Even if you’re not into anime, you’ve likely heard of Trigun—either because it was one of the classics of the 90s (alongside its contemporary Cowboy Bebop), or because it recently got a reboot called Trigun Stampede.
Or, most likely, because of the famed Bigolas Dickolas event that amazed the book world last year.
As someone who’s rampant in both fandom spaces and the book community, imagine my shock and delight when these two disparate things I adore came together into one glorious example of how powerful word of mouth is. I love Trigun, and I love This is How You Lose the Time War, so it just reinforced in me the belief that Trigun fans have superb taste.
After all, we wouldn’t be drawn to Trigun otherwise.
Trigun was first serialized as a manga in 1995 by creator Yasuhiro Nightow. The first animated adaptation came out in 1998, and though it didn’t perform that well in Japan, the reception was excellent in North America.
Back in the early 2000s, I was a fledgling high school student happily getting embroiled in the anime world. Like most nerds back then, my gateway drug was Adult Swim, which would play the English dubbed episodes of various anime like Naruto, Fullmetal Alchemist, and the aforementioned Cowboy Bebop. The only problem was that a lot of these came on late at night, which meant recording it on a blank VHS tape (shut up) so that I could watch the episodes in the morning before school.
One night, I couldn’t sleep, so I lay in bed watching Adult Swim. I hadn’t caught their rotation of Trigun (1998) episodes before, so the one that came on was somewhere midseason, during the introduction of an important secondary character. At first I was riddled with questions: Why does this guy wear a suit in the desert and have a giant cross? Why does this other guy have a big red coat? Who are these women and why are they insurance agents? Wait a minute is this sci-fi?
Folks, that singular episode altered my brain chemistry. I immediately knew I had to devour every episode and get my hands on all the manga volumes out at the time. It ventured beyond what I normally loved (I don’t like deserts, I’ve never been drawn to westerns, and I’m fonder of fantasy than sci-fi), but something about it transcended all those barriers and struck me like the Lance of Longinus.
Now, when I say I love this show (both the original and reboot) and the manga it was based on (the bulk of its run under the name Trigun Maximum, or Trimax for short), I need you to understand that I am dramatically understating the effect this piece of media has had on me and my storytelling. Hell, the effect it’s had on my life. It would be far more appropriate to say it makes me want to tear at drywall, throw up, bang my head against the floor, and weep myself into a coma.
“It’s just an anime/manga,” I can hear you thinking. “What’s the big deal?”
Listen to me: Trigun is a god damn masterpiece in character, motivation, theme, and tragedy. The plot and worldbuilding are chef’s kiss. The character relationships are exquisite. It’s both hilarious and heartbreaking, to the point that if I so much as mention a couch to a fellow fan, we both burst into tears (iykyk).
At its heart, Trigun is a space western. It proudly declares it has “DEEP SPACE PLANET FUTURE GUN ACTION,” and boy does it deliver. You have saloons, shootouts, and sickos in the form of bandits and bounty hunters. But it also takes place on a planet that’s not Earth, with two suns and an endless desert that’s home to giant worms and the debris of spaceships that crashed to the surface long ago. It manages to transcend genre by being horror adjacent, particularly in the manga.
It’s also Bible fanfiction (with an emphasis on Jesus/Judas), but we’ll get to that in a moment.
So, what exactly attracted me to this story, and why do glimmers of it keep appearing in my books? I’ll break it down into three sections: characters, world, and themes.
Complex Characters Who Keep the Audience on Their Toes
Immediately we have a mystery on our hands. The main character, Vash the Stampede—also known as The Humanoid Typhoon, a nickname he’s picked up from all of his misadventures—is a wanted man. Countless bounty hunters are after him because of the outrageous price on his head: $$60,000,000,000. (Yes, TWO dollar signs). Everyone makes him out to be a terrible criminal, and mankind’s first human disaster.
However, when we meet him, we’re introduced to a goofy gunslinger who has a strict and profound rule: he does not kill. Ever. He’s a pacifist down to his bones, and is always searching for a peaceful solution rather than a violent one, despite having legendary gun skills.
So then why does he have the largest bounty on this planet full of outlaws? What exactly did this ridiculous donut-loving man do to earn such a nickname and reputation?
The gradual unraveling of Vash’s many secrets is partly what drew me in so deeply to the story of Trigun. Characters who present one face to the world to mask their pain, who become unreliable narrators because of what they don’t want others to know, is one of those tropes I go feral for (probably because of this very character, now that I think about it).
A plethora of intriguing side characters round out the cast. Like Meryl and Milly, insurance workers who are required to follow Vash around because of how much property damage he causes whenever he goes. And of course there’s the infamous priest/assassin Nicholas D. Wolfwood (namesake to our dear Bigolas Dickolas), who carries a giant cross that’s actually a machine gun as well as a portable confessional.
“Wait, a priest who doubles as an assassin? Did I read that right?”
You sure did. It’s paradoxes like this that make the characters of Trigun so fascinating, and lead to some truly excellent plot twists. Conflicting traits add depth to characters—especially if you pit their ideals and philosophies against one another, as is the case with Vash the pacifist and Wolfwood the hitman.
Using “Rule of Cool” to Build a Memorable World
Central to the worldbuilding of Trigun is an event called the Big Fall, when spaceships from Earth—on a journey to find a new, habitable planet—accidentally crashed onto the surface of what would eventually be named No Man’s Land. Except, as we find out, it wasn’t an accident at all. Someone made the ships crash onto this desert wasteland in an effort to extinguish humanity.
