[English Review] Kenshin

Anyway, it is not an English assignment. It is purely an English review made by an audience of a movie and a fan of an anime series.

Ruroni kenshin, or simply known as Samurai X, is a widely popular manga. It has been adapted into anime and several OVAs. This year, Warner Bros takes a chance to adapt this Restoration-Era-manga into a live action movie. The movie was released on August 2012. This time, I’ll present you the movie review into two parts: apart from the original story and anime-movie comparison.

Apart from the original story

First, let’s put aside the manga or anime imagination from the movie. Generally, Rurouni Kenshin is a well-scripted movie. The story is simply amazing and describing a singular phenomena about The Good versus The Evil decorated by Post-Restoration era in Japan. The characters are as well building up the climax of this simple story. This movie will entertain audiences who are not expecting the complicated philosophy in a film. Unfortunately, the film-taking is not much compelling. Most of the fighting scenes are not cinematographed well. So, it seems like we are watching the swinging swords and sudden dead people without any clear clashes in between. The Meiji-Era setting is also not well developed. It seems like we are watching a Japanese drama in a particular studio. Mostly, we can not enjoy the Post-Restoration setting which consists of Meiji-Era buildings and people. So, apart from the original story, this movie is much entertaining because of the simple story and characters which build up to it.

Anime-movie comparison

If you are well aware with the story arcs from the original story, you will see the story of this movie is unclear and crowded story. This movie is trying to tie several story arcs (even OVAs) into one new story. As we aware with the original story, we will see the lack of elaboration and complicated philosophy which is actually a value from Rurouni Kenshin original story. We won’t see the personality growths from each character because they are compressed into a nearly two hour live action movie. The character, especially Kenshin Himura or The Battousai, is not well elaborated despite a good acting from Takeru Satoh as the post-manslayer wanderer. Originally, Kenshin is a complicated character with a deep turning philosophy from a cold-blood manslayer fighting for Restoration into a naïve gold-hearted wanderer. But in the movie, we only see a person walks into path of redemption without any principal justification as we see in the original story. Same thing goes to Saito character which is described as a loyal police without showing his Shinsengumi ‘Slay, Evil, Immediately’ philosophy in this movie.

Then, the dramatization of the movie is not well-developed. Rurouni Kenshin, even is a samurai movie, is not a full-slasher movie. The dramatization of the story is needed for making this movie granted to be remembered. The original soundtracks which made by Noriyuki Asakura in three seasons of Rurouni Kenshin anime is achieving a high dramatization of the original story. As the result, we can see that people will always remember several Rurouni Kenshin story. The movie adaption will gain a greater good if the dramatization, especially in original soundtracks, succeeds.

Conclusion

Rurouni Kenshin is simply a great live action movie. it is basically entertaining. But, this anime-comparing is happened when the storyline of the live action movie does not satisfy audience well. Of course, it is hard to please people, especially the hardcore fans. But, several noble values of the original story need to be elaborated in an adaption in order to gather the old fans and newer audience of the movie. A hope rises for the next adaptation of Rurouni Kenshin story. I personally think that Trust and Betrayal OVAs is worth to be adapted as the next live action movies with several cameos of Kamiya Dojo casts. This adaptation is needed to elaborate Kenshin character. As the third adaptation, it will be great if Kyoto Arc (Shishio and Juppongatama awaits!) combined with Enishi Arc (even if Enishi’s accomplices have been shown in this movie) is installed as the epic conclusion. I think it will be a great series of movie, that I really do.

 having a good day everyone ?