Trigun

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Rating 4/10

For BOTH Trigun and Maximum.
Trigun is a disappointment. The manga keeps letting itself down at every turn. Here's why:

Setting:

Trigun's setting is similar to Cowboy Bebop, with mankind having populated another planet far away from the ruined earth. However, Trigun does absolutely *nothing* with this environment. The planet is a sand ridden landscape and gives off a wild west feeling, and is intentionally designed to look uninhabitable for story reasons, but it makes everything look the same, bland and boring. Not only that, but Trigun never stops to explain locations or simply walk around and take in the sights. Every single location has only one ... purpose, to set the backdrop of whatever fight happens there. There is practically no explanation behind the social structure of the world, the people living and working there and what kind of troubles they encounter on this hazardous planet. I'm pretty sure we don't even know the planet's population size, the planets size itself, how many moons and suns it has, and just where exactly the planet is in the universe. Trigun just doesn't respect its' setting, and completely ruins the intrigue by ignoring the basics of environmental storytelling. Unlike media set in our present reality, media set in fictional settings NEED to explain how they work. Because there is no prior knowledge going into this unlike how we know how our present earth functions. There are a few great shots of vistas, but the fact that Trigun ignores them completely alienates me from the world.

Art/structure:

Trigun's art is fine, with some actually great art here and there. However there is a massive problem with how the art is presented. Many, many times when reading the manga, there are panels where I need to stare at the art for a few seconds before actually noticing what has been drawn. Many doubles takes have happened due to the art's horrible composition, there's just simply too much going on and very poorly laid out on the page, causing confusion and making my eyes hurt. This is a problem with many manga with guns, but Trigun is unique in having this problem with a greater magnitude compared to something like black lagoon, which had a simpler art style with bolder lines and cleaner layouts. This is a 90's manga so there's an endearing drawing style and emotes, with similar era humour. The character designs are top notch for the most part, and actually have visual story telling within them. Another issue with this manga is speech bubbles. Many times you just DON'T know who is supposed to be speaking, leading to even more confusion. One of the biggest issues with this manga is the official English release version I read. The official English version does NOT translate sound effects at ALL, not even a little text box underneath the SFX explaining what it is, they don't even bother putting them below a panel or anything. This is extremely lazy and while I DO know hiragana and katakana, Japanese is NOT my first language and I'd much rather have the sound effects be in English. This issue must be even more apparent to people unlike me who DON'T know Japanese characters. This is inexcusable because the English version releases YEARS after Trigun ended, so there is absolutely no excuse for this lazy official version people pay for. (SPOILERS) There is also an issue with the main villain being the twin brother of the main character, so fights between them compound the previously mentioned issues even more (end of spoilers)


Story:

An absolute mess. It's a revenge story. But the main character is a pacifist. With a large overarching message about the value of human life. Pretty standard, however the manga spends far too much of its time on story, constantly rushing along to the next plot beat or fight with no In-between time to worldbuild or even for exposition. Leading to a very empty narrative. The time skip is practically useless as nothing happens in between, unlike one piece, everyone remains the same more or less. Take it out of the story and nothing would change. There is no character development, and when characters change, they don't do it because they had been built up, they do it for plot convenience. Leading to some of the biggest ass pulls in the manga. There are a few decent moments here and there, but for a manga that sacrifices everything else just to get the villains and heroes to collide as much as possible, as fast as possible, it's extremely bland, predictable and cliche. There is also a humour issue, like Demon slayer, where the tension is completely revoked, e.g being a severely injured character in one panel having their face exaggerated when touched by someone, usually with "owowowowowow!" which takes away from their supposed injuries.

Overall:

This was one of the most boring manga I have ever read. It has some incredible character and gun designs, Vash in particular, however the manga is let down by poor art composition, a cliche bland story, and forgettable characters with no natural development in a boring planet that's only there to provide a backdrop for the mediocre and boring fight scenes devoid of tension.

Ten years after reading it and love it for the first time, I'm here completely disappointed in these volumes after a second re-read. Why? because this reads like Nightow had an idea he couldn't well grasp and he just went along trying something in preparation of something else...which, considering these two volumes clock around 400 pages, is just utter BS. And it's not just the action being messy, it's everything (the characters, the plot points, etc.) feel like they were made up with no idea how to develop them coherently, just on the get go. With the lone exception of the main protagonist being a ... pacifist in a by-the-numbers third-rate battle shonen set in a western reality and the occasional laugh, nothing is really memorable here. If I were in you, I wouldn't bother wasting money here, I personally regret it.