Trigun: Difference between revisions

On the [[Single Biome Planet|desert world]] of [[Meaningful Name|Gunsmoke]], outlaw and [[Honor Before Reason|absolute pacifist]] "Vash the Stampede" is being sought after by two young women: the tall, [[The Ditz|ditzy]] Milly and the tiny, [[Tsundere|short-tempered]] Meryl. They work for an insurance company that's getting bankrupted by all the [[Destructive Saviour|property damage caused by Vash]]: collateral from the ridiculous fights he tends to get into which result in his nickname of "[[Red Baron|The Humanoid Typhoon]]". The reason? Vash has a bounty of $$60,000,000,000 (sixty billion [[Global Currency|double-dollars]]) on his head, and every [[Bounty Hunter]] on Gunsmoke aims to collect in [[Zany Scheme|true Wile E. Coyote]] fashion.

In 2010, Yasuhiro Nightow started a modest series of new works for the Trigun universe in anticipation for the movie: '''''Trigun Badlands Rumble'''''. First it was a two-chapter story, going by the same name as the movie, drawn by Yasuhiro himself it serves as a preview for the movie. The second was a One-Shot, '''''Trigun: Rising''''', it is a short tale about Rai The Blade, one of the original Gung-Ho Guns, drawn by ''Yuusuke Takeyama''. The third, and final, was another One-Shot, entlied '''''Trigun: The Lost Plant''''', a story set 6 years after the original manga ending; it was drawn by ''Boichi'' and later published as an extra for the 12th Volume of his own series, [[Sun Ken Rock]].

The show, formerly licensed in the US by Pioneer/Geneon and now licensed by Funimation, is on [http://www.youtube.com/show/trigun YouTube], [http://www.hulu.com/trigun Hulu], and [http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Trigun_The_Complete_Series/60030879?trkid=2361637 Netflix]{{Dead link}}.

* [[Apocalypse How]]: {{spoiler|Vash prevents a [[Apocalypse How/Class X-4|Class X-4]]}} in ''The Lost Plant''.

* [[Beware the Nice Ones]]: Vash.

* [[Beware the Superman]]: What everyone tends to think of first when they start to understand just how ''special'' Vash is.

** One of the bounty hunters in the first episode has a gun that takes the cake for sheer impracticality: a two-barreled rifle, each barrel having its own long clip. In firing it looks like a propeller.

** There is no evidence Legato was modified--wellmodified—well, apart from anime Legato having Vash's severed left arm in place of his own. He's presumably a psychic mutant. This is not improbable, in the setting.

* [[But Your Wings Are Beautiful]]: Averted. Knives has people around him who think his [[Freaky Is Cool|freakiness is pretty damn awesome]], but so does he. Vash could do with hearing this, but no one can actually bring themselves to say it. [[Averted Trope|His wings freak them out way too much.]] In fairness, they are pretty terrifying wings.

* [[Cast Full of Pretty Boys]]: In the manga, at least; the only seriously recurring women are Meryl and Millie, who are absent for at least half the story and fairly useless most of the time, and eventually Elendira, who is m-t-f transexualtranssexual. (Transgendered?) In the anime only slightly, as there are Meryl as viewpoint character and Millie as her stalwart companion, and regular appearances by women like Mary-Anne, Elizabeth, and Jessica. All the actually significant characters are still male, though.

* [[Charge Into Combat Cut]]: In the opening scene of the first episode after an armed gang demolishes a bar that Vash was drinking in, he slowly stands up after finishing drink, adjusts his glasses and points his gun at the gang... cue a cut to another town, in which the insurance adjusters on Van's trail are introduced.

** (We later flash back to what happened then and it turns out to be his gun clicked on no bullets and he screamed and ran away.)

* [[Confessional]]: Wolfwood even sells confessions despite probably being a Protestant priest.

*** Though apparently, inasmuch as he was ordained at all it was through the Eye of Michael, who are purportedly an assassin ring fused with an underground ''plant worshiping cult.''. So yeah. He can be forgiven his scattered doctrine.

