Rurouni Kenshin: The Legend Ends (2014)

Plot summary (story synopsis): Kenshin ("sword heart") Himura (Takeru Satô) is washed up on shore after his failed attempt to save his girlfriend Kaoru Kamiya (Emi Takei). His old swordfighting sensei Seijuro Hiko finds him on the beach and carries him home.

After waking up, Kenshin convinces his old master to teach him the ultimate fighting technique of their style of swordsmanship, in order to defeat evil bad guy Shishio (Tatsuya Fujiwara).

Meanwhile, Shishio has been terrorizing villages along the coast, bombarding them with the cannon on his steel warship. Lacking such modern technology of their own, the government is unable to stop him. Shishio knows that he has the upper hand and pressures the government to arrest and execute Kenshin for his past crimes.

Along the way back to Tokyo, Kenshin has to fight off Aoshi Shinomori (Yûsuke Iseya). In Tokyo Kenshin is quickly arrested by government soldiers. The government pretends to execute Kenshin, but instead uses the fake execution as cover to attack Shishio and his warship. The stage is set for an epic confrontation between Kenshin and his sidekicks, and Shishio and his band of killers. 


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The Legend Ends is part two of this Rurouni Kenshin sequel. (Part one of the sequel is Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Inferno. The first movie, Rurouni Kenshin, was released in 2012.)

It's a rather disappointing part two. Part one was almost too busy, introducing new characters left and right. But at least it was interesting. Part two is rather staid in comparison, with too much of the run time being taken up by the extended confrontation on Shishio's warship.

The many new and old characters from part one are sidelined and don't get much screen time - the exception being Aoshi and Kenshin's sensei.

The first part of the movie, with Kenshin and his sensei, isn't too bad. There is the usual mumbo jumbo about the spiritual side of fighting (for the real stuff, read Miyamoto Musashi's A Book of Five Rings), but that's not too annoying. We also get to see Kenshin as a child, how he ended up learning swordfighting from Seijuro Hiko, but that's relatively brief.

However, whatever plot there is, isn't convincing. Kenshin's fake execution doesn't seem necessary. It's the kind of gimmick that you would expect to see in a kiddie cartoon. Actually, the government doesn't need Kenshin at all. In the end, their shore-based cannon manage to sink Shishio's warship, making Kenshin's attack on the warship a wasted effort. (You could argue that the government wasn't sure that their cannon would sink the warship, but then why would they act as if Kenshin was their only hope?)

It is doubly a wasted effort because Shishio was going to die from his burn wounds anyway. Which doesn't make sense. The justification is that Shishio can't sweat because of his burns, causing him to overheat. Ummm, he can't spray water on himself? And Shishio's doctor can predict the time of his death, accurate to the minute? And Shishio jumping around and fighting doesn't dramatically shorten his life?

The whole warship scenario also isn't convincing. How did Shishio manage to get his hands on such rare and expensive technology? Where did he get trained sailors from? How about resupplies - fuel and ammunition?

The moviemakers even manage to get the warship details wrong. The cannon barrel walls are too thin, and the shells are loaded in without any propellant (the powder charge in naval guns is a separate package from the explosive shell). Ooh, you think that's too geeky? Wait till you hear that the warship has the all-big-gun design of a post-dreadnought battleship, decades before HMS Dreadnought.

The warship is like a Bond villain's ridiculous lair - magically existing in the middle of nowhere, without drawing attention to itself despite years of construction, tons of raw materials, and thousands of workers.

It's okay if you want to establish some kind of steam punk alternate history - Wild Wild West and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen succeeded in that. But you need to establish it. The Legend Ends simply plonks down a warship and expects us to believe that the bad guy - with no obvious sources of wealth or naval piracy capability - owns it, while the government doesn't have their own.

This isn't nit-picking. Taking too many liberties with common sense, throws the audience out of the story. Like Fox Mulder, we want to believe, but we don't want moviemakers to treat us like fools. 

But more damning is the emphasis on fights over characters. Where is the backstory for the creepily-polite Sojiro? Part one was worth the price of the ticket. Part two is not.

Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Inferno (2014)

Plot summary (story synopsis): Government killer Makoto Shishio (Tatsuya Fujiwara) is betrayed by the government and left to burn to death. He miraculously survives with hideous burns. He swears revenge and starts killing policemen in Kyoto.

A desperate government reaches out to legendary retired swordsman Kenshin Himura in Tokyo. Kenshin at first refuses but Shishio sends his men to Tokyo to kill too. Sickened by this, Kenshin reluctantly goes to Kyoto to find Shishio. He goes alone but his lovable sidekick Sagara Sanosuke (Munetaka Aoki, playing a violent version of Seinfeld's Kramer) and pretty girlfriend Kaoru Kamiya (Emi Takei) follow not far behind.

Along the way, he picks up strays in the form of girl thief Misao Makimachi (Tao Tsuchiya) and a recently-orphaned boy. He also fights with, and loses to, Shishio's boyish and creepily polite henchman Seta Sojiro (Ryunosuke Kamiki), who manages to break Kenshin's sword.

Kenshin must now get a replacement sword from the master swordmaker who made his original sword. He has to fight another one of Shishio's men - Cho (Ryosuke Miura) a punk with bleached blond hair - before heading to Kyoto to foil Shishio's plan to burn Kyoto to the ground.

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Sequel Kyoto Inferno is superior to 2012's Rurouni Kenshin. Keishi Ohtomo directed both movies, but Kyoto Inferno has a stronger storyline, and probably a bigger budget too. The first movie grossed $100 million worldwide, so Warner Bros. likely budgeted more money for the sequel - $30 million (I can't find numbers for the first movie's budget). It certainly shows. The fight choreography, sets and lighting look better, more cinematic. The first movie looked like a TV production.

The first movie had a haphazard plot, trying to establish Kenshin Himura's origin story and showing how he settled down in Kaoru Kamiya's kendo dojo. Kyoto Inferno has a tighter focus on bad guy Makoto Shishio, fewer subplots that go nowhere.

Kenshin's diversions along the way to Kyoto are interesting and don't feel like filler. The supporting characters - both the strays he picks up, and the bad guys he fights - are nicely and quickly fleshed out and feel like real people.

Takeru Satô's portrayal of the pacifist Kenshin has improved. His aw-shucks goofy demeanor in the first movie did not fit Kenshin's retired killer character. He looks more serious in Kyoto Inferno, more believable.

Some gripes: the opening scene where the Kyoto policemen try to hunt Shishio is a bit ridiculous. They handle their bolt-action rifles like they were submachine guns. Director Keishi Ohtomo was probably influenced by seeing today's special forces storm buildings with their MP-5s. A bolt-action rifle is big, heavy and clumsy. You're not going to run around with one held up to your cheek in firing position, peering down the iron sights. Especially at night.

Okay, that's a military nut's nit-pick. More seriously, Shishio calmly walks away from a fight between his henchman and Kenshin. Okay, he's confident that Kenshin will lose. But isn't he at least a bit interested in watching Kenshin fight? This artificial nonchalance is obviously a dramatic device. Making the audience aware of this, throws them out of the story.

But overall this is an entertaining movie. It's difficult to find something new to say in a samurai movie - they have been done to death. Working within these limitations, Kyoto Inferno doesn't break any new ground, but doesn't drown in cliches either.

Warning: this sequel is a two-parter and ends with a cliffhanger. Part two is The Legend Ends.