Rurouni Kenshin: Meiji Kenkaku Romantan - Shin Kyoto-hen

what's the point of this? Every five minutes or so I had to wonder that. Why would you have the sword collector and not give him swords? Why have over the top techniques and not show the name painted across the screen? Why reanimate and exclude the animation intensive scenes? Why have Kaoru and Yahiko if you take out all their scenes? Why have Kenshin's master and super fast Soujiro if there is no secret super fast final technique? Why have Soujiro loose his calm over a moral issue if you don't show whis moral issues? Overall this feels like someone with a plot synopsiswas asked to highlight the plot points on their first read without take backs. (For example you'd assume at first that Chou is filler, and he originally was, but his character developed enough to put him in charge of the epilogue. Actually, all the characters that earned an epilogue are no longer part of the story.) Ruroken always had some rhythm issues with Watsuki improvising way too much along the way. The artwork of the manga and some great episode directors made the originals work, but if there's a remake that changes events they could had fixed a lot of stuff. So, what's the point of it? Was there really a need to do it this way? I think they wanted to capitalize on the live action films to promote the original, so they took out some sort of middle ground to motivate people to check it out. But the movies can do whatever they want because they are for a new audience and being live action you have a lower limit to push the fights before you lose the audience. There's nothing gain in this adaptation of an adaptation. I would had been happier with 90 mins of the final fight, but that would make it exclusive for fans who still care about it and are willing to rewatch it. Maybe a retelling from Shishio's perspective would had been attractive to people who watched the anime/movies while being significantly shorter. But Ruroken without fights is just really boring, and there are literally no fights for more than an hour. And the ones there are after that fall flat because the motivations are said out loud 2 minutes before being refuted if there's any build up at all. Usui constantly cock blocking Shishio was probably the only extra content that I sincerely loved. All historical elements were taken out (the burning of buddhist temples, prostitutes officially being defined as farm animals, the british economical control through Hong Kong, and so on) with all the great dead scenes. How do you dumb down an action show for 12 year olds? What's even the point?

I’m not going to use any arbitrary numbers because that won’t provide an accurate representation of what I just watched. One thing I’d advise before ever picking this title up is be sure you watched the original Rurouni Kenshin series prior. If you don’t you might be completely undone before you get to some of the juicier bits of this two part series. For everyone whose unaware of the story surrounding the New Kyoto Arc in Kenshin these films(?) are hard to follow and don’t convey enough of what made the original run of the arc so satisfying. Now I’m not going to waste time arguingwhat was done better in the original versus this adaptation, I’ll just get straight to it, it’s fast. The beginning of this series plunges you into the action of the story (with exposition, oh boy) and doesn’t really take its time to explain why the characters are all jumbled around, why Kenshin abandoned his friends, whose dead, whose not and that’s because it had to sum up the 30+ episodes that made up Rurouni Kenshin’s major arc in (give or take) 90 minutes. The soundtrack captures our wandering spirit (with a tinge of that sweet violin) just like the good ol’ Kenshin and Studio Deen’s fight choreography is great when Shishio and Kenshin finally get to have it out in [undisclosed location to avoid spoilers this time], so watch it for that even if it’s brief (the other fights are good too). Like any good fight scene though, context is necessary to drive emotions home and these films(?) don’t have time to provide context. Or at least not enough to make everything that’s happening feel justified. Who am I recommending this to? People who watched (and/or loved) Rurouni Kenshin, because they’re the only ones who’ll get the whole picture. It’d be a pretty confusing watch otherwise.

As a fan of all things Rurouni Kenshin I was quite excited to see an updated two episode OVA remake of the Kyoto arc of the original series involving Shinshio Makoto as the bad guy, probably made to coincide with the release of the live action film. After all Rurouni Kenshin inspired me to take up martial arts. I have to say I was left disappointed. Disregarding the fact that the two episodes were released so far apart, the first episode was good but the second felt rushed like the producers were trying to squeeze in as much as possible and as a result some ofthe story was different from the original series, the voice acting was lackluster and some of the characters just looked odd because of the modern animation techniques. However, the main charge I would aim against this OVA is that by using modern animation techniques much of the charm of the original series was lost. All in all an unworthy addition to the Rurouni Kenshin saga. I gave this a 7 but it really is a fan's 7. I would imagine most would give it much lower,

Rurouni Kenshin New Kyoto Arc is quite disappointing and not something I can recommend. Cramming a 30 episode arc into 90 minutes isn’t the best idea and did not work out. They drastically rewrote key elements and set pieces, as well as omitting characters and taking severe creative liberty to condense it for time. The OVA took a darker turn which ended up contradicting many of the characters and forgoing their development. The most egregious example of which is the main protagonist himself, Kenshin. He is way more brutal in this appearance, for some reason. Nearly all the fights are inferior compared to the originalseries. They do not have the proper pacing nor emotional buildup. Sure it has better animation. If this is your first experience of the Kyoto Arc do not let it be your first. Watch the anime or read the manga instead. The way it was meant to be experienced.

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