Trigun: Manga Vs 90s Anime Vs Stampede | Full Comparison

Very interesting video. 90's Trigun is one of the only anime I watched, and I was curious to see how it differed from the manga and Stampede.

This has been super interesting. I bought Trigun one DVD at a time back in 2000, before it hit TV, and loved it in a way you only can when you’re 13 and imprint on media like a baby duckling. Never read the manga, tho I do own the first volume in Japanese (which I absolutely cannot read) since it wasn’t translated back then and, y’know, imprinted. I always knew I wasn’t gonna judge Stampede fairly but tried to give it a chance, and my main feelings were that aside from Knives all the characters felt a lot more one-dimensional.

In the old anime, Vash and Wolfwood were interesting mirrors and foils in that they both used a lighter side to paper over deep trauma, though that trauma affected their worldviews and morals in vastly different ways. Meek, sad Vash and (especially) shithead edgelord Wolfwood just aren’t the vibe. I can give Stampede credit for a lot of things – the environmental design and world building are incredible – but despite the fact it takes place pre-July and is closer in a lot of ways to the manga, I just can’t vibe with weak character writing. They could have made it feel more grounded than the wild 98 comedy without boiling down the characters to a single note.

Anyway I have a friend who’s been trying to convince me to read the manga and after this maybe I just might. I’d never really considered going back to it til Stampede, and after a lot of "Stampede is way closer to the manga!" I figured that if I didn’t like Stampede I just wasn’t gonna like the actual source material. This video just might’ve convinced me. 🙂

trigun stampede is just made to show how studio orange evolved his CGI, in fact it gives nothing to the trigun saga. 1998 anime was the best when it comes to society and worldbuilding, and that's because half of the episodes are just short stories of vash and other characters in gunsmoke; and honestly the final part of the anime when vash is depressed represent better the trauma and tells more clearly the message than the manga does it. but when it comes to characters, story and plot the manga is unmatched. Overall, trigun saga is absolutely a masterpiece, it DESERVES to be put close to berserk and others

So basically:
Trigun 90's anime: Normal ending.
Trigun stampede: prequel dlc ending.
Trigun manga: true ending.

Yeah, the Trigun Manga wins by a lot. Both anime adaptations are pretty much on the same level, but the OG is better as of now. We'll have to wait for the rest of Stampede to decide if it's better than the original one.

I think the 1998 anime did well with what little source material it had to work with. I get the feeling that the writers were given a summary of where Nightow wanted the story to go, but considering it wasn't until nearly a decade later that the manga was finished, the exact details weren't ironed out. Also, the anime had a limited number of episodes to work with so it's why so much had to be condensed down. So I think it's very understandable that Trigun 98 only adapted the first two volumes of the manga and did a speed run through the rest, and you can't really criticise it for doing that, or for having a more light-hearted tone, considering the source material it was working from.
I do agree though that the fight between him and Knives was very rushed at the end. Honestly it would have been better too if the number of gung ho guns was cut down (especially the non-humanoid ones) because they were taken down so quickly they hardly felt like much of a challenge. Focusing more on their fights or spending more time with Knives would have perhaps been a better use of time. I'm glad you mentioned Vash and Knives' reaction to Tessla because that was possibly my favourite moment in the manga. It explains so much of the differences between the twins and really helps you understand why Vash was able to make peace with humanity's evils and Knives wasn't.
I know this has been said many times before, but I do wish the tristamp designs matched the gritter feel of the show. Even something as simple as Wolfwood's shirt being grey not white really bugs me because it was such an iconic part of trimax and made Wolfwood super distinctive even when only drawn in two colours and a blocky style. There's nothing inherently wrong with the tristamp designs, but they feel a bit too childish and cartoon-y for the harsh and violent story it wants to tell.
Glad Milly will be making a return in tristamp. The relationships between Vash, Wolfwood, Meryl and Milly were definitely the best part of the 98 anime and I was very surprised to see how infrequently the girls appeared in the manga. They were telling very different stories, but I could have read entire volumes of those four mucking around and I'm sad the girls were relegated to the sidelines in the manga. Hopefully we see more of that dynamic in tristamp S2!

i found this video suuuuper informative as someone whose been trying to comprehend the sequences of the three shows and i thank you for making it so much simpler. i do ask though, can you list the songs found at around 4:00 and 8:30?

You could say there’s three guns, a Trigun if you will.

Simular

Great video! I had no idea the 90s anime was so different from the manga. I will definitely have to check it out at some point.

Blasphemy to the original anime..😅

Why did they shrink the Nebraska gang cyborg guy? 🤦 that guy was huge in the og anime and manga. He is weak in stampede. Unesisary. Then they omitted Brilliant Dynamite Neon. 😮‍💨

9:29 nah I'm pretty sure Steve literally beat and abused him

Awesome recap, you did a great job. One small nitpick is that the word is "similar", not "simular."

I really enjoyed this, thank you!

Thanks for this breakdown… I was having a hard time getting through the new anime but wanted a comparison just like this one to see if I was gonna stick through it haha.