Tag Archives: Kenshin

Recent Viewing: Kenshin (Live Action)

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When I was first getting into the anime scene in high school, Kenshin was one of the more well known titles to fans at the time. We didn’t have the abundance of streaming options and a few select titles were making their way to late night TV. I enjoyed Kenshin for the most part, but was never a really big fan of the series, admittedly.

Regardless, it was good news to hear that Japan was making a live action film. Some of my friends posted images of the film shoot and slowly but surely I was getting more and more excited for the film, even though I haven’t rewatched the anime in close to ten years at this point. I recall the second season being really good, but found myself forgetting some of the events in the first season.

When I was at A-kon earlier this summer, they had a screening but I missed out due to the lines for registration and pre-registration 🙁 So at this point I figured I wasn’t going to really get a chance to check it out. Then to my pleasant surprise, it was screened at this years SGMS. So how was it?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq4O1zHyJqo&w=560&h=315]

The story of Kenshin revolves around him being a top assassin during the war, but when the war is over, the age of the samurai is as well marking the start of the Meiji Era (I believe this is right, my Japanese history is a bit lacking). So Kenshin takes up a life of not killing, however, other wandering swordsman continue their search for the legendary assassin so they can have their crack at killing him.

The actors and actresses fit the characters well from what I recall, although some of the characters I didn’t remember (mostly some of the villains). Since I also haven’t seen the anime for a while, I wasn’t able to track how closely they followed the storyline (which is a completely different situation than my viewing of Gantz, which will be up next week). So The I wasn’t relegated to knit-picking the story progression to the manga or anime.

I was really thankful for that, because I enjoyed the film since I some of the characters and story seemed new to me. There were a few kinda awkward moments in the film that took it down a notch for me. Mostly there was a pretty harsh cut in the film in the latter portion that  took me out of the film. I didn’t feel like they had to do such a harsh cut, they could have added in another scene or something to help smooth out the transition, or at least some dialogue. That was mostly the only issue I felt in terms of editing. The other moments were a couple lines of dialogue and weird moments of silence, even though I could see those being winks to the anime or manga.

I would be interested to hear what Kenshin fans thought of the film. I talked to one of my friends and she thought the film was really good, so it seems for fans it is a worthwhile film. The film has done well enough that a sequel is in the works as well. I must admit I am pretty excited for this because the second season of the anime was awesome and featured one of my favorite villains in my early anime years.

Japan Adventure Day 9

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Today was our final day in japan with the group 🙁 I had a great time getting to know some fellow travelers and had so much fun over the previous week or so of adventure. The majority of the group was flying back to the States and a few of us were staying in Japan and going our separate ways.

For the last few days there was a handful of us talking about going to the fish market for sushi breakfast. Admittedly, some of us had too much fun at the beer garden so morning came a bit too soon but never-the-less a small group of 4 including myself made our way to the market.

We had options of breakfast sushi platters so i went with the variety platter that included, eel, salmon, sea urchin and many more. At the end of breakfast, our guide had suggested we try one more type of sushi. I am not sure what it was called but it was a slightly seared piece of fatty tuna. It was seriously the most delicious thing I had ever eaten, hands down. Nothing has ever come close to that.

After we made our way back to the hotel we waited for a few other travelers before we hit up a couple areas. In the meantime we wandered a nearby temple and took some interesting pictures.

Around lunchtime we made our way to a mall that I was itching to go to since I started planning my trip. The reason I wanted to go, was to score myself some anime cels. The mall we went to was 4 stories tall, and covered a lot of ground. As we got to higher floors we started finding nothing but toy stores. So naturally I bought some more gachapon figures.

While roaming around looking for the cel shop, we discovered a small art gallery that focused on Rurouni Kenshin, featuring cels, figures and more. We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside so I was only able to get one off the wall.

As I continued to look for the cel shop, I finally broke down and called the guide for directions. I was able to get a vicinity to the shop and I found several cels to my liking 🙂 My objectives of the trip were almost complete.

We decided to stop by in harajuku again and we showed a couple travelers where the Neon Genesis Evangelion store was at. To our surpass, they had a lot of new content in the store from when we were there a little over a week ago. I was eyeing an Asuka figure earlier in the trip but they were now all sold out. I picked up a couple more art books and we were on our way back to the hotel.

By this point the other travelers were nearing their departure time. We hung out and swapped information with some of the travelers and watched as they boarded the shuttle bus and headed to the nearest station. It was now just me and my friend in Tokyo and neither of us speaks japanese. We went out for some eats at a chain place called Yoshinoya, which has some awesome beef bowls and went to bed early that night. We had a long day with the short amount of sleep and tomorrow we were starting a new challenge, Mt Fuji. Stay Tuned!


*(First image is my variety sushi platter for breakfast, the second is of lanterns at the nearby shrine, third is the wall outside of the Kenshin gallery showing and the final image is one of thousands of glass cases filled with toys at the mall.)