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Trigun

Trigun

トライガン

1998 Madhouse TV Tokyo 26 episodes Completed

Action Sci-Fi Western Comedy Drama

Details & Synopsis

Somewhere on a desert planet with two suns and no water, there is a man worth sixty billion double dollars. His name is Vash the Stampede. Every city he passes through ends up destroyed, leveled, cratered, reduced to smoking rubble. Insurance agents Meryl Strife and Milly Thompson are sent to follow him and minimize the damage. What they find is a lanky, spiky-haired idiot in a red coat who eats donuts, trips over his own feet, and refuses to kill anyone under any circumstances whatsoever.

This is either the funniest or the saddest thing about him. The show takes its time letting you figure out which.

Produced by Madhouse and directed by Satoshi Nishimura, Trigun aired on TV Tokyo in 1998. Twenty-six episodes that begin as a slapstick western comedy and quietly, almost imperceptibly, become something else entirely. The turn happens gradually and then all at once. By the time Knives arrives and the full weight of Vash's history lands on the screen, the show has already made you love these people too much to look away.

Nicholas D. Wolfwood carries a cross-shaped weapon the size of a door. He smokes constantly. He will break your heart.

Trigun was an Adult Swim cornerstone and a fansub era staple, one of the shows that defined what Western anime fandom looked like in the early 2000s. The 2023 CGI remake Trigun Stampede exists. This is not that. This is the original. This is Vash.

Alt Title トライガン

Studio Madhouse

Network TV Tokyo

Aired 1998

Episodes 26

Genre Action, Sci-Fi, Western, Comedy, Drama

Status Completed

Arc List (3)

Desert Wanderer Arc (9) Gung-Ho Guns Arc (13) Knives Arc (4)

Desert Wanderer Arc 9 eps 9 canon 📷 2

001 The $$60 Billion Man Aired Apr 1, 1998 canon ►

Meryl Stryfe and Milly Thompson - insurance agents from the Bernardelli Insurance Society - are dispatched to find Vash the Stampede, the most wanted man on the planet of Gunsmoke, and minimize the damage he causes. The man they find is a lanky idiot in a red coat who trips over things and begs for donuts. The city they are in gets destroyed anyway. The show establishes its central joke in the first episode and trusts that the joke will carry the weight of everything that follows. It will. But not in the way you expect.

Lore The Bernardelli Insurance Society's Actual Angle

002 Truth of Mistake Aired Apr 8, 1998 canon 📷 149 ►

A desert town with a failing water supply and a mayor skimming the funds. Vash intervenes - clumsily, loudly, apparently by accident - and the situation resolves in a way that only makes sense in retrospect. The show's formula is establishing itself: Vash looks incompetent. Vash is not incompetent. The comedy is the disguise for something that is watching everything and choosing not to show it.

View all 149 screencaps from this episode →

003 Peace Maker Aired Apr 15, 1998 canon 📷 162 ►

Frank Marlon - a once-famous gunman, now a drunk, living in the shadow of a reputation he can no longer inhabit. Vash helps him find the version of himself that still exists under the failure. The episode is the show's first clear statement of its pacifist thesis: a gun does not make you dangerous, and the absence of one does not make you safe. What matters is what you are willing to do and who you are willing to be while doing it.

View all 162 screencaps from this episode →

004 Love & Peace Aired Apr 22, 1998 canon ►

Vash falls for a kidnapping scheme involving a young heiress and proceeds to make it worse in every way before making it better in the only way that counts. "Love and Peace!" is both his battle cry and his punchline and the show is absolutely serious about both functions simultaneously. The episode introduces the tonal register Trigun operates in for its first half: genuinely funny, morally clear, and quietly building something underneath the comedy that it will not show you yet.

005 Hard Puncher Aired Apr 29, 1998 canon ►

The entire population of Inepril City is trying to capture Vash for the sixty billion double dollar bounty. The chaos this creates is the show at its most purely comedic - a man being hunted by everyone in a town simultaneously and refusing to hurt any of them, which makes the situation measurably worse. The writer proposed that Vash not fire a single bullet until this episode. The restraint was deliberate. The first shot lands differently for it.

