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This review is going to be divided in 2 parts, first a standalone spoiler free one, and then I am going to compare it with the old one and might contain spoilers.

First of all, animation is great, yes is full CGI but it is good CGI, if you love animation, I recommend at least the first and last episodes. Honestly, even if you don’t want to watch this anime, if you watch those two episodes you probably can fill the gaps on your own.

Story wise, it’s a little lackluster but there is a reason why: it’s just a setup for the second season. ... But don’t be afraid, this part does have a satisfactory conclusion for its own story, and just let stuff open or inconclusive because is not supposed to be done yet.
The characters are one of the weak parts of this show, it could be that I am more akin to the old ones, but it is hard to not see this new Vash as a boring protagonist, even if not comparing him to the old version there is not much to say about him in this new rendition, again the best things that he does are in the first and last episode. But I can’t blame this all on the character, because most of the settings where he is thrown in are just empty: The desert, abandoned towns, a sand ship that weirdly enough doesn’t have passengers. This is one of my issues with this new version, there is no life to most locations, and there is a lack of interactivity outside of the main cast and some villains. Due to this, there is no way Vash, a charismatic lovable goofball, can shine if there is no one to bounce out of.

So, in the end, I will say that it is an ok series, if you like sci-fi and shounen with a wild west feeling, go ahead, Trigun is for you, but what version to watch? If you want new graphics and a more serious tone watch Stampede, if you want a more goofy, old edgy pre-2000 styled watch the original Trigun.

Spoiler section below.

Now talking about the old one let’s talk about some interesting stuff. First, I want to say that I re-watched the old one because it’s almost a decade since I watched it, and I remember liking it but it wasn’t something amazing. And I can confirm, it isn’t a masterpiece like a lot of people say to this day. They might be remembering it with the pink glasses of nostalgia. I am not saying is bad, but there are a lot of bad animated episodes, a lot of them feel like filler, and some of the goofiness of Vash and the girls is pretty embarrassing compared to just them making funny faces in this new version. Now I can understand why in this new version they started by showing us that this is a sci-fi from the beginning, as in the old one the way it was presented most of the time was very jarring or abrupt. Also, the old one had a 180 shift on the tone from goofy wild west adventures to serious depressing violence, that’s why this new version already sets the tone as a serious story with some lighthearted moments sprinkled here and there.

I also like that Knives gets introduced (or at least mentioned as the antagonist) in the first episode. The old one just takes too long to introduce him. The only problem, and I will expand my point above about the characters, is that they change personalities. The old Knives is more cold but sophisticated, narcissistic, and psychotic, this new one feels more like a greedy and resentful teenager. I hope his personality changes a little closer to the old one in the second part. Another character that feels immature is Meryl, but I guess it’s expected as apparently, she is younger in this version. Wolfwood as well has lost his charisma and sense of humor, now he is grumpier and more cynical. And again, Vash losing a lot of charisma and creativity, but let me retake the point about the places feeling empty. This is something that when I started watching I felt like something was wrong, “Was Vash always this coward? Was Vash always this boring to be around? Why does the pacing feel slow?” Well, is because there is no one around. In the old version, almost every episode is a new town with tons of new people, people that talk, joke and interact with Vash and the main cast. There is also a lot of minor grunts in every episode that Vash needs to defeat or at least deal with, and there is the opportunity to show creative ways to win without just shooting them. And let me tell you, old Vash actually cracked some bones, something that this new Vash seems to be afraid of doing. I could talk as well of the lack of dead innocent people in this new version, but it might come up in the second season so I am going to skip it.

Obviously, I can’t compare it 100% to the old one, as this is more of a pseudo-prequel, also there is a lot of stuff that happened in this first season that actually is supposed to happen later in the story, so I am interested in seeing what they are going to do to cover those up, like Monev for example.
But at the same time, there is stuff that I actually like better in this new version than in the old one, like for example the existence of the black and white guns. In the old one feels too on the nose as “The good guy’s gun and the bad guy’s gun” here at least the black gun is black due to Vash’s power. We get a nice explanation as to why Meryl uses these tiny guns later on. We got an explanation about Zazie, the old one never reveals why exactly it can control bugs and worms. Monev existence and backstory is way better than the old one, the old one is so dumb. I don’t like what they are doing with Legato though, the old one seems to be the better version for now, but we will see how he develops in the second season.

All in all, it’s an ok re-telling of the flashbacks and events to lead to the old one and I think it deserves a 7/10 but honestly, I should read the manga and maybe you should too.

Ah btw, Millie is a non-character for the most part in the old one and I can not understand people making a fuss about her not being in this new one, but hey, she is confirmed for season 2, hope she is better than the old one.

Heads up, I haven’t read the manga and I don’t plan to.

Tl;dr: Could have been an edgy entertaining, smart 200 IQ 4D chess plays with mind games thriller anime, but it failed. It’s shit and I don’t recommend it.

Now, let’s go to the meat.


Art (animation, character design, background):

-Animation: 5/10 (Average)
... There isn’t too much to talk about it, the theme doesn’t allow heavy action each episode so you can’t expect fluid animation, but hey, Death Note got amazing animation for key moments, why this didn’t? Sometimes character would look off model so that’s a sign of bad quality.

-Character design: 5/10 (Average)
Just as the last point it’s hard to rate this kind of thing because I bet the author wanted characters that felt and looked real, modern, urban. But I can deny that some of them are just boring at glance, most of them look plain and their personality it’s as plain as their design.