And yet, humanity found a way to survive. They use plants (the generator kind, not the photosynthesis kind, that have appearances similar to angels) to power cities and towns for clean water and electricity. People use what materials they can harvest from the ships and the badlands to build settlements. Hell, they even find a way to make alcohol and guns.
Figuring out where things like clothes and food and shelter come from is a key aspect of worldbuilding. Nightow plays up the desert environment in fun and resourceful ways, like how one of the main sources of meat comes from the giant worms that burrow in the sands.
Yet, because this is anime/manga we’re talking about, there is undoubtedly a “rule of cool” to the worldbuilding. Nightow himself has claimed to do some hand waving when it comes to figuring out how certain things work, because sometimes it doesn’t matter as much as grabbing the audience’s attention and setting your world apart in unique ways.
For example, our protagonist Vash often finds himself pitted against superhuman assassins called the Gung-Ho Guns. These are genetically modified humans who have been outfitted with various abilities in an effort to take Vash down (one being a trans woman who can shoot giant metal nails, and who I would like to step on me).
Trigun said “your world can be resourceful and badass,” and I took that to heart.
The Price of Sin, and the Enduring Nature of Love
Trigun is based on the question: “How would two people react in extremely different ways to the same source of trauma?”
(SPOILERS AHEAD)
Vash and his twin brother Knives were born from one of the angelic-looking plants that humanity uses as generators. This was before the Big Fall, when humans were still in cryosleep on spaceships. The two of them were found by the woman in charge of one such ship: Rem. She became their guardian, and did her best to teach them about Earth, philosophy, and human nature.
Yet the twins discovered that they were not the first children born from a plant. The one who came before them had been brutally experimented on, and in finding her remains, they realized how terrifying humans were… and that a similar fate could befall them.
Knives, unwilling to face such a threat—especially for his brother Vash’s sake—initiated the Big Fall, hoping to end humankind in one fell swoop. Instead, the spacefaring refugees of Earth survived because of Rem’s last minute interference.
To Knives, this example of humanity’s cruelty altered him from a sweet boy into a tortured victim. His main goal is to finish what he started with the Big Fall, and to “save” Vash and the other plants from the humans who exploit them. He fashions himself a sort of god, meant to purge the world of sinners.
Vash, however, took strongly to Rem’s teachings, and knows the humans who inhabit No Man’s Land are only alive because of her. He feels a responsibility to do her proud and uphold her philosophy that there is good in people no matter what, which is the root of his staunch pacifism. Because of this, he bears innumerable scars where people have hurt or tried to kill him, believing this is the price he has to pay for his role in the Big Fall.
What’s interesting about these different approaches is that they’re not completely right or completely wrong. Knives’s motivation is flawed, certainly, but understandable. Humans suck. However, Vash’s pacifism, while something that should be more of an ideal, is actually a burden, and ends up causing more problems than it solves.
And the thing is, they’re both doing it out of love: Knives for his brother, and Vash for Rem. Many think Vash’s approach to life is naïve, when really he’s doing his best to uphold Rem’s legacy out of a tremendous sense of guilt.
The latter is where Wolfwood comes in. He believes that in this world, it’s kill or be killed—that people are nothing like god and more suited to become demons. He’s constantly harping on Vash about his refusal to kill even the worst of the worst, questioning how he plans to handle his brother when they have their inevitable showdown, and that one day Vash is going to be in a position where he has to kill to save others. That’s just how it works.
It also turns out that Wolfwood was sent to guide Vash straight to his antagonistic brother. If Vash is the Jesus figure, meant to pay for everyone’s sins, then Wolfwood is Judas leading him to his ruin.
Yet when Vash looks at Wolfwood, he doesn’t see someone who is forced to betray him. He also doesn’t see a coldblooded killer. No, he sees only the best in humanity: someone who would go out of his way to be kind to a child, and to protect others at the cost of himself. While on the outside it may seem that Wolfwood has no qualms over killing, he’s internally devastated at the blood staining his hands. Wolfwood encapsulates everything Rem believed in, and did her best to save. He gives Vash strength and renewed purpose.
(What can I say, Vash and Wolfwood created romance.)
Because of the strong bonds Vash forges with Wolfwood and the others, he chooses to step out of Rem’s shadow and to stop shouldering the pain his brother causes. And vice versa, Vash’s insistence on “love and peace” affect the other characters deeply, even leading Wolfwood to change his ways.
Like Rem told Vash long ago: your future is a blank ticket. You can change your destination.
The way these characters affect one another is so profound it makes me tear up just thinking about it. In writing my books, I’m often asking myself how the characters evolve because of one another, and how their arcs can shift due to their relationships. It’s not just characters that transform because of the story; it’s the story that transforms because of the characters.
These themes of loss, forgiveness, autonomy, and love have stuck with me a long time and show up across my books. And hey, if you want to read more about siblings who end up going down completely different roads based on the same tragic event, be sure to check out my upcoming dark fantasy We Shall Be Monsters.
There are so many more things I could praise in Trigun across its various formats—the plot, the symbolism, the action sequences, the character designs, etc.—but then we would be here all day. Instead, I highly recommend watching either iteration of the show or getting into the manga, which has a deluxe edition coming out later this year. (There’s also a movie, but that’s for seasoned veterans. You are not strong enough.)
As for me, I’m off to reread the manga for the 50th time with my various Vash plushies and figurines cradled in my arms. Love and peace, y’all.
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We Shall Be Monsters
