Rurouni Kenshin: Meiji Kenkaku Romantan (Rurouni Kenshin)

In the final years of the Bakumatsu era lived a legendary assassin known as Hitokiri Battousai. Feared as a merciless killer, he was unmatched throughout the country, but mysteriously disappeared at the peak of the Japanese Revolution. It has been ten peaceful years since then, but the very mention of Battousai still strikes terror into the hearts of war veterans.

Unbeknownst to them, Battousai has abandoned his bloodstained lifestyle in an effort to repent for his sins, now living as Kenshin Himura, a wandering swordsman with a cheerful attitude and a strong will. Vowing never to kill again, Kenshin dedicates himself to protecting the weak. One day, he stumbles across Kaoru Kamiya at her kendo dojo, which is being threatened by an impostor claiming to be Battousai. After receiving help from Kenshin, Kaoru allows him to stay at the dojo, and so the former assassin temporarily ceases his travels.

Rurouni Kenshin: Meiji Kenkaku Romantan tells the story of Kenshin as he strives to save those in need of saving. However, as enemies from both past and present begin to emerge, will the reformed killer be able to uphold his new ideals?

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Adaptation:	Rurouni Kenshin: Meiji Kenkaku Romantan
Prequel:	Rurouni Kenshin: Meiji Kenkaku Romantan - Tsuioku-hen
Side story:	Rurouni Kenshin: Meiji Kenkaku Romantan - Ishinshishi e no Chinkonka, Rurouni Kenshin: Special Techniques, Rurouni Kenshin: Review Special, Rurouni Kenshin Special
Sequel:	Rurouni Kenshin: Meiji Kenkaku Romantan - Seisou-hen
Alternative version:	Rurouni Kenshin DVD-BOX Special Ending, Rurouni Kenshin: Meiji Kenkaku Romantan - Shin Kyoto-hen, Rurouni Kenshin: Meiji Kenkaku Romantan (2023)
Summary:	Rurouni Kenshin Recap
Other:	Sobakasu

Sakurai, Tomo
Japanese

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Hasegawa, Hiroshi

Producer

Katou, Toshiyuki

Assistant Producer

Matsuda, Keiichi

Assistant Producer

Furuhashi, Kazuhiro

Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

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Opening Theme

	1: "Sobakasu (そばかす)" by JUDY AND MARY (eps 1-38)
	2: "½" by Makoto Kawamoto (eps 39-82)
	3: "Kimi ni Fureru Dake de (君に触れるだけで)" by CURIO (eps 83-94)

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Ending Theme

	1: "Tactics" by THE YELLOW MONKEY (eps 1-12)
	2: "Namida wa Shitteiru" by Mayo Suzukaze (eps 13-27)
	3: "HEART OF SWORD ~Yoake Mae~ (HEART OF SWORD 〜夜明け前〜)" by T.M.Revolution (eps 28-38,43-49)
	4: "the Fourth Avenue Café" by L'Arc~en~Ciel (eps 39-42)
	5: "It's gonna rain!" by BONNIE PINK (eps 50-66)
	6: "1/3 no Junjou na Kanjou (1/3の純情な感情)" by SIAM SHADE (eps 67-82)
	7: "Dame! (ダメ！)" by You Izumi (eps 83-95)

Reviews

Mar 25, 2024

No_following247

Recommended

Now before I begin I should probably address the elephant in the room, which is Nobuhiro Watsuki, the creator of Rurouni Kenshin. If you don't know, Mr. Watsuki has done some really questionable things in real life and honestly, I don't feel like going down that rabbit hole. I do recommend that you do some research into it so you can know what I mean. The question is, should you support Rurouni Kenshin even with all the mistakes Nobuhiro has made? Personally, I only try to judge and support the art and not focus on the artist. It's like listening to Kanye West. Ye has ... said and done some things that are pretty controversial, but the music he makes is usually quality. (For the most part, I'm gonna act like Donda 2 never existed). I'm a Ye fan myself and I really cannot defend what he says or does all the time, but I still listen to and enjoy his music. So I don't know, this kind of topic is really up for debate. If you have an opinion, let me know with a comment. I'd love to hear your take. But anyway, let's talk about Rurouni Kenshin and why I love this show.

