Today I conclude my journey through the live-action Kenshin films. This one was unfortunately the worst of the three, reflecting all of the dramatic sagginess you often end up with in trilogies. The film barely has a dramatic arc, and the plans of both its heroes and villains make too little sense to harbor much tension. Still, the fights were fun, and overall this was a pretty charming interpretation of the franchise. I didn’t watch all that much Kenshin as a teenager, but this trilogy definitely sold me on his world.

You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my brief notes below.

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Today I reviewed the first Rurouni Kenshin live action movie, which was a generally wonderful time! I only absorbed bits and pieces of Rurouni Kenshin back in the day, but this certainly seemed to capture the spirit of what I’d seen, along with just being a generally well-composed, exciting, and surprisingly thematically rich film. As I say in the review, Kenshin mines an extremely fertile vein of thematic territory with its dawn-of-Meiji-era setting, and this film takes full advantage of that. I hope you enjoy the piece!

You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my notes below.

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