006 Lost July Aired May 6, 1998 canon ►

The Inepril incident from Vash's perspective. Between the comedy beats, a city called July is mentioned - destroyed, supposedly by Vash, the reason for the bounty. He does not deny it. The episode begins excavating what it costs to carry sixty billion double dollars in guilt and still choose to smile at everyone you meet. July is not explained. Not yet.

007 B.D.N. (Brilliant Dynamite Neon) Aired May 13, 1998 canon ►

Sand steamer. Train robbery by Brilliant Dynamite Neon and his crew - old-school outlaws with flair and no particular philosophy beyond the money. Vash versus BDN is the show's first real gun duel and it is shot with the attention the earlier episodes were holding in reserve. Vash moves like something out of a John Woo film filtered through a cartoon and it is startling to see how well the animation serves it.

008 And Between the Wasteland and Sky... Aired May 20, 1998 canon ►

The sand steamer arc closes. Kaite - the engineer's son, a boy who has built his identity around his father's work - helps Vash and has to choose between the ship and the people on it. The sky is enormous and blue and the sand goes on forever and the episode earns its title. Small human moments in an inhuman landscape. Trigun at its most elegiac in the first half.

009 Murder Machine Aired May 27, 1998 canon ►

En route from the steamer crash to the next city, bus hijacking. A villain with a mechanical arm and no particular charisma. The episode is transitional - comedy giving ground to tension - and the bus setting creates a claustrophobia that the open desert episodes cannot. People are going to die in this show. The first half has been careful not to let that happen. That carefulness is about to end.

Gung-Ho Guns Arc 13 eps 12 canon 1 mixed

010 Quick Draw Aired Jun 10, 1998 canon ►

May City. Nicholas D. Wolfwood is introduced at a restaurant, helping out for the meal. A man with a cross-shaped weapon the size of a door, smoking constantly, with the easy confidence of someone who has been in every situation before and survived all of them. He and Vash dislike each other immediately in the specific way of people who recognize something true about the other person and are not ready to deal with it. The show's second lead has arrived.

011 Escape from Pain Aired Jun 17, 1998 canon ►

Desert caravan with Wolfwood and Milly. The episode develops Wolfwood's character through his interactions with children and orphans - a pattern that will recur and matter enormously. He carries that cross everywhere. It is not just a weapon. The show is not going to tell you what it means yet. It is going to let you watch what he does with it and decide for yourself whether a man like Wolfwood deserves the thing he is carrying.

012 Diablo Aired Jun 24, 1998 canon ►

E.G. Mine - a Gung-Ho Gun, one of the twelve most powerful assassins on Gunsmoke, sent to kill Vash. The name of the group has been mentioned. Now you see what they are. E.G. Mine fights with razor wires and contempt and the episode establishes that the people hunting Vash are not like the bounty hunters and opportunists of the first half. These are professionals with a purpose that has nothing to do with the money.

013 Vash the Stampede Aired Jul 1, 1998 mixed ►

Recap episode. The show uses the format to reframe everything you have seen through Vash's own awareness - he knows more than he has shown. After the recap, the original content lands: Vash spares Monev the Gale, who admits he does not know who sent him. "I just wanted to live." So did everyone Monev killed to get here. Vash makes him face that. Then lets him go anyway. The recap is the least interesting part of the episode.

014 Little Arcadia Aired Jul 8, 1998 canon ►

Promontory, a land dispute between settlers and a corporation. The quietest episode of the Gung-Ho Guns arc - no assassins, just people trying to hold onto something in a desert that does not care. Vash helps because he always helps. The episode is about what it costs to believe that every life has value when you are surrounded by evidence that most people do not believe this. Vash believes it anyway. That is not naivety. That is a decision made in full knowledge of the alternative.

015 Demon's Eye Aired Jul 15, 1998 canon ►

Legato Bluesummers. He is introduced killing a gang called the Rodericks for the minor offense of insulting him - not through violence of his own but by using his mind-control power to make them kill each other. He does it with the detached ease of changing a channel. Legato is the show's true villain and the episode establishes what makes him genuinely frightening: he does not want money or power or victory. He wants Vash to kill him. The psychology of that is the series' darkest thread.