So the thing is, this was the first shounen anime that I ever watched. Even though I first watched it last year, I still have a lot of nostalgia for this show and it already holds a special place in my heart. But why is that? Well, I'm not exactly sure. Maybe it's that animation from the 90's just looks so appealing and charming to me. Maybe it's because I think samurai are so fucking cool. Maybe it's because of the 90's animation that's appealing combined with the fact that it's a show about samurai that are fucking cool. And the thing is, it's not even my favorite samurai anime, because I have my issues with this show which I'll get into in a moment, but for now, I want to talk about the things I like.

First of all, Kenshin Himura is probably my favorite samurai character of all time. His tale is truly fascinating to me. I love when random badasses are trying to atone themselves for past mistakes. I think it makes for some pretty great stories. And I always appreciate that as much of a badass as he is, at the end of the day, he is always nice, kind-hearted and caring for his friends and other people. But it always seems like his benevolent behavior is a mask for the Manslayer inside of him. It’s way cooler than the way I’m phrasing it.

And he’s not the only great character. All the characters are great, for the most part. My favorite side character is probably Sanosuke. Aoshi is a close second. All the samurai fights are pretty cool and fun to watch. It may not have the greatest animation I've ever seen, but I'll let it slide, since it's an older show. There's a lot of great themes and messages about found family and peace and redemption. And a lot of great scenes where characters are talking about those sorts of things. Season 1 is also a nice introduction to all these characters and a solid start to the show. But it really ramps up once you get to Season 2: The Kyoto Arc.

When I first watched this show, I had never heard of it before and I didn't know that the Kyoto Arc was iconic in classic anime. And when I watched season one, I was pretty on and off with it. I would watch two or three episodes, then watch something else, and then maybe come back to it a week later. But once I got to the Kyoto Arc, I remember watching it and being like: "There really isn't a good place to stop. Eh, fuck it, I guess I'll just continue watching it." And that's exactly what I did and I ended up finishing the whole arc that day. As a matter of show, I ended up finishing the entire show the next day.

My only complaint with the Kyoto Arc was that even though I was enjoying it, I thought it went on for a little too long. Maybe I'm just not a big fan of long arcs, but I thought it kinda dragged at points, most specifically by the end. As awesome and badass as the Kenshin and Shishio fight is, it goes on for five episodes. And there were points where I thought it was over and we were about to wrap up, but it just kept going. And then there was the "Warrior's Spirit" bullshit, which I know that's manga accurate, but I thought that was so dumb. I mean you kinda need that otherwise it would be a pretty depressing ending to the arc, but I honestly couldn't contain my laughter when I saw that. But looking back, I guess the pacing and the longevity of it wasn't that bad because everything else was already great. Like my two personal favorite fights in the entire show are the Kenshin and Saito duel and the Kenshin and Aoshi duel, which are both equally badass and emotionally gripping.

Another complaint I have is that there were some episodes where I was like: "Eh, I don't really care." And the thing was, I didn't have the filler guide when I first watched this show, so I had to watch some pretty mediocre episodes that weren't that interesting. I know some people complain that Season 3 isn't that good because it's nothing but filler. I mean they're right, but I don't think it's that bad. Like there are definitely much worse filler episodes out there. And I actually think Season 3 had its moments as pointless as they were in the grander scheme of things.

I liked the religious cult arc. I liked how Sanosuke got a girlfriend during it, which I think he definitely deserves. It sucked that his relationship had to end in a bad way, but I won't spoil how. It may not be as epic as the Kyoto arc, but I think after a big story like that, you kinda need to take a break. I also liked the arc where they went into the caves to find a hidden "treasure." It was like an Indiana Jones adventure but with samurai. However, the final arc with the feng shui stuff was-ehh. Definitely the weakest arc in the entire show and honestly, it was so forgettable that I don't even remember anything about it.

