This review may contain spoilers.
It's February 1996, twenty-nine year old mangaka (writer and artist of manga [Japanese comic]) Yasuhiro Nightow has submitted a story to the magazine Shōnen Captian, the story was called Trigun.
It's February 1996, twenty-nine year old mangaka (writer and artist of manga [Japanese comic]) Yasuhiro Nightow has submitted a story to the magazine Shōnen Captian, the story was called Trigun.
I started reading Trigun after been drawn in by the amazing cover art of Dark Horse Comics English version of Volume 1 (see below, image's taken from wikipedia). This book is everything I ask for in cover art, it's dynamic, the colours are beautiful and above all it made me existed to read the book. And how was the book, well this in a space western, the way people dress and act can be very reminiscent of a western movie, though this is actually a desert planet in the far future, the inhabitants of the world cut off from earth and forced to survive on the little resources that are available. I love this setting, it's familiar enough for us to identify but gives the creator enough freedom to do lots of creative things, which he does constantly, many characters carry weapons that wouldn't exists in real life and in fact many characters are exaggerated to the 10th degree, you never know who or what you'll encounter in the next chapter but you know it will always be existing!
A note to point out the Shōnen Captian was cancelled in 1997, Trigun coming to an untimely end along with it, leaving us on a hell of a cliff-hanger. These stories were collected into three books, or two oversized ones as the editions I have are. Then Nightow was approached by the magazine Young King Ours, they wanted him to produce a new work but he asked if he could finish Trigun, so they said, OK. So in 1998 Trigun continued under the title of Trigun Maximum and ran to the stories conclusion, later collected in fourteen volumes. Now Young King Ours was a magazine for an older audience so Maximun takes on a more serious tone than its predecessor, and despite the story jumping two years on Nightow insists that both Trigun and Maximun are one long story and not an original and sequel.
Anyway, as for the book itself, the opening was strong, we learned a fair amount about our main charactered, Vash the Stampede, without been bogged down with information, we know he has an insanely high bounty on his head, he's suspected of murder, a topnotch gunman and also that he is a pacifist who's unwilling to kill his opponent.
Though the plot really takes off when two women, Meryl and Milly show up, there are insurance agents who inform Vash that dud to the amount of damage caused by his frequent gun battles (most damage seemingly caused by the people chasing him) that his bounty has been lifted and he's been classed a natural disaster and they now have the job of following him around to evaluate claims regarding him, weather he wants them there or not.
This is the plot for the early parts of the manga, we see Vash followed by the never relenting Meryl and Milly as he gets himself involved in various peoples affairs, writing wrongs while trying to spill as little blood as possible, then riding off into the sunset towards more adventures. That is until we meet Legato Bluesummers, our first real antagonist who challenges Vash to a game, and that game is to be the last one standing as twelve assassins are sent to fight him one at a time. This sets up what will be the plot for the remainder of the series, I don't want to give anymore away but let me say that the twists and turns that come your way will keep you on the edge of your seat.
NowI must say that I did have a couple problems with this one, first of all the action, especially in the opening volumes can be hard to follow, but Yasuhiro Nightow does improve on this and by the time of Trigun Maximus I'm seeing some of the best action scenes I've seen in any Manga. I also found that taking a break from this manga often made me loose the story a bit, and if your like me seventeen volumes isn't something your gonna read straight one after the other, so my advice is if you gonna put it down for a while wait for a point thats the end of one story arc instead of the middle, sounds obvious but hey, I was dumb enough to do that.
So in the end I must say this is one I highly recommend to fans of sci-fi, westerns or graphic novels in general. So now I leave you with the intro to the 1998 anime series.
