るろうに剣心 -明治剣客浪漫譚-

RUROUNI KENSHIN: MEIJI KENKAKU ROMANTAN

ANIME

STATUS
COMPLETE
EPISODES
94
RELEASE
September 8, 1998
LENGTH
25 min

DESCRIPTION

Himura Kenshin is a vagabond with a dark past and sunny disposition. Not a ronin but a rurouni, he was never a samurai, but an assassin of utmost skill in the Meiji restoration, who in the turning point of the war simply walked away. His travels lead him to Tokyo in the 11th year of the Meiji era, where he befriends a female Kendo master, a former thief, a brawler and a doctor all with their own secrets. Together they fight off the enemies surfacing from the dark past that Kenshin cannot escape.

(Source: Anime News Network)

CAST

Kenshin Himura
Mayo Suzukaze
Sanosuke Sagara
Yuuji Ueda
Kaoru Kamiya
Miki Fujitani
Yahiko Myojin
Miina Tominaga
Makoto Shishio
Masanori Ikeda
Hajime Saitou
Hirotaka Suzuoki
Aoshi Shinomori
Yoshito Yasuhara
Soujirou Seta
Noriko Hidaka
Seijuurou Hiko
Shuuichi Ikeda
Megumi Takani
Mika Doi
Misao Makimachi
Tomo Sakurai
Souji Okita
Akari Hibino
Jinei Udoh
Akio Ootsuka
Anji Yuukyuuzan
Yasuyoshi Hara
Yumi Komagata
Kanako Irie
Kamatari Honjou
Junko Takeuchi
Souzou Sagara
Hidehiro Kikuchi
Hannya
Akio Nojima
Tsubame Sanjou
Yuri Shiratori
Shura
Miwa Matsumoto
Yutarou Tsukayama
Mayumi Tanaka
Nenji Kashiwazaki
Kouichi Kitamura
Misanagi Moriya
Chisa Yokoyama
Tae Sekihara
Sumi Shimamoto
Chou Sawagejou
Shinichi Fukumoto

EPISODES

Dubbed

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REVIEWS

audivr6
70/100
A must-watch shounen classic despite it's issues

The story of atonement for past sins is a subject often explored in various works of art. A quick look at the synopsis of this series tells us that this story is no different. Set during the early Meiji era, a former assassin, now a wandering swordsman named Himura Kenshin wielding a non-lethal blade, offering protection and aid to those in need. The recurring theme in the anime is Kenshin's oath not to kill, when facing fanatics and revolutionists who are willing to die for their cause.

The anime, also known as Samurai X, first aired in the winter season of 1996, in a time when Neon Genesis Evangelion, Slam Dunk and Mobile Suit Gundam Wing aired, just to name a few. Rurouni Kenshin is one of the more popular series of the 90s. The anime can be chopped up into three parts: The Introduction Arc, the Kyoto Arc and the Filler Arc. I think it is important to describe each part individually.

The Introduction Arc, the first 27 episodes, are a bunch of shorter stories, where the cast and era are being introduced and about a third of them are filler episodes. Most if not all of these filler episodes are simply skippable, you could describe some of these as 'gag-episodes'. They are pretty bad and simply there to slow the anime down from catching up to the manga, because the manga was still being made at the time. I must say that there is a lot of criticism on the filler episodes and for good reason, the comedy is pretty repetitive, there is never any real danger, and the characters become caricatures of their own selves. I would suggest skipping the early filler episodes entirely.

The Kyoto Arc, episodes 28 to 62, is where the anime truly shines. Without spoiling the story, the stakes are at an all time high when a mighty warlord threatens the peace in Japan. The story takes a more serious turn and cuts no corners in terms of animation. This is immediately noticeable in the first episodes of the arc, when an old rival of Kenshin makes his appearance and sets the mood for the rest of the arc. The introduction of this anti-hero shifts the entire tone of the story from a more dreamy, idealistic goody-two-shoes can never lose to a more ruthless and realistic approach of dealing with your problems, even if it means abandoning everything you represent and fight for. You don't always get to choose and you don't always get it your way. To live in peace you sometimes need to get your hands dirty.

