Manga: Rurouni Kenshin Review

My dad actually plays a part in my graphic novel obsession as he has thousands of comic books that I've enjoyed reading (when he lets me XP) And I'd fallen in love with 'Japanimation' like I'm sure quite a few people did watching Pokemon...I got Pokemon manga! Lol, I didn't know it was manga though. It was just 'comics'.

But doing Google searches, I found out about these types of books and found out about one called 'Rurouni Kenshin'. I had a thing for characters with long hair and Kenshin was just so adorable! I actually just read the textual translation of it for a while, I was so obsessed...but then it finally got translated.



The story follows Himura Kenshin, a 'rurouni', which if I recall was a fictional term coined by it's creator Nobuhiro Watsuki. He basically travels around pretty aimlessly, armed only with his reverse blade. He comes across a young girl, Kamiya Kaoru, who instantly attacks him, thinking he is Hitokiri Battousai, whom has been going around town declaring he's of the school of Kamiya, her family dojo. After clearing up these mistakes and some confessions, we get the classic manga.

This manga carried my crew through high school mostly and I was always diligent in buying the next volume when it came out. Shonen manga for me at that time was where it was at. Violence, occasional romance, it was amazing. Nowadays though, shonen has this horrible attribute of DRAGGING. Now yes, Kenshin was 28 (29?) volumes long but, uh, it still ended...has Naruto or One Piece or any of those others finished and exactly WHAT chapter are they on?

Another suspiciously similar story my group read was Samurai Deeper Kyo...for a time. My co-writer to Miru's story said that it was good for the first few volumes but it has this weird shonen attribute: 'there's always someone stronger'.

This basically means that the group goes after this one person, declaring them to be a challenge then out of nowhere comes this even stronger person...? Realistically, I GUESS, but you have to admit when a story's long enough and suddenly this guy they've pursued for the last five volumes isn't the strongest anymore and they have to go after this next person, it's like, 'the f--k?'

That's where Kenshin seemed to excel to me because, well, Kenshin basically is the best :P While Kenshin went against increasingly better opponents as the volumes progressed, it wasn't the same concept to me where like the better guy comes and defeats the guy that everyone assumed was the best because the protagonists said he was and now they have this other guy and it's like 'oh no!'...no, no, with Kenshin it was like, 'wow, I keep running into stronger people'. And in fact the one that declared he was the strongest ended up being one of the weakest, sooo...

SPOILERS

One pratfall I'd say in Kenshin may have been that part where they thought Kaoru was dead...that was a tad weird and soap opera death scene. And Kenshin just being insane with grief was cute but it sure didn't last that long...then again, he was renewed so I guess he didn't have to stay depressed. Either way.

Watsuki writes in his liner notes that he was actually influenced by American comic books and it kind of shows a lot from time to time...I honestly have to cringe at his character I believe was named Jin-eh or something...he basically was Gambit from X-Men. His eyes, his hair, his head band, I was like, 'woah, crossovers!'. While I'm all for being influenced, that was kind of much...

I only watched a little of the anime...I hate anime filler so much XP I think it followed pretty well but when I read about one episode where apparently the groups on a train about to go take a photograph and someone attacks them...if I remember correctly, Kenshin gets knocked off somehow and it's all 'what shall we do?!' then...Kenshin rides up on a horse? x.X;; Nobody knocks me off a train and gets away with it! High ho, Silver! I mean, a horse? Where'd he get a horse, is he magical? Oh, anime...

Aoshi at the end in the tuxedo-y kind of thing reminded me of the Godfather :P

Grade: A+ to A-

A quinessential classic manga worth a read if you're into that kind of thing. Has pretty awesome characters that I have always enjoyed and wraps up with a happy ending. However, I'm aware that there is a non-canonical tale called 'Samurai X' and I just read the premise for it and nearly cried...then my two kind of stoic emotioned friends said it traumatized and upset them so...not going to watch that unless I really, really wanna cry x.X

Well, not much more to be said, definitely one of my favorites ^_^ I'd have it on a must read list if I had one.