About.com Rating



A prequel to the Rurouni Kenshin TV series, wherein we learn how wandering samurai Himura Kenshin was rescued from poverty to become an assassin, only to fall in love with the fiancée of one of the men he murdered, and discover in the end that he was not the betrayer but the betrayed.

Those familiar with the original series and its relatively light-hearted tone will be startled by the seriousness and depth of this production.

But so will everyone else, too: you don’t need to know a thing about the Kenshin franchise to experience the emotion and outstanding animation artistry on display here.

Pros

• Elegaic and beautiful story which aims to break your heart, and largely succeeds.
• Gorgeous cel animation -- hand-painted, not computer-generated.

Cons

• The very things that make it worthwhile -- its tragedy and violence -- may also make it that much harder for some audiences to stomach.

• Director: Kazuhiro Furuhashi
• Animation Studio: Studio DEEN
• Released By: Aniplex
• Released Domestically By: Aniplex
• Audio: Japanese w/English subtitles
• Age Rating: TV-MA (violence, blood, thematic material)
• List Price: $81.98 / ¥8,000 (BD / Import only)

Anime Genres:

• Samurai
• Action
• Drama
• Romance

Related Titles:

• Rurouni Kenshin
• Basilisk
• Shigurui

How Kenshin all began

Rurouni Kenshin gave us a story about a sweet, unassuming man whose gentle façade concealed what had once been a coldly efficient killer. Previously, Himura Kenshin had been an assassin for the forces seeking to overthrow Japan’s imperial government in the 1860s.

The TV series (and the manga it was derived from) hinted on and off at what had happened to Kenshin to make him swear off his former murderous self, but it wasn’t until the production of the two-hour film Rurouni Kenshin: Tsuioku-hen that audiences were able to see firsthand what had happened.

The film—it’s actually four half-hour episodes—serves both as a prequel to the TV series and a standalone production in its own right. No experience with the TV show is needed, although seeing it does help provide you with some context about the future fates of some of the characters—especially Kenshin himself.

At first he’s not even Kenshin: he’s Shinta, a boy left without even substitute parents when the slave caravan he’s with is attacked by bandits. He is saved by swordmaster Hiko Seijuro, who grudgingly accepts the young man as his student. The world is a brutal place, after all, and one needs the power to protect others if one wants to survive. He also gives the boy a new name: Kenshin—a name “more fitting for a swordsman,” he says.

A killer is drawn back towards humanity

By the time Kenshin’s in his teen years he’s joined the Hitokiri, an assassination squad attached to the anti-Shogunate revolutionary forces, the Ishin-shishi. As an assassin Kenshin’s just about perfect: efficient, ruthless, precise. As a human being he’s a good deal less than that—he brings to mind the hollowed-out, detached hitman protagonists of films like Léon or (appropriately enough) Le samouraï . One night the first of many cracks in his façade emerge when, in the process of killing one of his targets, he receives a slash to the face that refuses to heal completely. Sometimes for no reason at all it opens up and bleeds, a wonderful metaphor for his nascent guilt and shame over being a murderer.

He tries to hide his feelings in his work, and throws himself into it all the more vigorously. One night after another assassination, he is horrified to discover he has a witness: a beautiful, elegant young woman named Tomoe, who faints after witnessing his latest killing. She’s drunk, and from that opens up the next crack in his armor: he takes her back to the inn where his compatriots secretly assemble, and watches over her for the night.

The innkeeper takes a liking to her and even hires her, but Kenshin’s cohorts are suspicious. What if she’s a spy? What if it was no accident that she was there that night, even if she was ostensibly just drowning her sorrows in the adjacent pub? These are legitimate worries, especially since evidence is surfacing that the group may have a traitor leaking information about their movements to the Shogunate.

Love or treachery?

If this Tomoe is a spy, Kenshin is in the uncomfortable position of having to dispatch her—something he’s finding himself hard-pressed to do. And Tomoe, in turn, has trouble looking at Kenshin and not seeing anything other than a handsome young man whose gaze sometimes lingers on her a little longer than it ought to. This is the first person—certainly the first woman—he has ever grown this close to.

Then Kenshin’s identity as an assassin is revealed, and Kenshin is forced to leave town. He and Tomoe go to a village in the country and assume the guise of husband and wife. The guise soon becomes that much more real: they are in love. But they are also doomed, since the shogunate has spies closing in on them, despite their masquerade. And then there are a series of revelations between the two of them that are even more devastating than any outside attack.