English Dub Review: Rurouni Kenshin – Kyoto Disturbance “The Other Objective”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Shishio rallies his troops while Sannosuke finally meets up with Kenshin.

OUR TAKE

Yes, that’s right, we’re still inching closer and closer to the climax of the story, and we have yet another episode that is about building up the tension for the final confrontation and Shishio’s big plan, which is to light Kyoto on fire…or is it? Because thankfully not all of this episode is about just reminding us about big stuff we already know is happening, but in fact involves Kenshin and Saito thinking on how this big fire may just be a decoy for a bigger move on Tokyo, the capital of Japan. Just the fact that this fire plan was so easy to get intel on is a major red flag on its own, indicating that there is likely quite a bit more going on. As for how much, well, that’s probably what the six episodes left in the season are for getting into. But for now, at least Kenshin is fully back from his training, has gotten back in touch with Saito, and also met back up with Sannosuke, who…huh, it’s actually only now dawning on me how these two have been apart all season up until now. Crazy to think how Sannosuke was basically the Vegeta of this show once upon a time. Maybe more accurate to say he was the Yamcha actually.

Also worth bringing up is how many comedy bits there are this episode, and probably for a good reason. This is probably the last time we’ll get to have something easy going and comedic before everything pops up, so we might as well get them out of our system now while we have the chance. It’s basically the “better pee before we get on the road because we’re not stopping if you have to go while we’re driving” equivalent of storytelling. And indeed, as we see as Shishio’s base of operations, he’s giving his cronies one last inspirational speech to remember how they were all abandoned by their government and how they plan to pay them back for it. The tone is very quickly going to narrow in on serious stuff only, so I would recommend you all mentally prepare yourselves for that.