My Life In Fandom: Vash The Stampede & Moral Courage

As if you needed another reason to watch Trigun, here's one to keep in mind if you have children: the show has a teachable perspective.

Anthony Marchetta's analysis of the protagonist's moral character and how he relates to the philosophy espoused is great if you're looking for something entertaining that also has something important to discuss, and in this case it's not just the philosophy displayed and its actual effectiveness. It's also good to talk about the damage Vash does to his character to cope with his guilt, approaching it as if you were taking apart a malfunctioning machine to discern the source of the dysfunction so you could fix it and bring said machine back to proper working order.

No, you're not doing this with young children. Adolescents? Certainly. (Same with Rurouni Kenshin.) You're also not doing so on a binge-watch procedure; this is Prime '90s anime, so it's meant to be watched serially and not all-at-once like you're a starving man at an all-you-can-eat buffet. You need the time between episodes to properly and soberly assess what happened and how exactly these events reveal the moral courage (or lack thereof) of those involved. Yes, this means putting in significant time if you're going to take this route, but by then you've already decided to have children at all so you've demonstrated that you're willing to do long-haul work like this; it's just another layer added to the cake.

And yes, you can do this for a lot of the best Japan has to offer, especially for my favorites, and I say that you should if you're concerned with ensuring that your children don't grow up to be basic bitch surface-skimming media illiterates that are easily suckered by media manipulators. The best works have depth, and this is one of them. Use it to your advantage.