016 Fifth Moon Aired Jul 22, 1998 canon ►

The turning point. Vash uses his angel arm - the built-in weapon of mass destruction he has been suppressing for 130 years - and creates a crater the size of a city that is visible from orbit. The fifth "moon" of Gunsmoke. Everyone within range is evacuated because Wolfwood takes it upon himself to do what the military will not. Vash disappears for two weeks afterward. The show does not return to its first-half register. The comedy is still there, but the weight of what Vash is - and what he is capable of - never leaves the frame again.

017 Rem Saverem Aired Jul 29, 1998 canon ►

The origin. Vash and his twin brother Knives as children - born on a colony ship, raised by a woman named Rem Saverem who taught them that every life has worth. Rem died saving the colonists of the ship from Knives' plan. Vash saw it happen. Everything Vash does - the pacifism, the smile, the inability to let anyone die even when it costs him enormously - is in direct conversation with Rem's death. He carries her the way Wolfwood carries the cross.

018 Goodbye for Now Aired Aug 5, 1998 canon ►

The angel arm - the weapon Vash cannot fully control and does not fully understand - was activated by Knives, not by Vash. July, the city whose destruction created the bounty, was Knives. Vash was the instrument but not the will. The episode closes the distance between what Vash has been accused of and what he actually is. It does not exonerate him. He was there. He survived. The people of July did not. That distinction and that guilt coexist in him without resolution.

019 Hang Fire Aired Aug 12, 1998 canon ►

Vash sighted at Little Jersey. More Gung-Ho Guns converge. Meryl and Milly are back in the picture, having spent weeks following the trail from Fifth Moon. The episode is the show catching its breath before the final arc - character work, the insurance girls realizing they are not just following a liability but a person with a history they have only begun to understand.

020 Flying Ship Aired Aug 19, 1998 canon ►

New Oregon. A typhoon forces everyone inside and Vash recalls the colonial ships - the Project SEEDS vessels that brought humanity to Gunsmoke, one of which he and Knives were born on. The past and present collapse into each other. The flying ship of the title is memory. The episode is atmospheric and elegiac and the Imahori score is doing work here that is beyond what the animation budget deserves.

021 Out of Time Aired Aug 26, 1998 canon ►

Two Gung-Ho Guns board a SEEDS ship and kill residents. The show at its most operationally brutal - the deaths are specific and real and the camera does not look away from what Vash cannot prevent. The episode's title is the series' thesis compressed into two words: he is always almost fast enough, always almost in time, and the gap between almost and actually is where everyone he loves lives and sometimes dies.

022 Alternative Aired Sep 2, 1998 canon ►

Following the SEEDS ship battle, Vash decides he must find Knives. The decision is not dramatic - it is exhausted. He has been running from this for over a hundred years and the running has not made anyone safer. The episode closes the Gung-Ho Guns arc without resolving it - Legato is still out there, still waiting, still wanting the thing Vash refuses to give him. The alternative the title refers to is not a good one.

Knives Arc 4 eps 4 canon

023 Paradise Aired Sep 9, 1998 canon ►

Wolfwood's episode. His childhood at the Eye of Michael orphanage. What he was trained to be. Who he was trained for. Why he has been traveling with Vash under false pretenses this whole time. He is Chapel's assassin, sent to kill Vash or deliver him to Knives. He chose not to. When he is finally confronted - by Legato, by his own conscience, by the weight of everything he has done - he walks into a church, stands against the wall, and dies upright. He does not fall. He will not fall. The episode is the reason Trigun is in every conversation about the best anime of the 1990s.

024 Sin Aired Sep 16, 1998 canon ►

Legato uses his power to take control of Meryl and Milly, forcing Vash into an impossible position: kill Legato, or watch the two people he has been protecting die in front of him. Vash fires. It is the only shot he has ever fired at a person. The show does not celebrate it. It shows you what it costs. Legato dies smiling because he got what he wanted. The pacifist fired. The sin of the title is not Legato's. It is Vash's own, as Vash measures it - and he measures it at the full weight of his convictions.

