Trigun, on TV Tokyo
Anime Galleries; ANN; IMDb; Madman; Retro Junk; TV Tropes; Wikia; Wikipedia
streaming sites: Amazon; Funimation; Hulu; iTunes

So there's this guy named Vash the Stampede, who's also called "the humanoid typhoon." You might call him a gunfighter, except he always tries to avoid any violence. Which is never possible, because trouble always finds him wherever he goes, but at least he always tries not to kill anyone. I should also say he's rather odd. He always seems to switch between being dead serious and really goofy without any segue at all. (There are characters like this in lots of different anime, and while I don't think Vash is the prototype, he does seem to me to be one who such characters most often get compared to.) Anyway, he lives on a planet called Gunsmoke, which was seeded by humanity after Earth became uninhabitable, but it's alot like the Old West. And Vash unintentionally caused a town to be destroyed like 20 years ago. And now he has a huge bounty on his head. And then these women, Meryl Stryfe and Milly Thompson, are sent by an insurance company to follow him. And um, sometimes they're joined by this travelling priest named Nicholas D. Wolfwood, who isn't near as averse to gunfights as Vash is.

Anyway, as I say, trouble keeps finding Vash, but he always tries to keep people safe and minimize destruction, but he rarely does a good job of the latter. After a while a story arc starts where this group called the Gung-Ho Guns are trying to kill him. They work for a man named Legato, who himself works for a guy named Knives, and occasionally we see flashbacks to when Vash and Knives were kids, over a century and a half earlier. They're not human, by the way. Knives thinks they're better than humans, and wants to basically kill everyone. There was a woman named Rem on the colony ship that found the two, and she tried to raise them, and Vash loved her and respected what she taught them, but um... Knives didn't. He killed a bunch of people and nearly prevented the colonizing of this new world. Anyway, Vash and Knives are kind of like yin and yang... you can even see that symbol when their weapons cancel each other out in the final episode....

Anyway, the only other thing I can think to mention is that in just about every episode, at some point a black cat (Kuroneko) pops up, usually at the most unexpected times and places. There doesn't seem to be a reason for this, it's just pretty random... but I do like that cat. (I doubt it's ever the same one, but they all look and sound the same.) Well, that's about it for characters and basic plot. I should also say that I like the show. Y'know, it's um, I guess both funny and kind of deep, and it's cool. My own philosophy would fall somewhere between Vash's desire to protect all life and Knives's understanding that not all life can be saved (as illustrated in a flashback when he killed a spider from which Vash wanted to save a fly, which would become a metaphor for the whole difference between the two characters). I know not all lives can be saved, I just don't think that means everyone and everything should be killed. Right? Anyway, can't think what else to say.