* [[Covered with Scars]]: Vash. The girls walk in on him after a shower. {{spoiler|The prosthetic arm the audience knew about, after Monev, but the girls didn't have the angle.}} The scars are what he pays for trying to save everybody all the time. Of course, what some of those metal bits are doing on him is a deep mystery. [[Rule of Cool|What, does he have some pressing medical need to tack his skin to his spleen?]]

* [[Creepy Cool Crosses]]: Wolfwood, duh. His main weapon looks like a giant cross with a gun handle in its middle. The elongated bottom spoke conceals a machine gun, the top spoke above it holds a rocket launcher, and the two side spokes slide outwards to reveal racks for about a dozen pistols. The anime also has Chapel the Evergreen of the Gung-Ho Guns, who also carries a giant cross, though his seperatesseparates into two heavy machine guns.

** Especially notable is the one Vash and Knives had when they were a year old. Their reactions were actually relatively similar--checksimilar—check out Vash's [[Slasher Smile]] after he stabbed Rem--butRem—but Vash due to not passing out from the starvation thing worked through his and got better, while Knives pretended to have forgotten and then...[[Kill'Em All|killed everyone]]. At least he feels kinda bad about how many plants were included in 'everyone' later.

* [[Determined Expression]]: Vash looks like this whenever he drops his facade of idiocy and decides to get serious. Only to be expected from a man whose byword is determination.

** Victorian Language of Flowers is actually a pretty popular idea in Japan, inasmuch as you can consider anything that marginal popular. There's a mini-fetish for the whole Victorian motif, actually--whereactually—where do you think the Meido thing came from?--and it's colored the Japanese perception of the British rather hilariously.

* [[Enfant Terrible]]: Young Knives.

* [[Explosive Overclocking]]: {{spoiler|Wolfwood after taking two vials of serum.}} He regenerates almost instantly from almost any wound, but burns out his life and dies shortly afterwards.

* [[Expy]]: Knives has been accused of being a [[Dragon Ball|Vegeta]] Expyexpy.

* [[Fantastic Measurement System]]: Distances are measured in "iles" and "yarz," although it's never made clear whether those are actually miles and yards with letters removed and different spellings, or something different.

* [[Fearful Symmetry]]: [[Evil Counterpart|Vash and Knives]] in the anime. Very strange and gratuitous because it's extremely unlikely Knives would have the same gunfighting training and practisepractice as Vash, having just left [[Sealed Evil in a Can]] state and being secluded from the real world.

* [[Four -Philosophy Ensemble]]: Wolfwood is the Cynic (or the Conflicted), Vash is the Optimist, Meryl is the Realist, Milly is the Apathetic (when being silly) or Conflicted (the rest of the time).

* [[Gallows Humour]]: The humourhumor tied to Legato and Knives's insanity and to Vash goofing around in the most desperate circumstances gets particularly disturbing -- sodisturbing—so much that Nightow edited out some of the "offending" passages of the last three or four volumes, presumably under fandom pressure.

* [[Gecko Ending]]: The anime -- ananime—an odd example, though, as Nightow was in on the whole planning process, and many events play as a shorter dry run of things in the manga.

* [[Good Feels Good]]: Vash, obviously. The show also underlines that even though it may ''seem'' so, [[Evil Feels Good|evil]] ''[[Evil Feels Good|doesn't]]'' [[Evil Feels Good|feel good]]: Legato is suicidal, Knives seems to have a chronic nervous breakdown, [[Villainous Breakdown|Villainous Breakdowns]]s abound, Wolfwood is terribly conflicted over his questionable actions, etc.

** Vash occasionally utters a few words in French, crying for his "maman" and greeting his food with "Bonjour! Je t'aime!". The first time, he then questions why the hell he's speaking French.

* [[Hannibal Lecture]]

* [[Heartbroken Badass]]: Vash.

* [[Hive Mind]]: Apparently kindasortakinda sorta the case with the bulb plants, even before {{spoiler|Knives starts subsuming them into his giant body}}. In the manga also to some degree the case of the sand worms, whose psychic network extends over most of Gunsmoke's native life and learns how to invest itself in a human vessel, giving Knives the Gung Ho Gun 'Zazie the Beast.' They have some kind of alliance with him against the human invaders, although this is never properly explored.