However, the biggest issue I have with this show and I think the one thing that most people can agree with me on, is the relationship between Kenshin and Kaoru being pretty underdeveloped. For a show subtitled: Meiji Swordsman Romance, the romance isn't really explored that much. And for a show like this, the romance really needs to work, but unfortunately it's very half-baked. Like Kaoru always seems to be stuck in the friend zone for the entire show, while Kenshin just kinda sees her as a friend for the entire show. And they never advanced from there and I thought they would finally get together by the end, but it never really happened. And speaking of ending, holy shit is it anticlimactic. And I think the people who made this show realized that because it never even aired on TV, it went straight to VHS. But now you can easily find it on the internet, but it's not worth watching. In fact I'm just gonna spoil it right here because personally, I think it's so bad that it's funny.

So the final episode that never aired has Kenshin and Kaoru going to this beach resort and having a fling there, sort of. But they never fuck or kiss or do anything to move their relationship forward. Then there's a scene where Kenshin is on the beach and Kaoru is running towards him saying: "Kenshin don't leave me!" Because she had a dream of Kenshin leaving her life. And then they hug it out. And then the final scene is them returning to Tokyo on a boat and they see all the characters that they met in the show waving at them while they wave back. Roll credits.

It's so pathetic but at least it made me laugh. Maybe not in the way the show intended but I guess that's an upside. Like if this was another show with more than 100 episodes and I was enjoying it and then it had an ending like this, I would probably be pissed. But there's not even 100 episodes of this show and it's not the worst thing ever, but it's not good either. Apparently the manga has a much better ending, but I don't really read manga so I can't judge it. But just judging this ending, it's pretty underwhelming and you can tell while watching it that it was totally an afterthought.

But besides all that, I still love this show. If I was going off of nostalgia, I'd probably give it a much higher rating. But if I was not going off of nostalgia, it's a pretty flawed show, but I think there's still enough quality for it to be considered really good. Hopefully the new remake that comes out sometime this year fixes the mistakes that this show made. Because if not, there would be a lot of opportunities that were missed. But hey, I'm feeling optimistic and I'm pretty excited for it, so all I can do is hope for the best.

ORIGINALLY REVIEWED ON 01/25/2023

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Jan 2, 2024

NisemonoDesu

Mixed Feelings

Oro? Oro oro??

Ruroni Kenshin… a beloved classic produced the year I was born. I decided to pick this up mainly because of how good I’ve heard Trust and Betrayal is, but after finishing the series proper I had to write a full review because it would do this show a disservice to just slap a number on it and move on. I’ll try and keep this one brief. I’ll probably fail.

This is a show I want to be able to say I love, because there’s a lot here to love. Kenshin is one of the gems in director Kazuhiro Furuhashi’s Infinity Gauntlet, next to Hunter ... x Hunter, Gundam Unicorn, and Spy x Family. This is a director who needs no introduction—his work across 40 years of anime speaks for itself. His blood runs shounen, and he’s made a name for himself because almost everything he touches is quality. And directorially, Kenshin lives up to the hype. Despite having to get by on a 90s budget and make it stretch for almost a hundred episodes, Kenshin has a certain energy to it. Action scenes are never sakuga-infused eye candy, but the cuts, angles, and sense of kinetic energy keeps it exciting to watch. But… what are we even watching?

This is where I’m going to have to show my hand a little and explain that I do not typically enjoy shounen anime. Like, at all. The tropes that everyone loves… shouting attack names, speeches in the middle of battles, the-former-enemy-is-now-your-friend, all that stuff just really doesn’t resonate with me. I’m a big salty bald adult man now, not a teenager; I’m decidedly not the target demographic for these kinds of shows. I prefer a bit more subtlety and maturity in what I watch. However, when I decide to spend my time doing anything I like to put my best foot forward, so let me get into some of the things that kept me watching through the entire lengthy series.

