Rurouni Kenshin #2: Battle in the Moonlight 100 minutes English/Japanese English Subtitles 08/22/2000

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Two Kenshin discs in as many days is really just way too much for me. But, as I'm trapped in the most Southern parts of Florida with basically nothing that'd appeal to anyone under the age of sixty five, I have plenty of spare time on my hands. One can only make the two hour drive to Miami so many times! So, even though I don't really want to, I've got plenty of Kenshin to rewrite. I mention this often, about the poor quality of my first write ups of a lot of shows, but Kenshin was really stellar in how bad it was. Padded with (mis)quotes from the show with two or three sentences in between them. Simply atrocious. And now what am I doing? I'm using up space by writing about stuff not related to the show. Hey, at least I'm writing in paragraph form now. I have a theory about Kenshin, if you'll bear with me long enough for me to tell it. I think basically everything this show boils down to is your average 19th century Japanese person's desire for beef hot-pots. I don't know what a beef hot-pot is exactly, not what it's entirely comprised of, but I do know that the Japanese, if Kenshin is to be believed, will go so far as to sell their grandfather's priceless paintings if it allows them to get their hands on a delicious beef hot-pot.

You know, that really seems like it's going a bit far to me. Also, it worries me that every time the Kenshin gang go out to get beef hot-pots, which is frequently, something horrible happens to them or someone they love. This tragedy is often through the machinations of the evil, drunken Democratists. I know, I know, I totally hate them too. The Democratists, aside from having a hidden agenda of drunkenly destroying the beef hot-pots of friendly restaurant goers, seem to enjoy beating up young women and giving primary characters the ability to launch into large bouts of exposition. I don't know why I don't like it, when faced with precedent, but I just really can't bring myself to care about most people's backstory. Not even the brawling Sanosuke who is, arguably, the man. Color me surprised when I found out that this section of the Kenshin storyline had very little to do with beef hot-pots at all. Aside from a quick episode in the beginning, the majority of this disc deals with an annoying former manslayer that's as cheap as your standard Street Fighter II player. Jinei, the villain in question, has the amazing power to freeze those weaker than himself via a "sqoogy eye" and dispatch them at his leisure. This is about as uncool as sitting in a corner as Ryu or Ken and chucking fireballs as far as I'm concerned. You know, I could go around all day holding down rat's tails so they can't get away before I smush them... but I don't.

As cheesy as it is though, I gotta admit it makes for some semi-good dramatic tension. While I refuse to buy into Kenshin's whole "If I kill him, I'll become what I once was" speech, it's otherwise somewhat cool watching what goes down. My only problem is that, once the guy is out of the picture, it's back to business as usual with the Kenshin gang! The rough around the edges Sanosuke and the rapscallion that is Yahiko appear out of nowhere and start complaining about how they came to help and they're pisssed that they weren't needed after all! Kenshin and Kaoru, of course, are busy giggling amongst themselves while the body of the ferocious warrior bleeds all over the ground next to them. "Hello!" They say, "Nice day isn't it? Good day for an evil man to commit suicide right in front of me!" They don't say that in so many words, but it's the basic jist of it all. I don't really understand how Kenshin can be a pacifistic, crying bleeding heart one moment and then not shed a tear when the guy he was fighting, the guy he refused to kill just moments ago, totally kills himself. I guess this whole "no kill" philosophy really only applies to to non-passive actions. As long as he's not -directly- the reason that the guy dies, no foul! This is a terrible moral Japan. This show is why a good chunk of your populace grows up to be thirty with no job or education, subsidized by their parents.

It's sort of funny how Kenshin can go from interesting to absolutely maddening in the span of ten seconds. I mean, you take your shows like Love Hina and they're bad, but they were never really good, so it's not like it's exactly a huge deal. Kenshin's something weird and totally different though. I mean, you can't espouse cool dramatic moments and tense sword fights one moment and then totally forget about them and have the characters screaming at each other because one wandered into the wrong bathroom the next, that's just totally annoying and all too prevalent in these types of shows. Kenshin has the ability to be totally awesome. Unfortunately this only happens when it's not throwing super deformed characters all over the place and saturating the screen with those disgusting bumps that show up on the character's heads whenever they're hit with the odd frying pan or sake bowl, and that's very rare indeed. When Kenshin isn't floundering around looking for ways to bring up forced love triangles it's actually pretty okay.