Trigun

Originally airing in 1998, this anime series has the action and intellectual dark side that adds a mature feeling to the humor and slapstick. Largely unavailable to American audiences for the past decade, there are no special features to speak of but the strength of a story populated by unique characters still makes this box set of the complete series a must-buy. The hero, Vash the Stampede, can’t resist helping others out of deadly jams but he refuses to kill, so his creative solutions often backfire on him and the towns he visits, making him feared and hated. His genocidal twin, Millions Knives, doesn’t share Vash’s pacifist ways (instilled upon him by a woman he lost) and only wants to torment Vash and kill every human. At the start of the series, Vash acts like an oblivious, donut-loving jokester but along the way, his scars, both physical and mental, show him to be a complex warrior devoted to love and peace. A preacher who employs deadly force and two insurance workers help Vash combat a gang of killer freaks unleashed by Knives, but the real war is within Vash. Can he save the world without taking his brother’s life or will he break under the pain and punishment and sacrifice his ideology to take the easy way out?