English Dub Review: Rurouni Kenshin – Kyoto Disturbance “Arrival in Kyoto”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Kenshin and Misao finally arrive in Kyoto and meet Misao’s family.

OUR TAKE

We properly begin the next phase of the Kyoto arc with Kenshin and Misao…actually showing up in Kyoto! Funny that it only took them several episodes to actually show up in the place the arc is named after, but okay! Though it does at least make sense that the tone shifts a bit now that they’re in the enemy’s proper territory. They’re in a bustling city so things are more active and vibrant, but beneath Kyoto’s energy lies dark secrets and forces working against them that they will have to face at some point, among them Shishio and the Ten Swords. And in order to fight the Ten Swords, Kenshin will need more allies AND a new sword of his own, which is why the end up going to Misao’s foster family and meet a former agent of the Oniwaban, Okina, who apparently even used to run the organization before Aoshi. Though now he’s going to need to come back out of retirement to help out with this, especially since the Oniwaban are basically done for (something Kenshin is able to tell him but not Misao, though I imagine that’s going to end up biting him in the butt later).

Aside from that, Kenshin also tries going for a new sword, though the maker himself has died and his son is a pacifist, and so does not want to sell the remaining swords his father made…which I imagine he will change his mind on before too long when it becomes clear staying out of this conflict is not an option. In addition, while we know that Sannosuke is on his way to Kyoto as well, we also see Kaoru and Yahiko make it and run into the twin sister of Tae the restaurant owner, Sae, which I’m sure saved the author a lot of time in having to come up with a new design. I gotta imagine if this were a journey across all of Japan that we would end up meeting a ton of identical family members whose names ended with “-ae”, like a Nurse Joy or Officer Jenny situation in Pokemon. But overall, this episode is just about getting a lot of the relevant characters to the title location and setting up plot threads to be tugged on in the near future, especially since we are nearly halfway done with the arc itself. And we’ll see the continuation of that story…tomorrow!