Rurouni Kenshin is honestly a work of art and a masterpiece series. The main character Himura Kenshin is an example of how to make an amazing protagonist and easily one of the best of all time. Despite knowing the things the author of the manga has done (it’s really disappointing and disgusting) Rurouni Kenshin is a masterpiece of a manga, In my opinion the manga outshines the anime apart from Trust and Betrayal, it’ll take about 2 hours of your time and you’ll experience one of the best backstories ever. As a Gintama stan who loves samurai shit this manga will make you fall in love with it if your into these type of things.

The story of how Himura Kenshin atones for his past sins of being Himura Battōsai, a man slayer. Himura Kenshin as a Rurouni, basically a wandering samurai, is trying to change his ways of his backstory as a killer. He stumbles upon Kamiya Kaoru who means a lot to him since she got saved by him from someone who was from that dojo who wanted to crush it and as a thanks made him stay in her dojo because Kenshin had no where to go. Their relationship at the beginning is about respect but later on she changes him and motivates him because of Kenshin’s shattered worth. He later meets Yahiko, a poor 10 year old boy who pickpocketed Kenshin because that was his job since he was helping out the Yakuza with money. He was also saved by Kenshin himself who saved him from the debt from the Yakuza and let him stay and the dojo, Kaoru would make him train so he could become a fine swordsman to protect himself. Sagaru Sanosuke, a former member of the disgraced Sekiho Army in his childhood. He became a fight merchant under the name Zanza, Meeting Kenshin, Sano put his feelings aside and ended his fighting merchant days. Sanosuke became an ally of Kenshin’s and fought with him. There a lot of other characters, like Tomoe and Shishio that I really like and are amazingly written.

The art in Rurouni Kenshin is classic and really freaking good for its time, I actually was really hesitant of starting Kenshin because of its old art style but it’s great. The art makes you feel intrigued and wonder how better will the art style get? From the beginning to the end the art style constantly improves. The ongoing Kenshin manga, the Hokkaido arc’s art style is phenomenal too. It really tells you how much artists can improve over the years, this is obvious and for most mangakz but Kenshin has some uniqueness too it. Like Hideaki Sorachi, creator of Gintama, his art has emotional impact when something cool or something sad happens and I feel the same with Kenshin. Lots of hard work and emotion goes into them, These are some of my favourite panels:

I would really recommend the anime and manga of Rurouni Kenshin because they’re are simply fantastic. Apart from the filler in the anime, everything’s amazing. I would highly suggest the Trust and Betrayal OVA since it shows the origin of how Kenshin grew up and his tragic story that he had went through, and read the manga since the anime doesn’t cover the whole thing. This is my second review on this site so let me know anything for improvements.