they were before he came there. But he also illustrates why not everyone can do what he does. The process of making the world a better place to live in is a painful one. Wherever he goes he is constantly fighting, so he knows no peace. He is loathed throughout the world for reasons beyond his control, and despite the fact that he’s one of the few people working aggressively to make the world a happier place. He is constantly being attacked by extremely terrible people for no reason besides the fact that maybe the world just really hates good people. Basically he leads a pretty horrific life that most people would never choose for themselves. But again, that’s what makes him a hero. Taking on this terrible responsibility to that others don’t have to.

The series also takes an interesting look at the concept of “pacifism”. Which is, for the cavemen in the audience, an ethical philosophy disposed against violence. It relates to Trigun whereas Vash the Stampede himself is a pacifist. In the sense that he doesn’t kill. But the results are always called into question. This is manifests itself within a scene from the series about a spider and a butterfly. To those no doubt many of you who don’t know what I’m droning on about, I will give you the basic synopsis. Imagine a butterfly stranded in a spiders web, with the spider creeping towards it. You, being the nature-loving weirdo that you are, stop to observe. Now you are given a decision to make. Save the butterfly, or walk away. Suppose that you save the butterfly, by freeing it, and leaving the spider alone, you deprive the spider of its food source. And it will naturally shrivel and die. So the cynic might take the most direct route, and destroy the spider then and there. So the choice of “to free the butterfly or not” suddenly becomes “Should I save the butterfly or the spider”.   Vash was posed with this scenario, and demanded that there must be some way to save them both. That is Vash’s main goal. To save everyone. To take the pain unto himself so that he never has to decide between the spider and the butterfly.

They say every man carry his own cross, but this is ridiculous!

“But Liquid!” Some observant reader might be shouting at his computer screen, “That line of thinking is nave and childish!” Well thank you Mr. Reader. You’ve made an impressive segue into the next topic at hand. The Jesus story implies that innocence and goodness go hand in hand. The truth in this is dependant on your own beliefs, but the series takes a pretty strong stance on the issue. The choice of the butterfly and the spider can better expressed as the conflict between innocence and maturity. Or Idealism vs Practicality. It says that if you wish to help people, you must look at the world with a detached, realistic perspective. Recognizing that you cannot help everyone, and that there is a futility to it all. Or if you are an idealist, you’ll self destruct because the universe does not cater to your ideals. Vash is the cross between these two elements. He maintains his idealism, and vilifies it, but he accepts that no good deed goes unpunished, and chooses to take the sacrifice onto himself and, very often, out of his very flesh. This, ladies and gentlemen, is what a heroic idealist should look like.  An idiot who thinks that the problems of the world are small enough to be solved by one man with a gun.

If you have any comments, ideas, or arguments for me, please post them below, dimwitted people like me rely on smart people to tell me what to think!
And if you have any suggestions for a decent anime that you’d like me to examine, email it to liquidhelium@fm1397.com