Trigun Stampede Review

The 90s Trigun anime series is a show I don't remember all that well and it's been 11 years since I last watched it, my memory of it is hazey at best but I do thank Trigun's popularity because if it hadn't been for that Gungrave would've never have gotten made and spawned one of my favorite anime of all time, but with all that said, what I do think of this latest reboot?

I am going to be honest and say that the show COULD be pretty good but it's just held back by one major issue: it's protagonist Vash the Stampede. I am not a big fan of pacifist characters in fiction but Vash is a character so insufferable that I was starting to miss Batman and his monologues of, "if I kill my villains, I will become them", but I will describe more of that later on.

I'll start with the good, the characters outside of Vash and Meryl Strife are pretty solid and entertaining, my favorites are Nicolas Wolfwood, Knives and Roberto De Niro, in fact most of the characters are solid and are pretty solid and colorful. Knives is a solid villain in this version and has far more character than he did from what I can recall in the 90s Trigun, I actually rooted for him in this version of the show since compared to the main character, I felt Knives' motivations and convictions actually made sense and was far more reasonable, Wolfwood is such a good character I wished he was the protagonist of the show, and Roberto being a detached cynical old man I couldn't help but find him entertaining. His interactions with Wolfwood and the villains are also really amusing since he is so jaded attached compared to them. The music while nothing I want to listen to on Youtube is pretty solid during dramatic scenes, the animation is solid, the designs for certain characters particularly the villains I like, and the worldbuilding and how much it combines sci fi ad westerns is something I kind help but find interesting and cool as a fan of both. It's fun seeing them get mixed up like this.

Now, I'll get to the bad, Vash the Stampede has to be one of the most insufferable protagonists I have ever come across in a long while, I detest almost everything he stands for. He's almost everything people bash Goku and Superman for being. My big issue with Vash's pacifist morales is that nothing he ever does accomplishes anything. Villains are trying to kill him and instead of neutralizing the threat before the situation gets worse, he constantly screams like a little kid in a vain attempt at trying to difuse the situation, he feels like a censored cartoon character where he isn't allowed to be violent due to angering parents, but it goes at odds with the fact that Trigun Stampede isn't a censored kids cartoon and the show can be quite brutal. Vash doesn't even have good negotiations skills either, he just screams, "stay back" or "run away", every time violence is involved, like that will do him any good. The worst of this is during the episode where a kid Vash makes an empty promise to gets turned into a cyborg monster and all Vash did was hope that he was alright even though the monster was trying to kill him and his friends, and when he learns that the monster is that kid, he doesn't even end his suffering. Since the kid would want that, Vash still somehow thinks there is hope for him and after Wolfwood kills the kid, Vash actually has the nerve to take the moral high ground and act like he was better than Wolfwood. The way Vash acts all polite really gets on my nerves too, he acts like he is so pure when he is just a self righteous hypocrite.

It doesn't end there either, Vash is an immortal who can't age, and yet somehow despite seeing the worst of humanity, he still believes there is hope for them, I find this to be so unrealistic since the only people who treated Vash with any geniune kindness are Meryl, Rem and Luida. That's far too few people to be all pro humanity over and act like they are worth defending and worth taking their wrath over.

Anyway I can be here all day, but I feel like I would enjoy Stampede way more if it had Wolfwood as the protagonist, I could enjoy the show overall but Vash just ruins any consistent enjoyment I could get from the series. I normally don't like constantly reviewing anime but this show's protagonist was so clumsily written that I ended up writing this. I do sort of feel like rewatching 90s Trigun to see if Vash is as insufferable but I am not rushing out.