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Quote Bio of Kenshin Himura
Seijuro: “Boy, you failed to protect something very delicate. You were entrusted with those three lives. Your tiny hands will remember how heavy their bodies were, but you will carry the far heavier weight of their lives with you forever.”
Kenshin was born to the peasant class during the waning glory of the Tokugawa Shogunate. All things being equal, the boy named Shinta would have become a farmer when he grew up. But his parents died of cholera when he was seven years old and he was sold into slavery. While traveling with the slave caravan, he and the others were waylaid by bandits who only had murder in mind.
Three young women, Akane, Kasumi, and Sakura, sacrificed their lives to save him. He had only met them the day before, but because he was the only boy and there were no parents, they wanted to protect him.
Akane: “Don’t watch! Don’t watch! Please, spare just this child! Save this child! Save this child! Save….”
Kasumi: “Shinta. Shinta. You just think about living on. You’re still little, so you couldn’t choose your way of life like we did. So, at least until you can choose how to live your own life, you must stay alive!”
As Shinta was about to be slain by the bandits, a samurai in a big white cape rescued him and avenged the deaths of the three young women. But Seijuro Hiko the 13th did not stick around to help the boy – not initially. Seijuro told Shinta to go to the village, believing that someone would take care of the orphaned boy. (Of course after his parents died no one took care of him, or else he would not have been made a slave. Maybe Seijuro is more naïve than I thought!)
Seijuro returned to the area of the slayings and found grave after grave and the boy kneeling before three stones. He knew that this boy was different from most people in the world. Shinta had buried everyone, the slaves, the slavers, and the bandits, because to his pure heart people all people were the same when they died. For Akane, Kasumi, and Sakura, Shinta tried to find good stones. He wanted to give them flowers, but there were no flowers around. So Seijuro poured sake over the stones.
Seijuro: “It’s unfortunate to pass on without knowing the taste of good sake…. My tribute to them.”
Seijuro told Shinta that his name was much too gentle for a swordsman and renamed him Kenshin -- which was a good idea because Rurouni Shinta just doesn\'t sound right, y\'know? Seijuro became the eight-year-old’s master in the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu. He became more than a teacher to the boy, but mother, father, best friend, and chief tormentor.
Seijuro: “The last time you wet your bed was in the autumn of your eighth year. ...Or when you were so hungry you ate a laughing mushroom and almost laughed yourself to death.”
Kenshin learned Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu by doing. Seijuro was big on giving explanations. He performed a maneuver and Kenshin had to copy it and execute it properly. Thinking back on his boyhood, Kenshin was surprised that he survived the training, but his master assured him that it was because of his expert control.
Kenshin grew stronger, because in Seijuro’s opinion, he was so pure, almost a simpleton in how he viewed the world. This simplicity would lead Kenshin to becoming Hitokiri Battousai. Kenshin left his master at age 13. The Revolution was in its nascent years. Kenshin could not stand the thought of people being hurt while he stood by and did nothing.
Seijuro: “The half-witted pup. He has decided to live according to his own principles. Because he is so pure, he has no other choice but to do this foolish thing.”
The Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu was made to protect people from the pain of the times. But he was too young and too immature to understand that because of the strength of the style, he would guarantee victory for the side he chose. Seijuro told him that Hiten Mitsurugi would make him a mass murderer.
Seijuro: “Swordsmanship is a method of murder, do you hear me? You cam decorate it with all sorts of pretty words, but that is what it is. Kill some people in order to protect others. Murder some to save all. That is the final principle of all sword techniques. As you know, I have murdered hundreds of evil men, but they were all human beings. They were merely trying to live their lives the only way they knew how. If you leave this mountain, you will live the life of a murderer under the direction of men who write their own justice.\"
It is almost a given that the orphaned son of farmers would find a place with the Rebels who had the appearance of being anti-samurai, anti-nobility – although all of the leaders of the Revolution were samurai. Kenshin became a prized member of the Kihei-tai under the second in command of the Choshu, Shinsaku Takasugi, who was building an army to face and to defeat the troops gathered by the Shogunate.
Kogoro Katsura handpicked the boy to be his assassin in the shadows. He asked Kenshin to kill in order to create a new world.
Kenshin: “I will serve as Heaven’s justice.”
When Katsura takes Kenshin to Kyoto, Takasugi warns him: “The boy’s soul will be ruined by this work, you know. Therefore, you must keep your life clean and virtuous. Promise me you will never again draw your sword.” (However, in the manga, Takasugi gives Katsura much more of an argument, reminding the young leader of the Choshu that he\'s a pretty good swordsman and could do the slaying of the opposition himself.) But Katsura must stay clean as a symbol for the clan he leads.
