nime fan favorite Himura Kenshin is an affable, honorable man who tries to protect the weak and preserve life in all forms. Three years of the Rurouni Kenshin TV series told how he gathered a group of like-minded, lonely, good-hearted people after the Meiji Restoration replaced the Tokugawa Shogunate, and traveled around Japan in his quest to atone for his actions as a bodyguard and assassin in one of the rebel factions that overthrew the Shogunate. As the Hitokiri Battousai, the legendary swordsman who could not be bested in battle, he murdered untold numbers of people. That period of his life is spelled out in a four-episode OVA series.
Samurai X: The Motion Picture blends the divergent animation styles of the TV series and the OVAs in telling a story that touches on both eras of his life. After a final dramatic battle with insane revolutionary warlord Shishio in the TV show (which Media Blasters continues to release, though they're over half a year away from that point in the series), Kenshin and his friends return to Tokyo by train, passing through Yokohama, where they stop to see the new Western-style architecture that's been drawing tourists. They also meet some obnoxious Western-style Westerners: a group of drunken, rowdy foreign sailors in the process of smashing things and attempting to assault a local girl. A samurai defends her, displaying phenomenal speed, power and self-control, and Kenshin and company see to it that he and the girl escape the police afterward. Kenshin speaks briefly to the samurai, Shigure Takimi, and determines that he's a man of skill, honor and strong personal beliefs--a traditional warrior after Kenshin's own heart.
Unfortunately, some of Takimi's strong beliefs include the conviction that the Meiji government is hopelessly corrupt and must be overthrown. Acting to avenge a clanmate 14 years dead, Takimi has drawn together an army of the disaffected and is plotting to kill the visiting British foreign minister. Kenshin, as one of the few men Takimi can truly respect, steps in to try to calm Takimi before it's too late. The problem is, they've met before--as the Battousai, Kenshin was the one who killed Takimi's long-mourned comrade.
Swords neither crouching nor hidden
Samurai X: The Motion Picture is mostly animated in the cartoony style of the Kenshin TV show, rather than the grim, realistic style of the OVAs. The exception is the starkly beautiful, gritty opening scene, where Kenshin the young revolutionary meets and murders Takimi's partner in a dramatic fight in the woods. The combat is gorgeously rendered in muted deep tones, but The Motion Picture's primary flaw is that this scene is replayed no less than five times, usually at great length, as Kenshin and Takimi repeatedly recall the events. By the third time, it's redundant and irritating; by the fifth, it's downright infuriating.
This obvious flaw aside, The Motion Picture does a reasonable job of living up to the standards of the series, pairing a dense political background with a number of striking characters whose powerful emotions clash in memorable ways. The Kenshin saga is often steeped in tragedy, as principled people stand up for what they believe even when those beliefs bring them into sometimes-fatal conflict with people they love or respect. The Motion Picture moves those themes to the forefront in a fairly realistic story that pushes aside many of the more whimsical elements of the TV show--the giants, mutants and monsters that turned the series into more of a historical fantasy than an alternate history.
But one fantastical element that remains is the skill of the combatants, whose swords cut through metal as easily as flesh, and who hover in midair for breathless seconds during combats that have them moving faster than light in incredibly choreographed and stylized displays of skill. Honor and emotion aside, the Kenshin series continues to explore new ways to animate sword fighting in unique, breathtaking ways. As Kenshin projects go, this one isn't particularly exceptional visually or textually--it could well just be a series of TV episodes strung together, with marginally better animation. But an average Kenshin episode is still above average for anime and TV alike.
