Rurouni Kenshin: Meiji Kenkaku Romantan - Tsuioku-hen

Pre-review:
I’m currently reading the manga and reached ch.163 (prior to the events which this OVA covers from the manga). Words can’t express how disappointed I was as I watched this. I wanted to experience Kenshin’s past in anime format w/out spoiling myself from the manga because I generally prefer anime over manga as it is more immersive and engaging. Most of my criticism will be due to the short length of this flashback. (I know it’s like 15 ch.in the manga, which is short also, so the manga isn’t excluded from this critique)
Before going any further I will SPOIL some of the chapters featured in ... the manga and the ENTIRETY of this OVA:

Characters and their motivation:

Every character featured in this OVA –aside from Kenshin- are bland and uninteresting. Now, let’s talk about the main cast (will be further explained in the writing section). Himura Kenshin is first presented as a child who went through a tragedy at a young age when seeing all of the three women, who bought him as a slave and took care of him after his parents died, get slaughtered by a group of bandits and got saved by Hiko that’s when he develops an ambition of saving the weak from the oppressive thugs by learning swordsmanship.
Tomoe, this bland character has no interesting quality in her at all. Her only existence is to act as a foil one for kenshin’s main story of atonement, and has two purposes to achieve which is to act as a love interest for Kenhin and to get revenge from Kenshin who killed her future husband.
Now the supporting cast, Enishi is Tomoe’s brother who hates the battousai because he ruined the future life of his sister so he wants to get him killed. Honestly, Tomoe’s death ruined Enishi’s character for me because Kenshin didn’t kill her deliberately or something of that sort, he wanted to kill an old man and she jumped in so she got sliced meaning Enishi’s reasoning now to kill Himura is non-sense and even if it is justified why didn’t he kill him when they were in the same place and (how) didn’t Enishi saw Kenshin’s remorse due to Tomoe’s death. Katsura Kogorō has nothing going for him nor the spy and I don’t even know why he betrayed them. Hiko, Saitou and the others play their role perfectly (JK) -a master and a formidable opponent against Kenshin- nothing more and nothing less.

Writing:

Beginning:

It starts out as I said in the character of Kenshin and it sets the tone for what this OVA will go through and it achieved it perfectly.

Story arcs:

There is only one which is the love relationship between Tomoe and Kenshin and that’s a problem, first there is no more than that and second it’s not executed as well as many people claim it to be. First point: It was a wasted potential that there was no training arc b/w Hiko and Kenshin, which doesn’t add any depth to the relationship b/w the master and his pupil nor do we learn anything that happened to Hiko in the past to what led him to be a swordsmanship to let us care about him nor does he have anything interesting in his personality which makes stand out so he appears as a plot device just to make Himura strong, whether it is in the Bakumatsu or the Kyoto arc. Another story missed out is that of Saitou’s group we never spent time to learn their motivations and ideologies other than being police which serve as opponents to the Ishin shishi. Now the main focus story of this OVA, the Love relationship between the main characters. What makes it so weak is that there is no redeeming factor for any of the two for each other, for example what makes Tomoe love Kenshin? IDK, it’s not like he saved her in any shape or form, it’s quite the opposite he killed her childhood friend who would later on become her future husband the next month of his assassination. The only thing she finds good about him is that he is good at heart but because he has been as an assassin tool for a cult to achieve their goals, that’s why he became like this…. you know Tomoe just because you sympathize w/him doesn’t means he is excused for what he did against your childhood friend. As for Kenshin, this boggles me even more, why did he love herr? We got 2 eps of them barely talking to each other and she didn’t offer anything useful to Kenshin like giving advices or anything and the point where he mentions that she helped him to get a new way life and become less of a hitokiri and more of a normal man. No you (Himura) dummy, you only got to see that life because of the downfall of the Choshu clan that made the leader ask of you to go away from Kyoto, and the businesses you made as earning money was an advice from the spy and he persuaded you to sell those medicines and not Tome. Farming plants as a way to live your new life, is a thing you suggested to Tomoe and she agreed on doing it. Kenshin you already were thinking of not killing people even before you knew Tomoe so that change of you that you claim it is thanks to Tomoe is a lie.