Kenshin: \"It tastes bad.... These days no matter what I drink, I only taste blood.\"
Kenshin assassinates in the dark of night by Katsura’s orders. He is “in the shadows” because he is an unknown swordsman to the Shogunate and to some on the Imperialist side. His sword style is not well known, so he cannot be identified by it. Besides who would believe this delicate-featured boy with the long red hair and fragile body could be a manslayer? That is unless they looked into his eyes. He has a cold, deliberate, unflinching gaze. He killed 100 people in six months without even blinking.
Iizuka, the examiner of assassinations: “You’re good, but lately you’ve been absolutely incredible.”
Kenshin: “What do you mean?”
Iizuka: “You don’t even give them a chance to scream anymore.”
After a year, Katsura came to understand Takasugi’s warning. Katsura increasingly feared that Kenshin would become a heartless killer. But that was exactly how Kenshin saw himself. He had no other value to anyone except in his swordsmanship.
Katsura: \"I am attending a meeting tonight with Toshimaro and Miyabe. Important matters of our clans\' policies will be discussed.\"
Kenshin: \"You want me as your bodyguard?\"
Katsura: \"No, I want you to attend the meeting as my adjunct.\"
Iizuka: \"Oh, good for you.\"
Kenshin: \"No thank you. I am your assassin. That is the only way I can serve you. If there is nothing else, I will excuse myself.\"
Katagai: \"Hey! Come back here! ...What an obstinate attitude! How dare he repay your kindness with that kind of response!\"
Kenshin wanted nothing to do with leaving his name to history. He is a boy who slept sitting up with a sword leaning against his shoulder, ready to defend, to kill. In his moments of relaxation, he played with a wooden spinning top, reinforcing the idea to anyone who saw him that he is just a child. Since Kenshin was born in 1851, it actually made him about 13 in 1864.
Katsura: \"Who is that woman?\"
Katagai: \"Is she the one the men are snickering about?\"
Iizuka: \"That\'s her, all right.\"
Kenshin: \"Iizuka-san!\"
Katsura: \"She smells of white plums.\"
Kenshin: \"Katsura-san!\"
Katsura: \"I\'m not casting aspersions on her.\"
Tomoe Yukishiro criticized Katsura for giving a child a sword to preserve his ideology. But it was Katsura’s idea to use Tomoe as a sheath for Kenshin – literally and figuratively. Katsura hoped that Tomoe would tame some of what made Kenshin an expert assassin. He did not want Kenshin to become a heartless murderer. Everyone who knew the boy wanted Tomoe for him, hoping she would lift the darkness, the coldness from his eyes.
Katsura: \"Pardon me. I know it is very late.\"
Tomoe: \"Master Katsura.\"
Katsura: \"No, don\'t wake anybody. I need to talk to you.\"
Tomoe: \"Justice that seems like insanity.\"
Katsura: \"My teacher, Shoin Yoshida, taught me that principle. Himura is the embodiment of that very difficult idea.\"
Tomoe: \"You give a child a sword to preserve your philosophy?\"
Katsura: \"I have a friend named Takasugu in my hometown. He is a good man, but his methods are sometimes very extreme. However, he has a sheath who stands with him and keeps him from slashing too wildly. She is a woman named Uno.\"
Tomoe: \"A sheath?\"
Katsura: \"Would you be his sheath? Would you be the one to tame Himura\'s brandished sword?\"
Tomoe: \"Why me?\"
Katsura: \"My role in his life is to drive his passions and make him kill. A killer who is driven so can often cause tragedy unintentionally. So he needs that calming force. I know none of this makes sense to you.\"
The teenager did fall in love with her and the solitude that came from living with her. For the first time in years, he slept in a futon without a sword by his side.
Tomoe, however, did not go into their relationship with a pure heart. She went to Kyoto for revenge. Kenshin had killed her betrothed in a successful assassination attempt on a Shogunate loyalist. Her betrothed was the only person to wound him, not because he was a superior swordsman, but, in Kenshin’s words, out of spite. The wound on Kenshin’s left cheek constantly bled. Iizuka told him that a wound made by the sword of someone with a strong hatred would not heal until the revenge had been exacted. Of course, Iizuka would say such a thing, since he too betrayed Kenshin.
Tomoe fell in love with Kenshin and sacrificed herself to save him. She jumped in the way of Kenshin\'s sword thrust and died at his hands. It is because of her and her death that Kenshin vowed never to kill again once the Revolution ended. Tomoe gave him a peace he had never known. She loved him when she should have hated him. She betrayed him and then she protected him. When she died, he burned her body along with the home they made together in Otsu and the spinning top for the boyhood now definitely lost to him.
