I’ll be honest; I was having a
hard time thinking up a subject for today’s post. JuNoWriMo has sucked all the creative
juice from my life and funneled it into a single novel, which means that when
it comes to brainstorming out of left field…eh, I’m not as adept as I usually
am. Fortunately, my sister walked in and said, “Why don’t you talk about
Rurouni Kenshin?” Seeing as how we’re currently re-watching movies (and I just
ordered the first one on DVD because obviously I need to own all three of them
in time) I thought hey, why not? More people need to know about them, and there
are many reasons. Let’s get started.
Rurouni Kenshin began as a manga
and evolved into an animated series, video games, and a live-action trilogy
starring Takeru Satoh (Kamen Rider-O)
as Himura Kenshin himself. The story follows the former assassin known as ‘Battousai
the Manslayer,’ a swordsman who worked for the state. At the end of the war he
stops killing, choosing a way of peace as a wanderer. While swords were
outlawed during the Meiji era at the beginning of Japan’s westernization (think
‘The Last Samurai’), Kenshin carries a reverse-blade sword. The cutting edge is
on the inside, making it virtually impossible to do anything but wound.
Himura Kenshin is not your
average action hero – peaceable, soft-spoken, often mistaken for a girl, and
averse to killing, he’s more of an anti-action hero, someone who would much
rather settle down somewhere and live peacefully than engage in fighting. Of
course, as is so often the way of it, his life doesn’t take this turn; and when
he decides to help Kaoru, a girl fighting to keep her dojo, he’s dragged into a
series of events which threaten the entire empire.
A long-time lover of Japanese and
Korean history, I particularly love this story because this time period is
close to my heart (heroic and tragic tales of samurai and ronin have always
been close to me) and because Himura Kenshin is based on Kawakami Gensai, one
of the four most famed Samurai assassins of the late Edo period.
They both specialize in using
Shiranui-yu, or the ‘Flying Heaven’ style of fighting, which is based on speed.
These movies are incredible to watch. The actors do their own stunts and the
directors were firm on wanting to use little to no CGI at all, which means that
what you see on screen is the actors working hard to perfect every movement.
Takeru perfected moving with an incredible quickness, and the rest of the
actors – notably Munataka Aoki (Sanosuke) and Gou Ayano (Gein) – also show a
great deal of impressive learning and skill.
These movies have a very pure and
honorable quality that I value. Kenshin has a tragic past, but he isn’t a ‘bad
boy’. He doesn’t blame others for what he did. He’s honorable, sweet, kind, and gentle
– qualities you don’t often find in American screen heroes. The editing, music,
acting, and dialogue is top quality, and the best adaption of manga-to-screen I’ve
ever seen. The villains of the movies are dark – Shishio especially – but are
shown in a light that continues to keep them human. The movies are
heartbreaking and funny, entertaining and thought-provoking, and I would
heartily recommend them to anyone wanting a top-notch action/romantic/historical
movie that involves intensely choreographed fight scenes, tight-knit
friendships, and a hero who really is a hero in every sense of the word.
0 comments:
Post a Comment