* [[Humans Are Bastardsthe Real Monsters]]: The root of the problem.

** Nicholas D. Wolfwood is also Nicholas the Punisher. And {{spoiler|Chapel.}}

* [["I Know You Are're in There Somewhere" Fight]]: Vash does this pretty much every time he meets Knives in the manga; from Knives's perspective, ''he'' must be the one doing it to Vash, which brings once again the question of whether the twins are by "nature" peace-loving or mindlessly violent.

* [[Improbable Aiming Skills]]: A must for any [[Technical Pacifist]] operating as a gunslinger. Vash almost invariably hits what he aims at, no matter how absurd the shot, though a combination of rigorous training and superhuman potential count for a lot. On one occasion a terrible hangover made him reflexively hit all the targets in a quickdrawquick-draw tournament he'd been forced into, when he'd meant to miss some.

** In another, he concusses an opponent by flinging the bullets out the back of his gun, and blocks the hammer of another guy's gun with the bubblegum he had been chewing, apparently ''at range.''.

* [[Jerk with a Heart of Gold]]: Nicholas D. Wolfwood. The manga never quite explains why his [[True Companions]] inflict it upon themselves to put up with him in the first place, knowing that he never uses [[Honorifics]] and expresses his affection by distributing humiliating nicknames ("Tongari / Spikey,", "big girl,", "small girl,", "crybaby Livio"), "playful" insults and various blows. Plus, his manga version is particularly macho and even tries to protect Milly from Midvalley... by pretending he'll shoot her if she doesn't leave immediately. Borders on [[Values Dissonance]] when his mistreatment of Vash is [[Hilarity Ensues|played for fun]]. It's even a wonder Nightow still manages to make him such a likable and well-written character for all his [[Knight Templar]] and [[Jerkass]] traits.

** From the anime. {{spoiler|Dying}} Wolfwood goes for a cigarette. Flashbacks

{{quote| Millie (flashback): "It's bad for the baby, dear!" ([[It Makes Sense in Context]]).<br />

Wolfwood (present): "I'm sorry, honey." }}

* [[Klingon Promotion]]: How {{spoiler|Wolfwood}} got into the Gung-Ho Guns in the manga back story. Shot his teacher, Chapel, in the back, and used the contractual auto-replace feature to step in as the new Chapel.

* [[Knight Templar Big Brother]]: Knives is a big brother complex gone ''horribly wrong''. He's pretty much of a [[Yandere]] over Vash, with huge emphasis on the "Yan.". Also, he basically ''decided'' he was the older twin and it's up for debates which of them is the more childish.

* [[The Magnificent]]: Most major characters have one of these. Whether the name was earned by exploits or assigned as part of [[Theme Naming]] by employers etc. seems to vary. At least one was inherited via [[Klingon Promotion]]. Meryl and Millie shake up the trend by having nommes de guerre that come ''before'' their proper names and do not involve prepositions.<ref> Stun Gun Millie and Derringer Meryl, in case you're interested. They share with Nicholas the Punisher the convention of being named after your weapon.</ref>

** Nicholas the Punisher. (Notnot [[The Punisher|that one]].).

** Midvalley the Hornfreak.

** Livio the Double Fang and [[Ax Crazy|Razlo]] the [[Up to Eleven|Tri-Punisher of Death]] help make up the Eye of Michael's scary name quotient.

* [[Meaningful Name]]: Rem can be translated to englishEnglish as "the world,", depending on the context. Knives somehow acquired, as an adorable child, a name much more suited to his future as a homicidal maniac.

