Trigun

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I really wanted to enjoy this manga, I really did. I love the anime and it's honestly one of my favorites out there. Reading pieces of information from the Wiki made me eager to read the manga as well...

But there is one major issue: it's borderline unreadable.

Yasuhiro Nightow can draw, sure, but he seems to struggle when it comes to making a readable drawing, particularly in action sequences. There is no flow between panels and so many of the panels I honestly cannot figure out what they're supposed to be. Sometimes I can make up a mangled figure. Sometimes I can find a gun. ... But it's not enough to tell me what is happening.

The story is enjoyable when you can actually read the artwork, which is usually during non-action sequences. There's a lot more to the lore in the manga than there is in the anime, and I particularly enjoy learning about Vash's past... when you know, I can actually tell whats happening.

60,000,000,000$$ man who is a pacifist. Even that short sentence gives it all. But why would a guy like him be worth so much? Well it's for you, reader, to uncover.
Manga Trigun is a mix-up of future and western.
The story behind it is quite good, although it can be a bit confusing. When you finally add everything, it's not as good as it could be, but nonetheless it's worth reading.
Art is slightly worse, just because sometimes, while Vash is struggling against others, you don't really know what happened. Also the art itself is not incredible, but it's not that important.
Now we enter the pride of ... Trigun, characters that were introduced in manga. Every person important to the plot is presented so well, that we can almost imagine them as real. Vash, the main protagonist, is depicted far more, then characters in other series. He has human feelings and thoughts, which almost everytime he tries to hide from others.
Finally enjoyment!
Trigun is well balanced, so while there are some sad moments, they're just the night before the dawn. You rarely have time to be bored, because with every story, you uncover the real profile of the 60,000,000,000$$ bounty, Vash the Stampede.
To sum up, Trigun is almost a must have on your manga (or anime) list. If you have not at least tried to read/watch it, now is your chance.

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.

I never watched much of the anime series. But I can tell it's a good one by reading the manga. The original Trigun manga has only two volumes which is a bummer, but it continues in a series called Trigun Maximum. This manga series tells some of the journeys Vash has had in the anime.
The stories in volume one have some great moments most of which are humorous. However in the volume two, Vash is more seroius and there aren't many funny moments in it. So that basically takes away some points. But the characters are still great at least.
If you like the ... anime series, you might like the manga version. Or maybe the Maximum version of the manga. Whatever you choose is up to you. Read it and see for yourself.

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.

I've heard only great things about the anime, so I was really looking forward to the manga. Unfortunately I was only disappointed.

Before I get into the spoiler-heavy critique of the plot, I'll start with an overview of the other aspects.

The art:
The art style is a bit of a hit or miss. There are some panels that are truly gorgeous. But most of the action sequences, and even some non-action, fall under the somewhat common 90's manga trope of messy to the point of being hard to follow.

The characters:
Vash is interesting, or at least has the potential to be. He's a seemingly easy going character, ... flaunting a message of 'Peace and Love' and refusing to take anyone's life even despite being classified a 'localised disaster' level threat and being hunted by people who want to do just that. He has the air of someone with an interesting past, and the story scatters little elements about what happened to him before the big reveal in volume 2-3. The companions he gains are good enough to provide some fun conversations and switch up the mood of the action, while having potential for interesting developments themselves.

Now onto the story.

Because as I mentioned, we do actually get Vash's backstory revealed. Or at least, the big event that has caused a lot of his issues and motives in the present. Unfortunately, this is only one of my many issues with the manga's story.

The writing rushes through the reveal so fast that I hardly found time to care about what was happening, let alone fully understand it. The reveal of what happened to Rem was mentioned so abruptly and concisely that I had to re-read it to even realise that they had just disclosed what had been the big mystery of the plot up till that point. The introduction of Knives in the past was glossed over so little that all we knew about him was 'that one evil thing he did' and the fact that he and Vash used to be some kind of friends. This meant that when he showed up again, what was meant to be a rivals-with-history dynamic fell flat for me. This dramatic reunion between them, when their revealed backstory seemed so rushed, only made the confrontation feel dull. It would have been better to leave it all unknown so that the mystery of their shared past pushes the story forward instead, rather than reveal it in such a lackluster way and rush through their reunion after. Or at least lengthened the story to give it reasonable time to build all its pieces better to make for more impactful storytelling.

Outside of the reveal and reunion, a rushed pacing is a recurring issue in the writing, though that's when it was the most evident.

Perhaps this is only meant to serve as a prologue to Trigun maximum so I'm being too harsh on it. However, I'd still rather review this as independent from maximum since it stands as a story on its own. And, on its own, it didn't give me a whole lot of drive to read maximum next, even with the new pieces of information it introduced at the end to re-ignite its mystery.

Trigun – Spoiler Free – Not Recommended

TLDR
Story – 3/10 – 3 x 0.275 = 0,825
Art – 1/10 – 1 x 0.2 = 0,2
Characters – 2/10 – 2 x 0.225 = 0,45
Enjoyment – 2/10 – 2 x 0.3 = 0,6
Total: 2,075 -> 2

Disclaimer
... This review is solely on the Trigun manga, NOT Trigun Maximum.