I wouldn't blame anyone for stopping after the Kyoto Arc, because it's pretty much downhill from here. Episodes 63 to 94 are a few episodic filler stories and three longer filler stories, all pretty disappointing. The first features a swordman using the same style as Kenshin, the second story is about black knights and the third is about warring clans of feng shui users. Nothing worth your time here except maybe the opening, which they changed to show the filler's antagonists in the flickering flame effect. Despite promising starts of the first two of these filler stories, I felt like it never truly becomes engaging and I lost interest pretty fast.

There is more to the story of Kenshin, unfortunately it would never be translated from manga to anime as the show was cancelled while the manga was still being made. I would recommend reading the manga after the Kyoto Arc, because the final arc is absolutely worth it. Also with two new movies releasing in the summer of 2020, concluding the story of Kenshin with the 'missing final arc' and the new sequel manga of Kenshin's travels to Hokkaido, there should be plenty of new material for fans. But, do not miss out on this show! It captures the spirit of Kenshin in a way no adaption afterwards was able to.

I can highly recommend Kenshin for it's cannon material. It is a must-watch show if you like intense samurai action. The show features some cool techniques and powers and it does not have the problem of escalating power levels. Overall I feel the story of Kenshin deserved better. I would give the Kyoto Arc a 9, but that would be too high of a rating for all 94 episodes.

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Kuma187
55/100
Watch Sword of the Stranger instead
Okay, I have not watched the anime beyond the Kyoto arc, as I was told by several people that the anime was not interesting beyond it. My judgement will made only on the first 62 episodes.

Okay, that might be a bit too harsh of a summary but this show suffers from numerous issues that really can't be all excused by the year of release. 1996, a pretty bad year for Japanese animation. Sandwiched between the year of GitS, Evangelion, Gunsmith Cats, Memories, and the year of Berserk, Perfect Blue, Princess Mononoke, Utena, 1996 doesn't have much to show for, and feels pretty awkward with such towering older and younger siblings, and the fact that Kenshin is so highly regarded in that same year makes me believe that the situation is indeed pretty dire.

Rurouni Kenshin started actually pretty good. In fact, all the first part, with its presentation and SoL aspect of the series, topped with action that certainly reflected the idea of a time during which people strived to maintain a precarious peace after the events of the Meiji Restauration, offered a convincing story. Kenshin's vow to never kill again more than hinted at a painful trauma but he never outright spoke about it, and Yahiko deciding to follow both Kaoru's and Kenshin's styles in order to master the blade that protects people instead of killing them, Sanosuke's backstory as one of the many "orphans" of the conflict, and the perilous times of trust and betrayal that had plagued the country for centuries, were as many good reasons to be charmed by the series. In fact, for all "episodic" that the first part was, it certainly was the most effective at creating both a presentation and buildup, which peaked with the very beginning of the Kyoto arc.

Until that point, Rurouni Kenshin was walking a precarious balance between light and darkness, life and death by the sword, and Kenshin's desire to settle everything without killing, something that revenge-thirsty people like Sanosuke were certainly not used to and had difficulty accepting, and the result was certainly a shounen series, yes, but a shounen series that justified every defeat and every death. While there were already elements of that insufferable anime trope that I hate, powercreeping, those were very tame and Kenshin's strength was mostly used as a means to end the episodes while also bringing in some morale destined to young children: don't let blood get to your temper, don't be so swift as to choose violence when words might just be enough, don't cheat or lie, learn to forgive, don't misuse your power or stay silent when facing injustice, and so on. Among the highlight episodes, I could definitely point out episode 14, which is actually one of the best animated episodes in the series as well, episode 31 with Kenshin's goodbye scene, beautifully shot and worthy of a jidaigeki movie.

It's not like the first part is perfect and it's not like the second part is really bad. In fact, the very beginning of the Kyoto arc promised us a lot, with higher stakes, a continuous story about a coup d'état that would certainly result in another bloody massacre throughout the country after the political balance is shattered once more and Japan goes back to being a land of murderous conflict, and the first part certainly had a few small arc that were of little importance, like the island incident. The problem is that the series was limited in its scope due to the demography it was targeting: shounen, and that could be seen whenever someone got killed with the way it was all so obviously censored under an obviously poor excuse of visual restraint. What followed the buildup was ultimately nothing more than a tale that was INVADED by tired shounen tropes: the heroes training to unlock their full potential, making friends along the way, believing in their friends, a succession of fights very neatly set up and with very obvious plot armor, the villains having their backstory explored during the fights, and a terribly drawn out last part that really had managed to burn through the very limits of my patience with the useless fight commentary, and an overpowered villain that gets defeated due to sheer arrogance and carelessness. While I did enjoy the aspects that made Shishio and Kenshin so similar and yet so different, it was the only aspect I had actually liked during the previous 10 or so episodes and my patience had already run out a long time ago.