** He borders on this ''all the time.''.

* [[Mexican Standoff]]: Happens a few times throughout the anime and manga, but by far the most over the top one occurs in Volume 5 in the manga. {{spoiler|Those involved include Wolfwood, Zazie, Hoppered, Legato, and Vash, in a sense. Wolfwood has guns trained on Legato and Zazie. Zazie has guns on Legato and Wolfwood. Hoppered is crippled and is trying to fire on Legato. Legato is holding back Hoppered with his powers and is trying to contain Vash. Vash's involvement is debatable, as he's simply losing control of his Angel powers and trying not to freak out. The standoff is broken by Meryl leaping up from beneath Vash and taking a shot at Legato. Guns go off all over the place, but the only one who dies is Hoppered.}}

* [[My Death Is Just the Beginning]]: {{spoiler|Legato uses his own death to psychologically torture Vash.}} It worked.

* [[My God, What Have I Done?]]: Vash.

* [[No Romantic Resolution]]: In the anime, the relationship between {{spoiler|Meryl and Vash}} is left hanging.

* [[Nun-Too-Holy]]: Wolfwood is the male version, obviously.

{{quote| '''Vash:''' What the hell kind of churchman are you, anyway?!}}

** The most extreme interpretation of his position in the anime is, as described on the main [[Nun-Too-Holy]] page, '' {{spoiler|Knives priest}}''. The least extreme is {{spoiler|[[Professional Killer|assassin with a church front]].}}

* [[Older Than They Look]]: Vash looks like that he's around 27, {{spoiler|but he is actually over [[Really 700 Years Old|100]].}}

* [[Only Six Faces]]: All the non-[[Gonk]] characters must have only ''four'' faces or something. So much in Nightow's work that most "Kekkai Sensen" characters look like ''[['''Trigun]]''''' expies. Vash's face must be the most overused one, too, Livio even looks like Vash/Knives with a fancy tattoo.

*** This looks intentional in the flashback to the twins as kids--wowkids—wow, can't even tell which one said what, they're joined at the hip!--but problematic later.

* [[Papa Wolf]]: Wolfwood, for any child he happens to encounter at all. Made his anime {{spoiler|killing of Zazie all the more shocking}} (and even more of a gesture of attachment to Vash, but Vash wasn't really in a state to appreciate that.).

** Manga Legato gets triple points.

* [[Pastel-Chalked Freeze-Frame]]: Wolfwood in '"Quickdraw",' right after he turns around screaming with [[Guns Akimbo]]. Only one.

* [[Reckless Pacifist]]: Vash.

* [[Red Oni, Blue Oni]]: Vash vs. Wolfwood; Vash vs. Legato; Vash vs. Knives is a more complex case, as Knives is the more cerebral one but also the more impulsive and violent. In all these cases, it's often reflected in their clothing and/or background colours, though Knives often appears in red too -- buttoo—but often in darker shades such as crimson.

** Often in chapter titles, such as the one to [[Quentin Tarantino]] in the chapter "Reservoir Dogs.".

** Vash seems to be riding a wheeled [[Last Exile|Vanship]] during the trailer for ''Badlands Rumble''.

** Blink-and-you'll-miss-it one in the very last episode. The photo shown for {{spoiler|the man related to Rem that Vash was tracking down in July}} is a still of single-episode character Shiro Tokita from ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'', right down to his outfit in said shot.

* [[Sibling Yin-Yang]]

* [[Sinister Shades]]:

** He [[Slasher Smile|grinned]] while doing this at the flashback to Midvalley's concert. (Atat which, naturally, everybody died).)

** Rem is a particularly confusing example. Rem or Lem? Seibrem, Saverem, or Seiburem? It doesn't help that the manga lists her name as "Rem Seibrem" while the anime lists it as "Rem Saverem.".

* [[Stop or I Shoot Myself]]: Wolfwood seems to do this, to provide a visual example on how someone's chosen action will lead to the death of hundreds. It is quickly revealed however, that he never intended to put himself in any danger, and was using an empty clip.

* [[Strike Me Down with All of Your Hatred]]: {{spoiler|When the Gung-Ho Guns fail to kill Vash, Legato uses this as his final gambit to ruin his life. It works, until Meryl convinces him to snap out of it and finish his business with Knives.}}

* [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien]]: Vash and Knives are technically ''not'' alien lifeforms, but there are strong suggestions of this trope, especially in the anime since {{spoiler|there are no "[[There Is Another]]" plants from Earth}}. And, let's face it, manga Vash and (even more) Knives are very [[A God Am I|god-like]], which [[What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic|ties in]] with the [[Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory|religious subtext]].

