This is how I best remember Kenshin.

Shinta was just a poor boy who got abducted by slavers but miraculously survives an attack from bandits, he is found by the master swordsman Hiko Seijuro who bestows him a more fitting name for the era, Kenshin Himura.
He is warned that the Hiten-Mitsurugi style would kill him or his master but before he can finish he gets recruited as an Ishin Patriot in the battles for the Meiji Restoration, at just 15 years old, Kenshin is dubbed over night Battousai the Man Slayer.
He would eventually cross paths with a woman named Tomoe who he hides with when the revolution stumbles, they would fall in love but Tomoe has her own agenda as Kenshin slayed her fiancee, said fiancee leaving a scar on Kenshin's cheek.
An ambush nearly kills Kenshin but Tomoe jumps in preventing Kenshin from being killed by an assassin, guilty of murdering the very woman he loved, Kenshin is left with a second scar as Tomoe marks his cheek as her dying action.
As the Meiji Restoration ends, battousai fades with it, becoming a legend with nothing more than a scarred old samurai, (28 years old at the start of the TV series) wandering the lands with a failed sword, no longer possessing the murderous intent he once had.
To compare the OVA prequel to the TV series is night and day, this is how I was first introduced to Rurouni Kenshin, dubbed Samurai X on western release, so you can see why I often judge Rurouni Kenshin's erratic shifts in tone as being a bit much.
This was a passion project start to finish, the Meiji Restoration is a real historical event in Japan's history, apart from Kenshin, every samurai in the revolution were real people and portrayed correctly from accounts of that period.
There's no punches pulled either as the full weight of the period is portrayed as a bloody era of conflict, I'd go as far as saying it's so well done that I forget that I watched the dub as the dialogue is kept to a minimum, it's a little heavy on exposition but it's understandable when discussing a real life event.
Final Verdict: A gritty samurai drama far removed from the authors more unconventional story of redemption, Trust and Betrayal is one of the best representations of the bloody era and Kenshin himself who could be any real nameless samurai from said era.