Hello!
Welcome to The Anime & Manga Review!
It has been my dream to create a world on TheO where users can go for anime and manga reviews and finally here it is! I plan to make this world an active, exciting and helpful place for learning about and finding entertaining manga and anime to read/watch.
Ok when I heard there was going to be a live action Rurouni Kenshin (Ruroken for short) I thought I was being lied to. A quick google search later and I discovered it was all too real! “Oh no~!” I groaned to myself, “Its going to be awful…” I had images in my head of terrible red wigs and a butchered plot… oh how it haunted my dreams…
Then I went to an anime convention in May and I kept hearing “Have you seen the live action Ruroken movie? Its great!” and “Wow that cinematography!” Skeptical though I was, I agreed to go see it… Well long story short I couldn’t get into the movie due…
So there I was about a month ago and without having seen it went ahead and bought it on DVD.
And… It was FREAKING AWSOME!!!!!!
(hahaha you thought I was gonna say it sucked…. XD)
Sooooo good! I loved it! Sure it had a few corny moments but every action movie has those. Heck even the actual manga has its silly or clumsy moments!
Ok so how did they go about adapting Ruroken into live action? Well they had a couple paths. They could take the “red wig make people look like the characters so much its terrible route” or the “make them just regular people that bear little to no resemblance but everyone feels historically correct plan.” However this movie does neither and instead finds a delicate (and could have gone terribly wrong) balance. Kenshin is instantly recognizable as Kenshin but he’s been morphed into how he would look had he been a real person in that era. I’m not going to lie its pretty cool to see all my favorite characters in the flesh! The only ‘real’ human version I didn’t care for was Sanosuke, and that’s not saying he looks bad, he just wasn’t as good as the others in my opinion.
So the plot?
It’s basically the first 6 books or so of the manga squashed together. Kenshin meets Kauru, Yahiko, Megumi, Jin-E, Sanosuke, and bunch of other characters. Well once again this could have gone soooooo so very very wrong but it doesn’t. Whoever wrote the script knew what to keep and what to ditch when shaping this story together so it didn’t feel too rushed. A few parts still come off a bit pushed in or sudden but nothing that bothered me. All the changes made were good ones and none of them lost the Ruroken spirit!
The action scenes are great! I love me some good samurai battles and they did a really nice job! Its Kenshin’s sword style realized thanks to some fun camera work, a little subtle CG, and boss editing! (So freaking cool!) The villain is great, you can tell the actor is just embracing the part and finding his inner D*** and that makes him just so much fun to watch.
So yeah, I learned that a live action adaptation can… *gasp* be… good! And this movie which I thought would suck, is now a proud addition to my Rurouni Kenshin collection and now I absolutely can’t wait because they’re making the Shishou arch!!! And that is one movie I’ll watch as soon as I can to it coming out!
Whether you’re a long time Ruroken fan or even if you no nothing about it, but are a samurai action fan this is an absolute must see!
~Tsu
ps. I’ll still be doing a regular review this week but since my last review was short and I’ve been wanting to do this for awhile I figured this was the perfect week for a mini review!