Story – 3/10
This manga is really, really short – only three volumes long. Thus, the story really doesn’t have a proper ending, being mostly a prequel to Trigun Maximum. But with what we have available, it is ordinary and boring at best. This is really unfortunate, as world-building, even amidst a terrible art style, looked interesting.

Art – 1/10
Art is by far the worst element in Trigun. It is just terrible, not efficient, confusing and so bad that it becomes memorable for the worst reasons possible. It is an exercise in surrealism that renders the story incomprehensible. Action scenes – which are not easy to draw all by themselves — are also despicable. Apart from Vash, character design is fundamentally flawed and also confusing. Characters are poorly designed – sometimes, they seem to take inspiration from Jojo (which would be good) but in the worst possible sense possible.

Characters — 2/10
The only character in Trigun who keeps me from lowering the rating is Vash (the main character), for he stands on an interesting premise. Otherwise, the characters are forgettable at best and incomprehensible at a minimum, thanks to the terrible art style.

Enjoyment – 2/10
Art makes the enjoyment of Trigun a painful experience. In all fairness, there are several panels where we simply have no idea what is going on. As previously stated, I know the original Trigun is a prequel to Trigun Maximum, but the enjoyment was so bad that it simply becomes impossible to want to read the sequel – again, primarily because of the art style. Vash (as a character) and the world's lore are the only things that stand positive in the overall scenario. I definitely don’t recommend Trigun, and I don’t think I will ever read Trigun Maximum – from what I have seen, it is also inelegant and incomprehensible.

The story follows the protagonist Vash, a.k.a the 'Humanoid Typhoon' who has a bounty on his head and is being chased down almost everywhere he steps his foot in. Despite being a pacifist, he somehow manages to wreak havoc wherever he goes. Within the span of 22 chapters you'll get to know about him and his past and what drives him to do what he does!
The protagonist is cool and the side characters are also pretty decent but they don't have a story to back them up, well at least in this manga they don't.

Considering that this manga was published in 1995, the art ... isn't that bad, especially a few panels were absolutely cool! Some people may feel a bit uneased with the art style, if they are not used to reading such antique pieces.

For only 22 chapters, this manga offers a lot and is quite engaging as so many things are going on as you move forward with it. Even though it's fast and engaging, it is also the reason why the story has a few flaws in it. The story was rushed and it felt like a lot of elements which were to be revealed later, were revealed too early. The story definitely isn't that bad, it just needed to be executed in a different way.

If you're someone who's planning to read it and don't care much about where the story is headed, then I'd say it's definitely worth a shot!

How does this not have a review like Baki and Mob didn't either, well whatever. The scores are a baseline high, maybe nostalgia played a role but I did try to review unbiased, tried, but I might have failed. Very funny faces which I love World Trigger does this very well. I just got done the original Trigun(the first time I've read it, watched it twice) and it was very good, and it held my interest, engrossing is the word I love to use on very good stories, just like all Baki's I want to read the next chapter and not sleep.

~SPOILERS~

Basic story setting is ... simple: vast wasteland(old west style[US]), big bounty(Massive 60 billion $$[double dollars]), lost tech, two companions(female) who do tend to help more than hinder. Has a strong hatred towards some douche bag named Knives, who made the "seed ship" crash killing his BFF Rem. He fights windy(Monev The Gale), ballman(E.G. Mine), and dragon eye lady(Dominique The Cyclops), so three assassins(Gung-Ho-Guns) out of twelve to "test" himself i guess. He also has a small fight with a newly birthed Knives who grabs his arm and transforms it into some giant ass arm cannon. Vash regains the control of his arm and aims it up away from the city and punches the moon with some sort of huge energy beam. This also leave a huge crater where he fired the beam and as of now it seems Vash is dead.

Trigun is a very good story, a unique one that isn't normally found anywhere else, but I can't say it doesn't have an extremely rough start. (light spoilers)

This spans around 1-3 volumes of early content, and the anime stops following accurately at around chpt 7 of vol 3. As a general warning, the mangaka is not a very lore orientated writer. Some things will be left unsaid, especially in these beginning sections.

Trigun Maximum refines the earlier elements that this manga had, and ultimately, the last volume ends in a big bang.
If you came from the anime, and you'd like to see more, I deeply recommend ... Trigun/Trigun Maximum. Later on, the art shys away from its primitive, rough form, and eventually forms a story that will even give you context on side characters and their environments. Trimax deals with some heavy thoughts and dark themes, which is barely shown in the final chapters of Trigun. The tone of the manga is completely different from the anime.

Dreadful, pathetic wasteland with a glimmer of hope is the best way I can describe the manga. Vash's philosophy continues to get challenged all throughout the story, so if you at least *liked* this beginning portion, I urge you to continue forward.

General weaknesses:
Incoherent art, lack of flow. In this one especially, the art is rough until it gets near the end of it. Trimax has arguably better art.
Poor translations, Dark horse does an...okay job. I recommend Trigun Overhaul. Stay away from scanlations.
Plot line is the main focus, minor and major details do get explained, but if you're looking for cohesive of world building...then it falls flat in that department.