Griff Lees Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Roy Hart If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Winifred The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

Staci Frederick Blistering performances.

Shostakovich343 If there is one word adequate for describing "Ruroundi Kenshin: Tsuioku-hen", it would be "inconsequent". Although the story, storytelling and animation all suffer from a lack of balance, there are faint glimmers of brilliance to be found in the mini-series, explaining it being frequently mistaken for one of the masterpieces of Japanese animation.The first of four episodes serves as backstory for the backstory for the main plot, and with "backstory" (the first "backstory that is, for a lot more backstory is coming) I mean the protagonist's complete character development over the course of a small decade, conveyed through half an hour of exposition of differing subtlety and clarity. To keep the episode interesting, the chronology has been stirred somewhat by cutting between timelines, which mostly has the contrary effect of making the story feel convoluted, especially noting the shipments of minor characters dumped onto the screen with little introduction and the possibility of never showing up again.The second episode provides the more recent backstory, centering around the shogun wars during the late nineteenth century. Considering all of this is background information for the personal conflict of the second half of the series (the one with a plot), it should be noted a lot of time is spend on oblique dialogue concerning the geopolitical situation in Japan, which is mostly irrelevant for the central conflict. At the same time, the second episode features more action than the first, but most of it is disappointing. In my experience, the audience is usually interested in being able to *see* the action, besides a few flashes of blood (or tomato juice, for as far I could distinguish) illuminating the dark sky, and covering the dark streets, dark houses and dark corpses. And intercutting the fighting with stroboscopic black screens is not a way to heighten the tension, for the presumed majority of viewers who do not suffer from epileptic disease, that is.The third episode is the one that finally gets to the main plot, and the first episode to actually be good. The awkward action and shogun politics are brought to the background, shifting the focus to inner- and personal conflict. The protagonist's struggle with the question whether blindly killing people is truly the best way to create a better world (superficial as this conflict may be) is beautifully represented by the leitmotiv of a continuously reopening wound on his cheek, while the interaction with the woman he is sheltering with is subtle and believable. Their conversations always have an complex undertone of love, grief, doubt and fear, without directly addressing those matters. The audience is not informed of how their relationship develops, but shown through the sophisticated interactions, which is how the potential of film as a medium is fully realised. For a delightful thirty minutes, "Ruroundi Kenshin: Tsuioku-hen" was actually great.After the sudden increase in quality during the third episode, I bade: "Please, let the last episode not just be sword fighting and shameless melodrama." How I hate to be right. The deliberate understatement has been traded in for operatic betrayal and misconception, combined with the first two episodes' action, luckily somewhat more bearable because of the lighter backgrounds. The final episode still is a melancholic portrait of a samurai's stoicism, but ultimately, "Ruroundi Kenshin: Tsuioku-hen" has ruined its opportunity of nuance.The animation is hit-and-miss as well. Some characters look more realistic than usual for the medium, while others look like walking fish, with appropriate lip movement. The backgrounds are plagued by a similar imbalance: the ones are not obscuring brown and oppressive grey, are so brightly coloured they interfere with the characters, making the frames feel unbalanced, as it is difficult to decide where to focus."Ruroundi Kenshin: Tsuioku-hen" is cobbled together from ill-fitting elements, most of which were not very good in the first place. The mini-series has moments of beauty and even shimmers of genius, mostly in the third episode, but the structural ineptness undermines the impact, as the first half is tedious set-up and the second lacks decent pay-off. Many lessons can be learned from its triumphs and mistakes, and it should be watched by fans of the medium, although a certain moderation in critical response would be appropriate.

salvamax133 With no doubt, we have here one of the masterworks of the anime. It is great, from the beginning to the end, in this film everything is carefully prepared: the direction and the screenplay a memorable, told with an unusual beauty in anime, delve much into the characters and gives a faithful description of the time, both the politics and the era, and the problems that face the innocent who dies day after day about the politic situation. Here we have one sentence of the film: "... you should not feel resentment even despair, one who has died will not return to life, you glad to be alive, ...". And of course, I can't forget the score, one of the best anime score I never listen, it helps you with its delicacy and tragic beauty to believe the tragedy who have to live with poor Shinta (later knows like Kenshin).

bloodredx This is the best anime I have ever seen, and I will not hear any arguments otherwise. The style is different than the main series, and Kenshin's personality is also different, but this takes nothing away, since he is amazing in both.This movie pretty much takes the story told in volumes 19-21 in the manga, adds more details, changes a few details and the result of this is a fantastic movie that I feel is unrivaled.As the prologue of the Rurouni Kenshin series, naturally this is the story of Kenshin's days as the Hitokiri Battosai, before the founding of the Meiji era. This tells the story of Kenshin and his first wife, Tomoe, who was also the person who saved him from himself. (by the way, in the dubbed version they call her Tomo, but you are supposed to pronounce a long e at the end. Darn people who don't know anything about Japanese names. Makes me want to cry...)There are some points where you think the animation has paused some how, since they stay on the same shot for a long time, but this is just the story going slowly. The creators managed to balance these slow scenes with the action perfectly. It slowly eases you from the violence in the streets of Kyoto, to the slow action that takes place in other settings.But a word to the wise: This series is practically covered in blood!!!! Kenshin is a very vicious assassin, who is not afraid of how much blood falls when he kills someone, and we see many images of him brutally murdering people. The +17 rating on this is not an understatement.So, now that I have to wrap this up, I will close with the soundtrack, which is fantastic. Many of the songs make you want to cry they are so beautiful and sad, especially the song they play in the credits (called "The Sound of Falling Snow"), which is made even sadder since we just saw Kenshin mourning Tomoe.An anime that is missing nothing. A beautiful story, beautiful people, beautiful animation and beautiful music. These things make up for all of the blood, which is a part of the story, so it couldn't be removed.

episode6 I'm not easily impressed by a movie. Even worse with an animated one. But this one got me drooling. I picked this one up by recommendation, and I'll recommend it to anyone from now on. I was familiar with the story of the TV series, but that didn't excite me in the least. But at least I knew what I was looking at (and I suggest that people considering to watch this should familiarize themselves with the TV series first).Although the violence is very graphic and the dialog can be a bit of a drag if you lose track, everything else perfectly makes up for it. The animation is fluid, the art is beautiful, the pacing is impeccable and the soundtrack is gorgeous. Now combine all these elements in a single concluding scene, and you've got at least half of its viewers reduced to tears.This movie is very re-watchable. I've seen it at least 6 times already, and I'm eager to watch it again. Like most people advice; you should avoid the dub like the plague, but even the subs can be a bit misleading. I've had the pleasure to have seen 3 different subtitles on this movie, and the degree of accuracy of any of them is debatable. Although the plot doesn't suffer from this, the story and especially the details and references to factual Japanese history do.But this shouldn't stop you from watching this movie, instead, it should encourage you to set out and find out as much about this movie as you can.