English Dub Review: Rurouni Kenshin – Kyoto Disturbance “Aoshi vs. Okina”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

As Kenshin trains with his master, Misao grapples with learning that most of the Oniwaban have died and races to stop Aoshi from fighting Okina. She fails.

OUR TAKE

Hey, we’re finally back with more Rurouni Kenshin,  let’s talk about the episode itself, which is pretty much a villain-centric one this time around. Kenshin is off beginning his training to learn his final ultimate super special awesome technique, so that gives the antagonist some time to breathe, plan, and kill their former mentors at their leisure. As the title implies, the main focus is about Aoshi finally taking that final step from aggressive but well meaning antagonist to full on bad guy by making a clear demarcation that he is willing to kill anyone in his quest to get vengeance against Kenshin, and that includes the old guy who worked with him under the same guy. So I guess this technically isn’t a Darth Vader Killing Obi-Wan kind of moment but more like when Anakin killed Mace Windu in Revenge of the Sith.

My point is that Aoshi has officially crossed the line and that’s kind of bad timing for Misao as she has only just learned of the thing both Kenshin and Okina were trying to keep from her, which was that the majority of the Oniwaban under Aoshi have died. Not killed by Kenshin, but killed nonetheless. You could make an argument that this was something that should’ve been told to her at least some time ago, and there could be a case for that, but right now it’s kinda just bad timing since she has to go from learning that to seeing an older parental figure be killed by the guy she admires the most right in front of her. That girl is going to have trauma for days. Oh, and also the Ten Swords have a little bit of a moment by themselves where Shishio shows off how he basically has a lot of internal heat so he kind of has fire powers now? This show has always tried to be pretty grounded with its characters’ special abilities so this is probably the closest we’ll get to someone throwing around fireballs, but hey, who knows where we’ll be going in the remaining ten episodes of the season!