Characters dialogues/interaction:

It is a mid one honestly. You had those big words when those military swordmen talked to each other and kenshin’s interaction with Tomoe which was hella boring since you don’t feel the chemistry b/w those two, they have the same dull faces when they hated/didn’t care for each other and when they loved each other. In addition, there was kenshin’s monologues which honestly are the saving grace of this category.
Character development:
Kenshin’s development is extremely well-done. We always see him have a psychological conflict within himself, he always wanted to save the weak from oppressive people so he got into the Ishin Shishi (after he got proposed by Katsura Kogorō )to create a new age of peace but the way he do things is contradictory to his beliefs since he kills a lot of people he is assigned to assassinate, and he always had this feeling of not fulfilling what he wanted to achieve actually and at the end he realizes that what he had done was wrong and he is in the path to atone for what harm did he cause to a lot people’s lives.
Tomoe…. Has no character development aside from hating to loving Kenshin. And I already discussed that she is uninteresting

Ending:

The ending was good on its own but the pay off was not good for me. As Kenshin finishes his last mission, he goes off in his path of atonement.
World building:
During my read in the whole manga we never actually see the actual relationship between the shinsengumi and Ishin Shishi aside from being enemies or anything related to this setting, so I thought we would get-at some point- a good flashback about that and it would be this. Granted it’s a historical setting so if you don’t know about the Bakumatsu history -like me- then you are screwed. You are expected to go into this knowing that, so I can’t discuss it since IDK much about it, but that doesn’t excuse the OVA to go half-assesd about it. You don’t ever understand why the Ishin Shishi do what they do and why against the government.

Production/Presentation:

This is one of the best production of Anime I’ve seen. The musics were fire and hits at the right places, the animation is superb. No complaints

Enjoyability:

I didn’t really enjoy it too much. Since the relationship between the MCs aren’t compelling and their interactions are borderline boring and it is the only thing we had (as a story arc), everything else was kept at a minimum.

My Final thoughts:

I was really disappointed with this OVA seeing a lot of tens and a lot of people praising the love relationship between the MCs and I think it is a mediocre one. If you ask me what anime has a good love relationship, I would say Okabe and Makise (from Steins; Gate) is one of them.

I'll be honest here. I'm not a big fan of romanticized, revisionist historical animation. And when I mean romanticized; I mean to the fullest extent of the word and any other derivation of its definition.

Samurai X: Trust and Betrayal's story concerns itself with a cold blooded and skillful retainer of a rising Shogun. There's some political intrigue yet most of it will require some extensive background knowledge of the era but its main focus is on the retainer's realization of his actions and how he has lost his way despite his original, noble intentions of saving people.

Most of this comes from a woman ... who he is initially cold to, but slowly cracks his stalwart emotional wall. Sadly the contrast between the extreme violence and the rather feeble attempts at building a romance comes across as idealized, convenient (given some of the plot arcs that follow on) and frankly pathetic given in how the relationship develops from dialogue that is frequent to long awkward pauses, cold stares and tone-deaf writing. I do hope that this is not the writer's idea of a romance because most of the story concerns it.

The dissonance also grows stronger given the violence is not used as a metaphor to say anything meaningful about violence. It's violence for violence's sake. It's not dispassionate, it's not in any way juxtaposed with the romance to illustrate the different sides of life that are integral to a society, it is perfunctorily added for the sake of 'oohs' and 'aahs' as opposed to 'that's grim, this guy is a dick'. In other words the violence isn't used to distance the audience from the character. It is heavily stylized, connoting the actions as graceful and admirable rather than his internal conflict.

One could argue that this story is that of redemption but you would need something to redeem yourself for. Amir in Kite Runner had to redeem himself for his betrayal, John Marston had to redeem himself for being a nuisance to America's industrialists and the swordsman here is redeeming himself for killing people? That motivation is so unbelievably hollow and atypical that it dredges the tone for the whole film.

If there is one saving grace to this for me, it would have to be the rather fluid artistic direction. Bar the obvious visual spectacle, this is like watching Spartacus, flashy but ultimately piffle.