When the last battle was fought and the Imperialists had forced the Restoration, Kenshin thrust his sword into the ground and walked away. He visited Shakku Arai, the infamous swordmaker, who gave him the sakoubattou, the reverse blade sword and bid him deal with the world without the ability to kill.
For ten years he wandered before he came to Tokyo and happened upon a young woman waving a bokken at him and accusing him of being Battousai the Manslayer. Well, he was that, but he was not the one who was killing people in the name of the Kamiya Kasshin Ryu and calling himself Hitokiri Battousai. When the murderer attacked the young woman, Kenshin, with his godlike speed, removed her from harm.
Kaoru: \"Rurouni-san, if you like, you can stay here until you leave town.\"
Kenshin: \"You don\'t even know who I am. Is it all right?\"
Kaoru: \"I\'m sure you have your reasons for being a wanderer. I see no reason to question you more.\"
A fateful moment. Kenshin finally found a home and stopped wandering; he found a home with Kaoru Kamiya at the dojo she inherited from her father. And quickly his presence attracted more friends in Yahiko Myojin, Sanosuke Sagara, and Megumi Takani. His presence also attracted bad guys and truly evil men.
The problem is that everyone wants to fight the legendary Battousai, not Kenshin Himura. Until he learned the final maneuver of the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu, he was always endanger of returning to his former self, breaking his vow, and becoming the manslayer again and forever. Only his master could save him from himself, so that he could save those he loved from harm.
Seijuro: “You were a brat, who couldn’t be held down back then. And, the result of you leaping from my teachings is this. Your swordsmanship was superior, but at only fourteen-years-old, the stupid apprentice’s mind hadn’t matured, so he suffered deep wounds on his left cheek and in his heart that would not heal, causing him to become an unstable swordsman, swaying between a manslayer and one who does not kill. And your Hiten Mitsurugi style, as a result, helped to create this ghost of the Revolution called Shishio. Got it? Hiten Mitsurugi style had been taught to protect people from the pain of the times, yes! But only as a free sword that is not under the influence of any power at all! Because you didn’t understand that you are not qualified to learn the final secret of the Hiten Mitsurugi School! ... It was a mistake to teach an idiot like you the Hiten Mitsurugu Style!”
The chaos of the Revolution had stripped him of any desire for life. When he thought back on the moment when he lost his innocence, when the bandits wantonly slayed both slavers and slaves, he recalled the three young women who tried to protect him and begged that his life be spared.
Kasumi: “Shinta, Shinta. You just think about living. You’re still little, so you couldn’t choose your way of life as we did. So, at least, until you can choose how to love your own life, you must stay alive!”
As he remembered that moment and their wish for him to live, tears fell from his eyes.
Kenshin: “I … still ….”
Seijuro: “Because you have slain many people, you don’t even the your own life. That is what allows the manslayer nesting deep in your heart to take over your soul. Even using the power of a manslayer who sacrifices himself to protect those that you love or the weak is only a moment in the long, continuous strands of time. Live on, Kenshin. Then, you’ll be able to use Amakakeru Ryu no Hirameki as you please. And you will never again lose to the manslayer hidden within you.”
In fighting the best of the Ten Swords of Shishio, he encountered a young man named Sojiro Seta. Sojiro is called the Tenken because his abilities with the sword are from an inborn talent. In this way, Sojiro and Kenshin are the same, for Kenshin\'s talent is also a gift from Heaven -- if not the boy would never have become Katsura\'s Heavenly Justice.
They were both orphaned at an early age and were inspired and raised by a swordsman following an extremely traumatic moment. Sojiro, the illegitimate son of a merchant, was forced to live with his father\'s family. He was mistreated and physically abused. Sojiro met Shishio and helped him. Shishio gave him his wakizashi and his creed: \"Only the fittest survive, the weak die.\" In deadly peril, Sojiro killed his father\'s family. He offered a false smile to Shishio who approved of his innate ability. Sojiro abandoned all emotion but for a smiling contentedness.
But if Sojiro had met someone like Seijuro Hiko instead of Shishio, what kind of a person would he have become? During their duel, Kenshin asked Sojiro what was bothering him. Sojiro found him a paradox -- how could he be so strong, so skilled and fight to save the weak? How could Kenshin be who he is when only the strongest should live? How could he have made a vow not to kill when the weak should die? During the duel, he asked Kenshin why didn\'t he protect him as he had protected others; why didn\'t his Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu save him from the pain and the sadness?
The paradox stifled Sojiro\'s abilities, but it also opened his heart to that day so long ago. He realized that he had not be smiling, but weeping when he killed his father\'s family. Kenshin defeats him and in doing so, offers him another path, another creed.
