Reviews

Even though the storyline deviated from the manga a little, it was still well done. Of course, the artwork in this OVA was superb. However, I had a hard time deciding whether the subbed or the dubbed version was better. In my opinion, the voice actors in the dubbed version sounded a whole lot better, but the quality of the dubbed version was hampered by the actors’ mispronunciation of Japanese words, and in some cases, mistranslations. The good news though is that the mistranslations didn't change the overall storyline. The mispronunciation of Japanese words occurred frequently, especially with “key-words” within the storyline. For example, everyone consistently mispronounced “Tokugawa” (and other Japanese words) so frequently, it became an irritation. Now, if your knowledge of proper Japanese pronunciation is limited or non-existent, then you probably won’t be bothered by this issue. The subbed version was good; however, I was really turned off by the female voice actress doing the part of Kenshin. To be honest, this really was the only real issue I had with the subbed version. If you can get past the Kenshin female voice actress, then the subbed version wins over the dubbed version, hands down. Overall, I liked the OVA and it flows fairly decently with the Ruro-Ken story line in the anime..