-Background: 7/10 (Good)
There is a good amount of bgs on this, and most of them are actually pretty nice. It’s a shame that they don’t go further from your casual visual novel bg, the kind of bg that the characters don’t really interact with.


Sound (Music, SFX):

-Music: 5/10 (Average)
There isn’t a song that I can remember from this show. Nothing is remarkable either.

-SFX: 6/10 (Fine)
The sounds for the SCM and the duels are fairly ok, it’s more remarkable that the music I can tell you that. Other than that, they use the same pack of sounds that your average anime uses.


Story (Characters, plot, pacing):

-Characters: 3/10 (Very bad)
Aside for the fact that they are boring, my big problem with the characters is that most of them, I think more than half of them, just became extras for the last 6 episodes. These characters have 0 dialog lines past the fourth or fifth episode. Do you remember Seiya? I don’t. They introduce more characters that really don’t add anything they just become numbers, pieces of a collection. But the worst part is that most of them become dumb while in duels so they obviously lose. Why try to crate smart characters to have intense duels trying to outplay their rival when you can just create a simple version with dumb people?

-Plot: 3/10 (Very bad)
This point isn’t spoiler free, so just go to the pacing if you don’t want spoilers.

I mean, I bet the author felt clever making the dog a player in his sick game, but hey, anything for being original amaright?

Any ways, the concept of the SCM it’s kind of ok, it’s stupid that your victim needs to be using one for it to work, because I bet irl no one would fucking put anything in his/her mouth just because some fool want you to play a game. (Google “Watch ya´ mouth”) well, maybe I’m wrong.

In the same line, what happens if someone just refuses to accept the duel? I don’t remember if they gave an answer to this or not, but let’s say that if you don’t accept it you just lose. Then what happens if you want to accept but only if you put some new rules or change the duel so it’s more in your favor? Do you get where am I going with this? The show could have some cool inner monologues for the characters trying to decipher the trick of the duel and coming up with a more favorable challenge or at least a twist on the rules of the rival. The first episodes feel good in the duels even with them being simple and easy to follow, but you would expect for them to become more complex, spoiler, they don’t. In fact, the duels don’t matter anymore, they are just a transaction now: “I challenge you… you just lost”. There are even duels that just happened off screen “wow, I just lost all my slaves, and I didn’t know” terrible. But for the casual duels that you get a look at, they make characters dumb, take that duel between Eiya and Nerima Muon (The business pimp man) 2 hours, the one that have more money at the end wins (some rules that you need to get money and not use the one that you already have). Obviously Eiya have a plan to make 1 million. The old man makes his workers go and take money from his clubs/shop/businesses. They get almost a million, and they even ask the old man “Do you want us to get more to the other places?” And he says “No” why? Because he just got 10 million from Yuuga. And I would ask you, if you just got a bag full of money, what is the first thing you would do with it? I would give you time to think about it.

Answer: You count it.

I mean, I would still send my workers to get more money on my other establishments, but also, I would count how much money I’m getting from this bag, and by doing that I would have seen the time bomb in the bag, or I could at least hear the clock.

Obviously, the old man plays dumb, the bomb burns the money in the bag and he just lose. I don’t want to say Eiya is a Mary Sue, but I will do it anyway.

But you know what is worst? The Judgment SCM, forget the duels, if I snap my fingers you are my slave now. So yeah, get rid of the interesting part that makes the show different, let’s just get slaves. At first I was like “What? How do you defeat that?” but then I said “There is a trick in this, there has to be… right?” lucky me, there is and I’m grateful that they told us, shame it was in a stupid way. The owner of the judgment SCM just get too cozy with one of his slaves, she asks him “How does it work?” he then tells her and BAM! She wasn’t his slave anymore, he gets ambushed and now the JSCM is owned by someone else. But at that moment I knew the path the show was going. The JSCM doesn’t work if the other user hasn’t lost a duel. Do you know who haven’t lose a duel yet? The Mary Sue obviously.

But then, we get to the part about slaves and the human nature. Again, the first episodes are ok at it, but as the show continues you see how it lacks balls to deliver. I can assure you if this was molded on real life, at least one slave would have committed suicide to escape the torture of being a slave, probably a master would end up killing a slave, other would make their slave kill other master or at least commit multiple crimes. And a lot of sex and rape, but that just gets stale and to be fair, we got rape in the first episode, and there is a fair amount of nudity, don’t get me wrong, it’s not really at par with ecchi series, and it’s not even good nudity so don’t worry about it.

Oh! I almost forgot to talk about the dumbest part, some kid is possessed by his dead mom so he works like 2 people in one body, so when the mom gets to control the body she doesn’t have to follow the orders of his master. I mean, it could have worked if you just say “Oh yea, this kid, multiple personalities” but no, they went for a possession so they can bring 2 more characters.

-Pacing: 6/10 (Fine)
When you get boring characters with a bad execution and bad development of a good premise, it just feels bad, but surprising enough, it doesn’t feel like a drag. Shame that there are a few backflashes of things that we already saw and don’t need to be showed again.


Enjoyment (entertainment, inspiration):

Entertainment: 3/10 (very bad)
I only give it points because the first 3 episodes are ok

-Inspiration 0/10 (worthless)
This is just a special point if the show has something special for me, if it inspires me in any way or if it has some good message, I don’t know, something that makes me feel alive(?).

OVERALL
If you know math just sum the ratings
Fuck it, I would tell you, it’s a 4.

Sorry for the bad english, I only know 3 more languages.