Regarding the technical aspects, I have already hinted at that but this anime is really questionable in terms of character animation: some episodes are better than others, and even betray the change in director or artists through slight modifications in the character designs or the presentation, but the overall product is, sadly, what you'd expect from a product made in the second half of the 90s: colors with very low saturation, which give the anime a very cheap and washed up aspect, low effort animation that really hurts the action sequences

There were other ways this story could have been done. Maybe by having Kenshin be forced to make a choice like Kiritsugu Emiya had to in Fate/Zero: an ultimatum that would have him kill someone, as unwilling as he would have been, because there would have been no choice if he wanted to save people dear to him.
That brings me back to my initial point: You want a story about a rurouni who wants to escape his past actions and atone for what he did? Just watch Sword of the Stranger instead of Rurouni Kenshin. The themes, the presentation, the animation, the narration... everything is done much better in that work. You'll also save time doing so.

Rurouni Kenshin isn't exactly a very "bad" series but it suffers from too many issues that ruin whatever emotional charge the anime wants to inflict on the viewer. It's definitely too childish: it idealizes the idea of a samurai hero that doesn't kill and protects others, and that is too difficult to swallow, especially after things really start going south.
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Alduin
100/100
The beauty of redemption stories
This review contains some light spoilers for the story of Rurouni Kenshin.

Rurouni Kenshin is a classic that you've probably heard about, it's a story about Himura Kenshin who after slaying hundreds of samurai during the Bakumatsu revolution decides to go on a journey and try to live a normal life during the new era and atone for the lives he took. However redemption is not that easy, Kenshin is constantly forced to meet people he knew during the revolution and is constantly reminded that even though he did it for greater good he still took the lives of other people and he is constantly fighting a battle with himself, one side of him wants to stop killing people and live in peace but the other side of him knows that it isn't that easy and tries to kill people to save the ones he loves.

"A manslayer is only that until he dies... He can never be anything else. I'll see how long you can stay a wanderer..."

Most of you probably know what happened to the author of Rurouni Kenshin and refuse to watch or read the manga just because of the awful crime he committed, however this anime doesn't in any shape or form promote what the author did. This is an anime about redemption and it is hard for me to believe that someone who wrote Rurouni Kenshin doesn't feel sorry for what he has done and he is probably going to life the rest of his life in shame.

This anime taught me how important it is to forgive people no matter how many unforgivable things they did. Nobody is perfect and we all made some mistakes and regret them so all of us can relate to this, however you can't hate someone when you didn't even give them a chance to become better and learn from their mistakes. We must remember that all of us have something inside us that allows us to learn from our past choices and become better people but not everyone can do that, especially if you're not even giving them a chance to do that.

After all those praises I have to say that the beginning of Rurouni Kenshin was rather slow and boring for me. However the Kyoto arc is where anime truly reaches it's peak, It's an arc about another manslayer but this time he wishes to destroy Imperialist government that has betrayed him. This arc has a ton of exciting backstories and fights out of which I would have to mention Anji's backstory. Anji was a devoted monk but after a series of unfortunate events he has saw how evil the world is and sees that there is no point in praying to Buddha if he isn't going to do anything about it, instead Anji chooses to take the matter into his own hands and destroy this evil world to create a new one where evil and greedy people won't exist. There are much more exciting ideals and backstories in Kyoto arc which is another reason you should give Rurouni Kenshin a try.

The only problem I have with Rurouni Kenshin anime are the fillers. There are fillers in animes like Gintama that are actually enjoyable and fun but Rurouni Kenshin fillers have no purpose, they're just there to fill the time so the anime wouldn't catch up to the manga too quickly. However you can just skip fillers so it's not such a huge issue.

If you like Rurouni Kenshin I recommend you check out Vinland Saga and Trigun, they're both great shows about pacifism and forgiving people.

I would have to give Rurouni Kenshin a score of 80/100 because of the fillers that make up 50% of the show but since I skipped fillers on my rewatch I can confidently say that the anime is 100/100 if you disregard them which I highly encourage you to do.
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