Was watching anime the past week, and the two series had similarities that ended with the gun toting main characters, Vash the Stampede (Trigun) and Brandon Heat (Gungrave).

Trigun was like watching Cowboy Bebop. You are just thrown into the story and you’re slowly introduced to the characters. There is little to link most episodes together and the story slowly develops. Towards the latter half of the series, you’re given a more in depth history of Vash, but it’s still sketchy and leaves most of it to your imagination. The ending leads Vash to confront his past, but there is very little to satisfy the curiousity and a lot of story threads are just left unfinished. Heh, it’s almost like the animators did not want to take responsibility of how the story ends, but leaves you to decide how you want everything to turn out. Still an enjoyable watch though.

Gungrave is based on a video game, or so I read. This anime however, will probably be one of my better favourites. The opening was vague and a little exaggerated as you had monsters and this undead guy carrying some bad ass gun and blowing them to pieces. The animation was top notch however, so I was inclined to find out where the story went. Actually, I think the story was seamlessly blended, with adequate flashbacks (unlike Naruto, where you get long winded flashbacks that explain stuff but are ultimately useless as you’ve seen those scenes before) that explain and add depth to the story. Brandon Heat was revived from death to protect somebody, and that’s how the story begins, but how it all ended up like that is what the story strives to tell us. Compared to Trigun, there is a bigger plot to the story and everybody is intertwined (willingly and unwillingly), and you feel for each character until the very end. It explores the contradiction of human emotion and human reasoning. Heh, don’t want to give away too much other than I’d recommend anyone to watch this series.