025 Live Through Aired Sep 23, 1998 canon ►

A small town, far from everything. Vash is alive and does not know why. Meryl and Milly stay with him through the aftermath of what the show put him through - Wolfwood's death, Legato, the gun. The episode does not rush toward the finale. It lets Vash sit with what happened. Meryl realizes she loves him in the way that becomes clear when someone you care about almost stops. The show has earned this slowness.

026 Under the Sky So Blue Aired Sep 30, 1998 canon ►

Vash finds Knives in the desert oasis of Dimitri. One hundred and thirty years of history. Two brothers shaped by the same woman and the same catastrophe who chose opposite conclusions from it. Rem believed every life had worth. Knives used that belief to justify exterminating humanity for failing to live up to it. Vash used it to refuse to kill anyone, even when it cost him everything. They fight. Vash wins. He does not kill Knives. He never kills anyone. The sky is enormous and blue and the donuts are waiting somewhere and Vash the Stampede is still walking. Love and peace.

Lore Debut: Vash vs. Knives

ⓘ Legend

canon Episode adapts events from the source manga.

mixed Adapts source material but adds anime-original scenes.

good-filler Anime-original episode generally well-received by fans.

filler Anime-original episode not based on the source manga.

📷 Number of user-uploaded screencaps available for this episode.

Vash the Stampede

The Humanoid Typhoon / Gunslinger

A legendary gunman with a double-sixty-billion-double-dollar bounty on his head. Despite his reputation as a ruthless engine of destruction who levels entire cities, Vash is actually a goofy, donut-loving pacifist who refuses to take a single life, constantly shouting "Love and Peace!" Beneath his hyperactive exterior, his body is covered in heavy scars, carrying the painful weight of a century of isolation and the burden of his superhuman nature.

+5 LORE

Vash vs. Monev the Gale Combat Ledger Vash vs. Dominique the Cyclops Combat Ledger Vash vs. E.G. Mine & Rai-Dei the Blade Combat Ledger Vash vs. Legato Bluesummers Combat Ledger Vash vs. Knives Combat Ledger

Meryl Stryfe

Bernardelli Insurance Agent / "Derringer Meryl"

The sharp, highly professional, and perpetually stressed representative of the Bernardelli Insurance Society. Sent to track Vash the Stampede to minimize insurance claims, she initially refuses to believe that the goofy, dramatic dork she meets is the legendary "Humanoid Typhoon." Armed with dozens of Derringer pistols hidden under her coat, her sharp mind and growing affection for Vash eventually make her one of his most trusted anchors.

Milly Thompson

Bernardelli Insurance Agent / Heavy Gunner

Meryl’s tall, incredibly strong, and deceptively gentle junior partner. Despite her imposing physical stature and her massive, custom-built stun-gun that fires heavy metal claws, Milly is a sweet, optimistic, and pudding-loving girl with a heart of gold. She has a surprisingly deep emotional intelligence, often seeing right through people's emotional walls, and her sweet, slow-burn relationship with Wolfwood is one of the show's most touching aspects.

Nicholas D. Wolfwood

Wandering Priest / Eye of Michael

The chain-smoking, cynical, and deeply charismatic traveling priest who carries a colossal, cross-shaped gun called the Punisher. Unlike Vash, Wolfwood is a pragmatist who is entirely willing to kill to protect the innocent. This fundamental philosophical clash between Wolfwood's brutal realism and Vash’s unyielding pacifism sparks some of the series' greatest debates. His complex past and tragic, redemptive arc make him one of anime's most legendary figures.

Millions Knives

SPOILER!

Primary Antagonist / Vash's Twin

Vash's cold-blooded, superhuman twin brother and the mastermind behind the destruction of humanity's SEEDS colony ships. Unlike Vash, who loves humanity despite their flaws, Knives views humans as parasitic, inferior beings who deserve nothing short of absolute extinction. Wielding immense god-like power and pulling the strings of the Gung-Ho Guns, his obsessive mission to force Vash to abandon his pacifism drives the apocalyptic climax.

LORE

Legato Bluesummers

SPOILER!

