Real Men Wear Pink - AKA Rurouni Kenshin

Wow, first post! Eek! Well, I think I'm going to start off with the first anime I ever watched seriously, and that would be Rurouni Kenshin. I was suggested it by a friend who is apparently one of the mods over at ANN and she suggested I try this one, so I did. I think it's probably one of those love at first sight sort of things when it comes to RK.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Rurouni Kenshin, I'll give you a brief summary. Kenshin Himura (AKA the Battousai) decided at the age of 28 that he wanted to atone for the sins of his bloody lifestyle as an samurai-assassin that seeks the downfall of the Tokugawa Shogunate. It was after receiving his reverse-blade sword that he began wandering for ten years, helping others on his travels and living a very unstable lifestyle.
He effectively became a wandering ronin, which is where 'Rurouni' originates from.

However his wanderings stop when he is attacked with a bouken (heavy wooden sword) by a young woman called Kaoru in a case of 'mistaken' identity. He then helps her out of trouble with her dojo and becomes a lodger after she offered him a room to stay as way of thanks. And so the story continues, introducing many characters as you progress through the series.

While Rurouni Kenshin is aimed mainly at boys more than teenage girls, there was just enough romance and comedy in it to keep my hooked. While the art wasn't as good in comparison to the stuff my ex-boyfriend had forced me to watch, it was very good for an anime produced in 90s. I also had to love the pink gi they put Kenshin. It made me giggle like the little girl I am when I first saw him. He's a short little red-haired guy wearing pink! I found it difficult to take him seriously.

The characters that were introduced were all very well thought out, each with different personalities and I thought it was fantastically done. I also thought it quite funny how Saitou associated an animal with each of the three main female characters in the series and how very apt the associations were.

There were many giggle worthy points in the anime that stick in my mind. One of the main ones being during the Tokyo Arc when Kenshin is in the bath thinking about Yutaro and the whole mess with Raijuta and he suddenly realises something. In his sense of urgency, he practically leaps out of the bath and crosses the bush divide to where the ladies are bathing and ends up standing in front of them completely buck naked, eliciting the depicted reaction from them. Another amusing scene is during one of the dreaded filler episodes where Kaoru and Misao are having a bath and they discover a peeping tom. After hearing Kaoru scream in distress, the three guys rush to the girls' aid only to have Misao hurl buckets at them out of embarrassment that they'd seen her naked.

As far as the plot goes, it was great until the end of the Kyoto Arc. Then it started to suck. Badly. The filler episodes just pissed me off because of some of the corny stories they came up with, and I was really disappointed with the last episode. It seemed rushed and not very thought out. The sound track wasn't bad, but the art work in it was off from how the other RK episodes were and it had so much of the episode filled with old pictures of places that I grew quite frustrated.

After watching that, I was left with a very bitter feeling towards the anime ending which immediately sent me on a manga rampage. I got hold of some copies of the Jinchu Arc and read through it so as to calm my irritated nerves down. It did the trick. The ending was cute, wrapping up all the loose ends such as what happens to Yahiko and Tsubame and whether Kenshin and Kaoru have babies (Kenji = kawaii! miniture Kenshin).

Now because I'm one of those people who tends to get a bit obsessive about things (no, I'm not an otaku), I went looking for more on the RK ending. I found out that there was the Kenshin Kaden which I've yet to find a copy of and I also heard about the OVAs. I watched the first OVA quite happily, but the second one... *shudder*. I had heard from various people that I should keep away from the RK Seisohen OVA, which is advice I wish I had listened to. I watched it. I got depressed. I hated it. Along with KGNE, Seisohen has got to be one of the most depressing things I've ever watched. I know I'm probably exaggerating, but for me it's one of those 'Oh Em Gee, I want to slit my wrists!' sort of things. Not only that, but the makers went against the mangaka's wishes and gave a very unhappy ending to RK. So as a suggestion to those of you who are planning to get into RK, don't go near the Seisohen OVA unless you want to get teary-eyed and depressed.

Well, that's all for today.

Ja ne!