One thing to keep in mind with Trigun throughout its run is that first appearances can be deceiving. While Vash make seem like a comical goofball if you are coming upon this series for the first time, there is quite a bit more to his character than what you would see on the surface. Plus while the first half of the series starts off as a comedy-action title, hints are spread out throughout this part of the series that reveal more aspects to Vash's character such as his superhuman gunmanship and idealist philosophy. Things gradually get more serious within the second half of the series where Vash's past makes its presence felt on him as his origins get revealed and they are a rather complicated matter that push his idealist beliefs to their breaking point.
For its time, Trigun was a rather unique title in its setting with mixing elements of sci-fi and westerns. While typical elements of westerns such as outlaw gangs, crooked sheriffs and survival in the desert are incorporated, the series also incorporates sci-fi elements such as robotic body parts for humans, the PLANTs that provide power to human cities and the unique origins of how human life came onto Gunsmoke. Vash's origins play into this unique mixture when his origins are unveiled later in the series.
While Vash is the main character of focus in Trigun, prominent characters within the series still get a decent amount of fleshing out. Meryl and Millie show a diverse range of personality when dealing with their adventures of Vash and Wolfwood gets a good deal of fleshing out having his own rather complicated origins and reasons to stick with Vash throughout later episodes in the series. The episodic plots even offer some fleshing out of major characters and introduce some rather colorful ones like members of the Nebraska family and Brilliant Dynamites Neon.
The show does have some shortcomings. While the serious bent of Trigun's second half helps to add an ongoing plot lacking from its first half, the enemy threat Vash and his allies confront suffer from some rather shallow development to a great extent since many of them only exist as obstacles to be put down and the true threat Vash confronts from his past makes little action throughout the series beyond a rather lackluster final battle in the series finale.
Visually, Trigun is of standard quality for a late-90s anime series. There is a good amount of detail drawn into settings and character designs with subdued color toning. The highlights of the visuals come in the form of some of the technologies employed and some giant-sized enemy characters seen at points throughout the series. The series makes use of animation tricks to simulate fluid movement, particularly during heated battle scenes. However, the choreography for these scenes have their moments thanks to unique environments where they take place or the special abilities of foes that Vash confronts.
The soundtrack of the series consists of western-influenced tracks consisting mostly of electronic rock and guitar numbers that are fitting for both the setting of the series and the mixture of action, comedy and drama found throughout its run.
Overall, Trigun is a fun and engaging series that offered a original setting unique for its time, a nice balance of action-comedy and drama and a lovable and complicated lead character in the form of Vash. As one of anime's popular gateway drug titles, this is an easy recommendation to make as the series is very accessible to non-anime fans, especially with the excellent English dub featuring Johnny Yong Bosch as Vash.
