Trigun - episodes 23 to 26

That ending was quite odd.

There was an interesting question raised about Wolfwood: just what kind of holy man is he? I was going for Catholic, but there's something about him that goes against that - perhaps he's just a flawed man who can't always conform to his faith, or perhaps the rules of Catholicism changed to meet the necessity of the barren planet. The way he turned out, however, was highly compelling and he was definitely one of the better characters of them all. The way they paired him was a total surprise.
He was weaker than Vash, while appearing to be strong. This idea of strength and morality was part of what made the interplay between Wolfwood and Vash, and Knives for that matter, was ultimately the series' backbone.

The other aspect is that Meryl was allowed to come into her element. The one truly tear jerking moment of the series came with her bathed in a golden light. And, while it hadn't seemed like romance, that's exactly what came up. Because it was so tender and unforced, it blossomed naturally.
Again, Milly's feelings were largely unexpected. What was taken as joking turned out to have serious undercurrents.

One thing that I had always forgotten to mention, beyond Hayami Sho's Osaka-ben, was that the mysterious Rem was voiced by Hisakawa Aya. This is layered by the fact that Hisakawa Aya and Onosaka Masaya were both Kero-chan in Cardcaptor Sakura and here their respective characters share the same philosophies.
Another thing about Rem is that her relation to Vash is completely unexpected and subverts story types to a high degree. Vash's final lines represent both the growth and limitations that had been imposed on him by this mentor, creating several of the more complex issues of the series.

Finally, the ultimate episode is weird. One would think that it would cover the present, but half of it was lodged firmly in the past. The final duel was very quiet, and Knives is someone who I will perhaps never completely understand, but the excitement ran rampant nonetheless. The last scenes, continuing into the ED (new animation, but still that awkward old song) are a fitting ending. It was abrupt while encompassing the spectrum of emotion and situation, and quite satisfactory.

Trigun was a highly enjoyable series, that made one crave manga. It has a definite, hopeful ending. It's exactly what one could hope for, but its shift from high comedy to high drama might put quite a few off along the way.