Rurouni Kenshin: New Kyoto Arc Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Rurouni Kenshin: New Kyoto Arc Blu-ray Movie Review

Rashômon Kenshin.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 22, 2013

The title of Akira Kurosawa’s legendary film Rashômon has become synonymous with the supposed unknowability of “the truth”, but it’s also become shorthand for the notion of revisiting the same story from different points of view. In Kurosawa’s formulation, the viewer is presented a number of different versions of the same story and is left to puzzle which—if any—of them most resembles what actually happened. In clumsier hands, this same gambit can seem decidedly less like Art and more like, well, Gimmick. Fairly recently a gaggle of Japanese filmmakers returned to Rashomon and came up with a pretty lame revisiting of the same core story, Tajomaru: Avenging Blade. But even American filmmakers have approached this same idea in such less than stellar fare as Vantage Point. Vantage Point might have seemed to have had less of a formidable shadow to pull itself out from under than did Tajomaru: Avenging Blade (which was fated going in to be compared—unfavorably—to Rashômon), but this film suffered from a glut of information coming late in the film that actually sought to depict “objectively” what had been shown previously from various “subjective” perspectives, a perhaps fatal mistake in a film that sets itself up to deliberately skew the audience’s apprehension of what’s going on and whom to trust. Now some might question the need for this frankly convoluted concept to be applied, intentionally or unintentionally, to the relatively less intellectually demanding world of anime (yes, a gross generalization, but you get the idea), but that is exactly what has happened in Rurouni Kenshin: New Kyoto Arc. And in fact this “reboot” suffers from much the same problem that afflicted Tajomaru: Avenging Blade, since it is revisiting one of the most fondly remembered storylines from the original Rurouni Kenshin anime series. This supposedly “new, improved” version also bears a certain resemblance to Vantage Point in that a ton of information is crammed into it, sometimes seemingly willy-nilly, giving the project a sort of stuffed, yet strangely redacted, feel, like a Reader’s Digest version of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

Rurouni Kenshin can be a pretty opaque franchise to jump into headlong, if for no other reason that it is absolutely stuffed to the gills with various names for some characters (including its lead) as well as a glut of terms that get bandied about with little if any explanation or, especially in this set of two “episodes”, context. The lead character is Himura Kenshin, a onetime assassin who now wanders the countryside attempting to atone for his past life by offering protection to those in need (in this particular aspect, the series is quite reminiscent of a male version of Balsa in Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit). One of the interesting things about Rurouni Kenshin is how it quite artfully blends real life historical characters with fictional ones, though in this particular set, the fictional elements tend to outweigh the “real life” ones.

The main bad guy in this particular arc might in fact be mistaken for a bad mummy. Shishio Makoto shares several salient characteristics with Himura Kenshin, not the least of which is a past life as an assassin. In fact Shishio often calls Himura his “brother”, an appellation which Himura doesn’t take very kindly to, though Shishio at least has the wherewithal to accurately describe them as more or less opposite sides of the same coin. The most compelling thing about Shishio, and the one which makes him so unforgettable from a purely visual standpoint, is the fact that the character has been horribly burned over almost all of his body, and so he is swaddled in bandages that in fact make him look gruesomely mummy-esque. Shishio is also prone to giving portentous speeches that have a certain Darwinian, or even an outright Nietzschean, quality, bemoaning the stupidity of the weak and how they're fated to be ruled, if not destroyed, by those with more power. (Lest those who don't pay attention to ratings start watching this with young children around, there's one fairly graphic scene of Shishio involved in the "act of love".)

The third main character in this so-called Kyoto Arc is the young teenage girl Misao. Misao chases after Himura in a forest, demanding to see Aoshi, her mentor in the martial arts and a man for whom she has perhaps more than merely a “professional” interest in. As should come as no great surprise, Misao and Himura start as relative enemies, but soon forge an uneasy if ultimately solid alliance. There are a gaggle of minor characters that fill out the two parts of this set, but this trio provides the main focus for the vast bulk of the action, and in fact the main showdown is of course centered squarely on the long standing rivalry between Shishio and Himura.

The main problem with Rurouni Kenshin: New Kyoto Arc boils down to one very basic but ultimately telling question: why? Why revisit a storyline that was already told more fully (and some might argue much more effectively) in the so-called second season of the show (there were no actual “seasons” in the original broadcast of Rurouni Kenshin, but the Kyoto Arc took place in the second glut of episodes). And what exactly did the creative staff think they were accomplishing by supposedly shifting the focus to Misao’s point of view. “Supposedly” is another operative word here, for the gambit is not only highly questionable, it’s also highly debatable, since the point of view still tends to veer fairly regularly to both Himura and Shishio (in fact there are isolated moments when these characters are nowhere near Misao and yet still occupy the frame and the main storytelling). In fact, it's kind of like a Japanese Rashômon nesting doll.

Rurouni Kenshin: New Kyoto Arc Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Rurouni Kenshin: New Kyoto Arc is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Sentai Filmworks with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. I had seen a lot of complaints on various anime forums from longtime Rurouni Kenshin fans about the animation style of the two supposed "features" (really more like extended episodes masquerading as OVAs) in this set, but I have to wonder if they were watching something that I certainly wasn't. While there's no debating the fact the style here is somewhat different from the main Rurouni Kenshin series, it's quite lustrously beautiful quite a bit of the time and it pops especially well in this high definition presentation. Colors are bold and extremely well saturated, line detail is as sharp as a tack, and best of all there's a lot of well done dimensionality that adds some incredible depth to quite a few sequences. This has a somewhat lither, more "modern", appearance than the main Rurouni Kenshin outing, which may account for at least some of the complaints, but when taken on its own merits, this release offers some really nice looking animation.

Rurouni Kenshin: New Kyoto Arc Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Rurouni Kenshin: New Kyoto Arc features lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mixes in both the original Japanese as well an English dub. Interestingly, this time it's the Japanese track which boasts the more aggressive mix, with noticeably louder amplitude in dialogue and effects than the English language track. The English language track isn't anemic by any stretch of the imagination, but a quick toggling back and forth (which must be done via the Setup Menu—the Audio button is inoperable due to the authoring of this release) shows that the Japanese boasts a louder, more "in your face", mix. It's also interesting to note the difference in the voice actors. The Japanese dub posits Himura as a rather young man, while the English dub gives him a much more mature sounding voice. All of this said, both tracks offer excellent fidelity, with well prioritized dialogue and effects, and generally consistent and logical use of the surround channels.. There are regular decent bursts of LFE that should please those who like their subwoofers engaged in surround mixes.

Rurouni Kenshin: New Kyoto Arc Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The disc's so-called Special Features are nothing other than trailers and disc credits, neither of which I include in the scores given above.

Rurouni Kenshin: New Kyoto Arc Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Rurouni Kenshin: New Kyoto Arc is a project that probably never needed to be done in the first place. The Kyoto Arc is fondly remembered by longtime Rurouni Kenshin fans, and those are the people one would think this new offering is geared toward, and yet those fans are going to be disappointed by the exclusion of vast swaths of material as well as a kind of haphazard handling of even general plot developments. The one place I personally will take issue with the many complaints I've read about the New Kyoto Arc is with regard to the animation. Yes, it's different from the original Rurouni Kenshin, but that doesn't automatically mean it's bad, and in fact I personally think it's quite beautiful a lot of the time. It looks undeniably great on this new Blu-ray. This really doesn't warrant an outright recommendation since the main content is so much better explored in the original anime, but curious fans or rabid completists may well want to check this out anyway.