Sojiro: \"I\'m thinking about wandering for at least ten years or so.\"
Obaachan: \"Oh my, ten years?\"
Sojiro: \"Two men, once walking down the same path, took that long to decide on opposite truths. And so, I think that I might find my own truth if I spend ten years wandering.\"
In gratitude for teaching him, Sojiro revealed to Shishio what he believed to be the key to defeating Kenshin\'s Amakakeru Ryu no Hiremeki.
Sojiro: \"A fundamental of battoujutsu (sword drawing) is to step forward with the right foot so that you don\'t cut your own foot with the attack. However, Himura-san took one step more from there with his left foot. To preserve the momentum from swinging and twisting his waist, he changes the timing ever so slightly for his sword draw. That one last step that he takes instantaneously adds acceleration and power, changing Himura-san\'s godlike speed battoujutsu into a super godlike speed. ....That one step is very difficult. To make that extra step forward in the small space between life and death. If you\'re willing to sacrifice yourself or if you are looking for something in death.... In other words, if there is even the smallets negative feeling buried in your heart it would be impossible.\"
Of course the boldness of the left foot is only part of the devastating Amakakeru Ryu no Hiremeki.
Kenshin eventually defeats the evil threatening Japan, but there always seems to be more bad or misguided people, who threaten the nascent peace of the Meiji Era. People who suffered religious repression during the Edo Period are led by a man blinded by the lies of another who seeks to takeover Japan. And everywhere there are warriors who refuse to live in this time of peace. Some believe the Meiji government to be too weak and too corrupt. Others see that weakness as an opportunity to reestablish the old rule, when being a samurai had meaning in their culture and society.
He meets warriors who dispise the arms taken from the West, appalled by the idea of guns and cannons, tools of death but without the saving grace of proving superior skill. Some of these warriors fought for the Shogunate and could not recovering from the devastating loss; others fought for the Restoration and are disappointed by the world that was born of their fighting and dying.
Some are simply mad; others mad at the world. And one way or another many of them come to blame Hitokiri Battousai for the brave new world. One such person is Enishi Yukishiro, the brother of Tomoe, Kenshin\'s wife. Unlike Shishio, who had to take out Kenshin in order to fulfill his dream of creating a nightmare, Enishi\'s fight is personal. He watched his sister die at Kenshin\'s hands and he remembers his sister\'s last wish, to see the assassin who killed her fiance pay with his life.
Enishi returns to Japan to make Kenshin face the sins of the past and to suffer. He wants revenge against everything even remotely connected to Kenshin -- those Ken-san holds most dear, those he speaks to, those he\'s helped, and the Japan he created with his bloody sword -- a Japan without Tomoe. He would have targeted all those who ever had direct contact with Kenshin, but he limits his targets because Tomoe would not have liked the uproar. She liked the quiet, the solitude.
Little does Enishi realize that Kenshin is always suffering for the many deaths he caused. Despite learning a reason to live -- his love for Kaoru, Seijuro, and the others -- he still doesn\'t think well of himself because of his past. When he encounters Enishi, he broods about the killings. He wielded his sword to create a new age for the sake of the oppressed, but in killing, he caused the loved ones of his victims to suffer. He was, in truth, a mass murderer, killing humdreds for the sake of a fragile dream.
Kenshin served as \"Heaven\'s Justice,\" which was the message Iizuka left on the bodies. Enishi came back to serve as Jinchuu, \"Earthly Justice\".
Rurouni Kenshin is a marvel of storytelling, animation direction, character design, and plain old good writing. While the Kyoto and Revenge Story Arcs are the strongest, none of the stories ever let you down.
The writers of the series are not unaware of the design of the characters, in fact, they often refer to Kenshin’s small stature and pretty-more-so-than-handsome features. Sano calls him wussy. Misao calls him a transvestite. A foreigner on the street calls him a boy. Hairstyles are often referenced. Because of Sano\'s spiky haircut, he is called a rooster head by other characters. Saito is called a willow-head. Chou of the Ten Sword with his tall wheat-like yellow hair is called a broomhead. Humor comes at in the heat of battle or at key moments in the series, as when Kenshin revitalizes during his monster duel with Shishio; the leaves and all nature resonate with his swordsman\'s spirit. But something similar happens to Shishio; the flames of the petroleum platform dance.
Aoshi: \"Just like when the Battousai awoke, a resonation with the swordsman\'s spirit of Shishio.\"
Saito: \"Just like? There\'s no similarity between leaves and flames!\"
The End
[Edited on 28-7-2003 by Yoh Asakura 21]
? (Put Vegito choping off the sqirrel\'s head instead of that one because I like Vegito ;D )
Banned
