Rurouni Kenshin (2012) movie review

http://streamme.cc/stream/7ed4cb365112b8ac/

Movie adaptations are the latest big thing in today's cinematic world. Hollywood makes more film adaptations, remakes, and other forms of re-using unoriginal ideas than they make any sort of truly original film. Most of these "original" films are also just genre films, using stereotypical writing tropes to pander to the general audience in hope of making a big buck.

Now, don't take my introduction the wrong way, I LOVE movie adaptations. I simply felt that some context needed to be made before I could get to the point I was going to make. Rurouni Kenshin (2012) is the best manga-to-live-action film I have ever watched (disclaimer: I am an American and am not aware of many film-adaptations of manga and anime. I only just saw this movie a year after it was released, online through the link I provided at the beginning. Why is this review so late? Because I live in America and this movie was made in Japan.

Despite America apparently becoming so experienced at making movie adaptations of pre-existing works, they still seem terrible at making them. Avatar: The Last Airbender, directed by M. Night Shyamalan, was one of the worst movies ever. Dragonball: Evolution was hated by the very fans whom it was made for.

I bring this up because despite my previous comment about about Rurouni Kenshin (2012) being the best manga-to-live-action film I've seen, the movie itself has a LOT of problems.

Since I don't want to spoil the plot of the movie until later (though to be honest, it isn't exactly a spoiler since there's no plot twist or new development from the manga), I'll discuss the choreography first. Now, the titular character, Himura Kenshin, is renown in the world of his story for his Hitsen Mitsurugi Style swordplay. The style is a fantasy swordstyle based on Battojutsu, a real way of using the Japanese Katana, but it is regarded in the manga as one of the fastest swordstyles. Now, Kenhsin himself is choreographed as being VERY agile, but his swordstyle doesn't resemble the ultra-fast swordplay he uses. The problem with this is not only the choreography, but also the editing. A style like Hitsen Mitsurugi is supposed to move faster than a normal human can blink. This requires film editing to show this, much like how someone would portray Neo from the Matrix fighting at super-speed against Smith.

But Kenshin's speed and swordstyle isn't the only choreographed issue. By the end of the story, Sanosuke gets into a fist fight with one of the minions. This fight, which could have been VERY well choreographed, instead was very clumsy and boring. It felt like the director just said "ok, you two, I want you to start beating each other up, and we'll film it". The fighters were very clumsy and the break in the middle of the fight seemed pointless.

The problem here is that fighting scenes in movies aren't just filler or meant to be two guys fighting. If you watch any of Bruce Lee's or Jet Li's movies, you'll know that fighting scenes are meant to be theatrical, dramatic or comedic. But Sanosuke's fight wasn't any of those, it was just clumsy.

But since we got to Sanosuke's fight, let's also talk about the fight Kenshin has at that same time. This fight actually WAS well choreographed and showed both the fighter's skills. the problem with that fight though, is that before we even get to the fighting, we have to sit through Kenshin's opponent shooting a million bullets at Kenshin from his handguns. This movie is set in the Meiji Era. And even though the fighting styles were sometimes magical, there was a lot more reality grounded into Kenshin than most manga had. The way the bullets were flying out at Kenshin, you'd think he had Magazines in his guns. The Meiji Era was pre-WW2. That means that at best we'd have Automatic rifles, but those guns were not automatic rifles, they were handguns, like pistols. Now, I'm not a gun-fantatic, so please don't quote anything I've said, but if you have two handguns in Meiji-era times, you aren't going to shoot more than two bullets before you need to manually reload.

But whatever, onto the characters. While most of the characters were clearly defined and in-character, there were three characters I had a problem with. Yahiko and Kanryu's two henchmen. In the manga, Kanryu hires the Oniwabanshu to protect himself and to torture Megumi. In the movie, Kanryu has these two guys with no real connection to the story except that they were combinations of characters. The henchmen that fights Kenshin is clearly a combination of Aoshi and Han'nya, but there in lies the problem. Part of what made Han'nya such a cool character was how devoted he was to Aoshi. He even destroyed every identifying part of his face to make himself better at wearing disguises to better serve Aoshi. But in the movie, the guy apparently has a huge burn scar on his face. Why? What purpose does that scar give besides make him look cooler?

And another factor is that the Aoshi-Han'nya hybrid character never even tried to pull off Aoshi's "Dance of the Wheeled sword", which was Aoshi's signature technique. I understand that Jin-e was the major villain this time and Kenshin had to save his trump card against him, and the movie was pretty much wrapping to a close, but WHY did we need both the Kanryu-Megumi plot AND the Jin-e plot? the reason behind the Jin-e lot was most likely a narrative decision because Jin-e represents the mass murderer that Kenshin used to be but abandoned. And the Kanryu-Megumi plot was most likely because they needed to bring in all of the main characters for the movie, since Sanosuke and Megumi didn't become major characters until that plot.

But the problem still remains with Yahiko. In the manga, Yahiko became a student of the Kamiya dojo because he wanted to study under Kenshin. but in the movie, he's just a kid who lives at the Dojo studying under Kaoru. And this is before Kenshin even meets her. So Yahiko has literally no dynamic on the group at all besides playing younger brother to Kaoru. His story is completely ignored and he's pretty much a pointless character.

But that isn't the worst bit. Even though they combined Aoshi with Han'nya to balance time, Jin-e's role in the story is so confusing. He replaces Hiruma Gohei as the man impersonating the Battosai (Kenshin's alias during the war) and claiming to be using the Kamiya swordstyle which is used by Kaoru.

The problem with this ISN"T that they were combining plots and characters. I wouldn't have minded it. In fact, throughout the movie I was excited to try and learn his reason for impersonating the sword style. But his reason is NEVER explained. He doesn't say why, he doesn't even get asked later on. This was the biggest problem with the story. By trying to find a way to narratively include Jin-e in the movie, they made their plot even more confusing.

Now, Rurouni Kenshin is still a good movie. The burn scar on the Aoshi-Han'nya guy was probably made as a lead in to Shishio since I read that the producers were intending to create a sequel, and since the movie did do well in the box-office, let's hope we can at least get that. but please studio, DON"T combine the Shishio plot with the Enishi plot. The Shishio plot had more than enough to make a single movie.

All in all, I rank this movie a 5/10. The plot and choreography are not up to par with most movies and the decisions they made in the writing department were not the best. Hopefully the sequel will be a lot better.

Welcome

Welcome to Ani-Country, because a nation just isn't big enough to hold my ideas. Now, here at Ani-Country I'll be reviewing and discussing animations, comics, and other medias that are related such as Movie adaptations and others.

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