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Review Text - Rurouni Kenshin

1) Rurouni Kenshin is a 2012 Japanese film adaptation of a popular manga about a former assassin named Battosai who has given up killing and now wanders Japan as a rurouni, or wanderer. 2) The film is directed by Keishi Otomo and stars Takeru Sato as Battosai. 3) It finds many ways to convey its anti-violence message to young audiences through the story of its main character who has sworn off killing despite his skills with a sword.

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102 views1 page

Review Text - Rurouni Kenshin

1) Rurouni Kenshin is a 2012 Japanese film adaptation of a popular manga about a former assassin named Battosai who has given up killing and now wanders Japan as a rurouni, or wanderer. 2) The film is directed by Keishi Otomo and stars Takeru Sato as Battosai. 3) It finds many ways to convey its anti-violence message to young audiences through the story of its main character who has sworn off killing despite his skills with a sword.

Uploaded by

真弥志多
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Rurouni Kenshin

Genre : Drama/Action
Director : Keishi Otomo
Producer : Kubota Osamu
Year : 2012
Duration : 2h, 15m
.

Cast ..: Satoh Takeru, Takei Emi, Kikkawa Koji,


Aoi Yu, Eguchi Yosuke, Kagawa Teruyuki

Orientation How many ways can you say, “Killing is bad”? Rurouni Kenshin, the lush
adaptation of Nobuhiro Watsuki’s popular manga, finds many ways to put its non-
violence message before the young audiences who are likely to adore it. Like many
screen mangas, adults will find it a little too teenage for comfort, underlined by the
casting of young Japanese TV stars in the lead roles. The film, being sold by Gaga,
grossed over $25 million for Warner Bros in Japan.

Interpretative The action opens on a ghoulish battlefield in 1868, the battle of Toba-Fushima,
Recount shot through blue filters to emphasize its other-worldliness. Amid the dead and dying,
the young samurai Battosai (Takeru Sato) who face is hidden by blood-matted hair
walks away as Empire is declared and the birth of a new age.

Ten years go by. The new age has come to Japan and the samurai have disbanded
or become sordid mercenaries. The rapacious businessman Kanryu, played with
toothy glee by a delightfully over-the-top Teruyuki Kagawa, has his private army of
ex-samurai including a super-national fiend who kills for the hell of it. Kaoru (Emi
Takei), a nice girl who runs a fencing school left to her by her father, challenges the
monster and is only saved by the intervention of a mysterious young Wanderer –
Battosai in his new guise. He has renounced killing and wears a sword whose blade
is on the wrong side, to honor his pledge never to kill again. For Kaoru and Battosai,
now called Kenshin, the sword is a way of life, not death. But most people living in
the new age see things differently. Forced over and over again to fight in excitingly
filmed action scenes, Kenshin never loses his cool or his steely moral resolve.

Evaluation With his long pony-tail, curvaceous lips and wide eyes, Takeru play up his
resemblance to a Japanese Michael Jackson. Standing out less in the film is the soap-
and-water Emi as his idealistic love interest. Though she’s a courageous girl who
defends her father’s memory, she is continually thrown into an out-dated damsel-in-
distress role that weakens her appeal. As the vixen who wants to reform and comes
to live with them in the fencing school, Ao never quite gels as a character.

Evaluative Choreography is fast and furious and the sword fights ably showcase Battosai’s
Summation incredible skills. Sato Naoki’s energetic score pounds out the action scenes to a
barbarian beat.

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