Leader of the Gung-Ho Guns

The deeply unsettling, fanatically loyal right-hand man to Millions Knives. Legato possesses terrifying telekinetic powers, allowing him to mind-control entire crowds of people, forcing them to mutilate themselves or turn on each other with a simple wave of his hand. He lives solely to fulfill Knives’ dream, orchestrating a series of sadistic psychological games designed to push Vash the Stampede past his breaking point and force him to break his sacred vow to never kill.

+3 LORE

Knives' Answer to a Brother Who Won't Fight The Gung-Ho Guns Legato Bluesummers The Gung-Ho Guns Vash vs. Legato Bluesummers Combat Ledger

Rem Saverem

SPOILER!

The Eternal Mother / Moral Catalyst

The brilliant, deeply compassionate crew member of the SEEDS project who raised young Vash and Knives. Rem is the absolute foundation of Vash's character; her unyielding belief that "no one has the right to take a life" and her sacrifice to save the colony ships are the sole reasons Vash became a pacifist. Wielding the geranium flower as a symbol of hope, her memory is a beautiful, haunting shield that Vash uses to protect his soul from his brother's darkness.

Monev the Gale

The Unstoppable Beast / Gung-Ho Gun

A towering, heavily armored cyborg who spent twenty years in absolute isolation, training his body for the sole purpose of killing Vash the Stampede. Wielding two colossal, high-speed Gatling guns on his arms, Monev represents a brutal shift in the series' tone. His destructive rampage through the city of Inepril forces Vash into one of the most desperate, bloody, and emotionally taxing battles of his life, testing the limits of his pacifist vow.

+2 LORE

Monev the Gale The Gung-Ho Guns Vash vs. Monev the Gale Combat Ledger

Dominique the Cyclops

The Hypnotic Assassin / Gung-Ho Gun

The highly confident, eyepatch-wearing assassin who utilizes the "Reptile Eye", a terrifying hypnotic technique that briefly freezes her target's sensory perception, making it look like she is moving at impossible, supernatural speeds. Dominique is one of the few Gung-Ho Guns who manages to completely outmaneuver Vash's legendary reflexes. Her incredibly tense, fast-paced duel with Vash remains a highly memorable masterclass in tactical gunslinging.

+2 LORE

Dominique the Cyclops The Gung-Ho Guns Vash vs. Dominique the Cyclops Combat Ledger

Midvalley the Hornfreak

The Jazz-Age Executioner / Gung-Ho Gun

The incredibly stylish, suit-wearing assassin who fights using a heavily modified tenor saxophone called the "Sylphid." Midvalley can manipulate sound waves to disrupt his opponents' equilibrium, project physical shockwaves, and play songs that physically destroy his target's nervous system. He perfectly encapsulates the series' underlying jazz aesthetic, bringing a tragic, musical flair to the Gung-Ho Guns' grim mission.

LORE

Chapel the Evergreen

SPOILER!

The Sinister Mentor / Gung-Ho Gun

The ruthless, wheelchair-bound assassin who serves as Wolfwood's former mentor in the "Eye of Michael" murder syndicate. Chapel wields a massive, cross-shaped machine gun similar to the Punisher, but split into two distinct, highly lethal firearms. His bitter, controlling relationship with Wolfwood represents the inescapable gravity of Nicholas's past, forcing a tragic, mentor-versus-student showdown that permanently shatters the hearts of our traveling group.

LORE

← All lore

Plant Technology

The Thing Keeping the Lights On

Gunsmoke Runs on Something Nobody Talks About

Energy Infrastructure Hiding a Bigger Secret

Plants as Infrastructure

Plants are the biological power source keeping human settlements alive on a planet that otherwise couldn't support them, quietly doing the work of keeping the lights, water, and everything else running in the background of nearly every episode before anyone explains what they actually are.

What Vash and Knives Actually Are

SPOILER!

Spoiler-heavy, core to the finale

The reveal that recontextualizes the entire series: Vash and Knives aren't ordinary humans, they're Plants themselves, the same kind of being the planet's entire civilization depends on for survival. Vash's pacifism and Knives' nihilism become two opposite answers to the same question once you know what they both are underneath it.