** In the anime, this is also an interpretation for Vash's complete failure to say a word or make a move in his own defense while being lynched by the town that recognizes him as the Stampede, in the episode after {{spoiler|he shoots Legato in the head.}} He wasn't actually catatonic, as he demonstrates at a couple of points, but he kept acting almost as though he was while they ''tied him to the back of a truck and dragged him around on his face.'' .

* [[Super-Powered Evil Side]]: {{spoiler|Livio/Lazlo}}; {{spoiler|Vash}} might fit too.

** Elendria rams nails through peoples bodies ''faster than the eye can see.''.

* [[Technical Pacifist]]: Vash, in ''spades''. It even says 'pacifist' on his Quickdraw tournament application, if you look!<ref> Evidence that Wolfwood, who did the paperwork, had already been briefed on his target before their first encounter, since they'd interacted by fighting robots and sharing a bus, and the no-kill rule [[Fridge Logic|had not had a chance to come up]].</ref> Partakes of the irony of someone whose life is defined by combat but who still thinks in 'pacifist' terms.

* [[Time Skip]]: Two years passes after {{spoiler|Vash blows a hole on the moon}}, transition from ''Trigun'' to ''Trigun Maximum''. Six years passes after {{spoiler|Vash defeats Knives and most Plants dies during the conflict}}, transition from ''Trigum Maximum'' to ''Trigun The Lost Plant''.

* [[The Ugly GuysGuy's Hot Daughter]]: In the anime, the (only identified) daughter of the Nebraska clan is an attractive teenage girl, while her dad is an ancient-looking ugly guy with three teeth and her mom is, basically, an [[Opposite SexGender Clone]] of Gofsef Nebraska, the deformed, cybernetically augmented giant, only without the cyber-mods.

* [[Used to Be a Sweet Kid]]: {{spoiler|Knives}}.

** Also Wolfwood, Livio, and Legato, for a given value of 'sweet;'; they were respectively already bitter, already carrying an [[Enemy Within]], and already vengeance-driven at the earliest points in their lives we see them, but by comparison they come across as heart-twistingly innocent.

* [[Villainous Breakdown]]: Happens to quite a few villains, some of whom commit suicide or start [[W/Angst|Angsting]] if they fail.

* [[Villainous Crossdresser]]: Elendira, the only [[TranssexualTranssexualism|trans woman]] [[Badass]] enough to freak people out while being called "the Crimsonnail,", fits this trope to a large extent.

** She is equally subject to censorship for being a trannie and for being ''terrifying.''. In a world of guns, Rai-dei got by with a sword and was [[Lampshade Hanging|appropriately observed to be crazy]]. In the same world, Elendria fights with '''a briefcase full of giant red nails,''', as in hardware supplies, and is very possibly the most deadly thing on the planet. (Onlyonly because Knives is lazy and Vash is [[The Fettered]], mind.).

* [[Weapon of Mass Destruction]]: That are actually sentient -- seesentient—see above trope.

{{quote| '''Vash (to {{spoiler|Elizabeth}}):''' {{spoiler|Aw, you aren't after that stupid reward, are you?}}<br />

'''{{spoiler|Elizabeth}}:''' {{spoiler|''[[Little No|No]]''.}} }}

* [[Yandere]]: Manga Wolfwood can be seen as [[Cute and Psycho]] -- you—you start suspecting something's wrong when [[Nightmare Fuel|he turns Grey the Ninelives into minced meat]] with a [[Slasher Smile]]. Also, Knives might be a [[Yandere]] over Vash, because nothing is too creepy or dysfunctional for him. Depending on interpretation, Vash might also be [[Cute and Psycho]].

* [[Younger Than They Look]]: Vash and Knives in both versions of the flashback--theyflashback—they were a year old when the Fall happened. {{spoiler|Wolfwood}}, in the manga. He's in his mid to late teens when introduced, and {{spoiler|dies before}} he's twenty. [[Super Serum|Super Soldier Serum]] is involved.

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