First of all, there’s the setting. I’m a huge history nerd, and an even bigger Japanese history nerd. And my favorite period of Japanese history is definitely the Meiji Restoration. This show doesn’t just take place during the Meiji period—it embraces it with reckless abandon. Actual historical characters appear left and right—we’re talking people like Yamagata Aritomo, Saitou Hajime, and Katsu Kaishu—and most of them play large roles in the plot. The entire central theme of the show revolves around Japan’s transition from a warring feudal system to a modern peaceful nation-state and the philosophical predicament that places on the people who must use force to enforce that peace. Heavier stuff than your average shounen.

That brings me to the second strength of this show: the man who used more force than anyone to achieve his goals, Himura Kenshin. Among shounen protagonists, Kenshin stands apart for several reasons. For one, he’s 28 years old—much older than what we typically see in these kinds of shows. That age lends credence to his dark past because he’s had enough time alive to actually… you know… HAVE a dark past. And second is his ideals. While every other shounen protagonist’s ideals can be easily boiled down into something you can shout at the baddie in the series finale, Kenshin has a little more complexity to him. He combines optimistic pacifism with pragmatism.

Early on in the series Okubo Toshimichi approaches him and asks him to become part of the new Meiji government and Kenshin declines, which is surprising to Okubo because Kenshin fought so hard to put that government into place. But what Kenshin knows is that to keep that government in place, he’ll have to continue to perpetuate a cycle of violence that he doesn’t agree with. This is basically Max Weber’s philosophical treatise “Politics as a Vocation” presented in an anime for young teens: the fundamental characteristic of any government is the monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Kenshin both understands that fact and disagrees with it. After all, even if he fought to establish the Meiji government because he felt it was a better alternative to the Tokugawa shogunate, would everything they ask Kenshin to do be justifiable? He knows the answer to that is no, so he chooses a different path: rather than blindly do the bidding of some dubiously moral entity, he just tries to help the people who are directly in front of him who are obviously hurting or in danger, because that use of force requires the least possible amount of mental gymnastics to justify.

This is where my opinion on this show begins to fundamentally differ from most other people’s. Everyone else I see talk about this show unanimously agrees that everything before and after the Kyoto arc is boring filler, and the Kyoto arc is the real 10/10 stuff in this show. I have the complete opposite opinion: I think the “filler” is the best part, and the Kyoto arc is boring as sin. Those slow episodic “slice-of-life” -ish bits are where the show really takes its time to establish characterization and explore the show’s themes and setting. The Kyoto arc is where the show slides right back into all those same tired cliché shounen tropes that I mentioned hating a few paragraphs ago. By the time the Shishio battle was nearing its conclusion the show had become an absolute slog for me; I contemplated dropping it a few times but was barely able to finish it.

Is this the show’s fault? Not really—it just wasn’t written for me. I touched on this briefly in my last review of Kemono no Souja Erin, but I’m not the target audience for shows written at the YA level. And if you’ve read my review up to this point but haven’t seen the show, don’t let my over-analysis fool you—this show really doesn’t explore those interesting concepts it presents very deeply. I guess that’s the most frustrating part of this whole experience for me: the show teases my brain with these interesting themes and characters, and then barely scratches the surface with them because we can’t go too deep since we’re a shounen and need our battle arcs gosh darnit.

Overall, I’m going to have to give the show a 6—which on my rating scale is still a recommendation, albeit a weak one. If I were 13 years old again, this might be one of my favorite shows. If you’re a shounen fan, you should definitely check this one out. As it stands though, this is a battle shounen first and foremost, and an interesting historical thinker a distant second.

Oh, and Misao best girl don’t @ me.

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Jun 6, 2021

Resting_Bonfire

Not Recommended

Funny

Rurouni Kenshin

This work has undoubtedly a deserved cult status for its performance at the time. Many still see her as a heavyweight of her time and would call this shounen even today one of the best.

Note, I only watched the anime adaptation and not read the manga. The manga is supposed to be better and also have a different ending, I don't know about this.

At the time, he was definitely one of the more individual anime among the anime. The portrayal of the old Japanese era in which there was a lot of cruelty has given the series a certain atmosphere.

Apart from that, the ...

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Poll: Rurouni Kenshin Episode 17 Discussion Drgentile777 - Feb 28, 2010	17 replies	by Osk_Social »» Apr 19, 11:46 AM
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