Rurouni Kenshin which loosely translates to Wandering Kenshin in Japanese follows the story of the protagonist of the popular anime series known as Samurai X. This reenactment of the animation covers an arch in the life of legendary Swords Man Kenshin, where he strives to redeem his path of bloodshed through doing good deeds.
In this movie, the highly skilled combatant, known as Battosai across the land of 1860s Japan showed a less violent side of himself and instead of murdering in cold blood, he just helped people in need instead. In this anime, he encountered a number of foes that threatened his life but he refrained from killing any opponent... for the most part.
In one flashback of his life, you could see the kind of man he was and it also showed how he got one of those legendary scars on his face. Anyway, on his path to redemption for his murderous ways, he encountered a certain girl who had a dojo with a complicated history and name that's been dragged in the mud by a fake Battosai that's going around killing for fun.
Due to that bad rep, nobody patronized the dojo. In one scene, Kenshin aided the young lady to protect the dojo. Also, Kenshin seemed fascinated by the Dojo's unique but fascinatingly naive mantra of claiming to produce students that "create life with the sword".
Kenshin knows all too well how swords can be dangerous, so to prevent killing people, he moves around with a black blade. A black blade is basically a blade that can't cut because the blunt edge and the sharp edge are in reversed position. So in essence, he moves around with a sword that can only cut him, the wielder.
The villain in this movie is an opium dealer in search of a sneaky girl that escapes his grasp. The villain has no regard for life and one of his accomplices, the fake Battosai was tasked with finding her. The fake Battosai's quest turned out to be a murderous one that led to the death of scores of people.
Despite his insistence on not hurting or killing anybody with his sword, Kenshin gets plunged into a tough situation that might make him break his promise to himself. How is he supposed to win against such dangerous opponents that want nothing but blood?
Impression
This was a movie riddled with intense badassness in the sword fighting department. It also had some magic and all the cool elements that make the anime dope.
I usually have low expectations from movie reenactments of anime but seeing as I'm not a samurai x fanboy, I had no preconceived notion. I watched it as a standalone movie and enjoyed most of it because it had just the amount of violence I like to see in movies.
To properly enjoy the whole thing, watch it with Japanese dub and English subtitles. I find watching a movie in an alternative language to be tedious.
Overall, I'll give it a 6/10 for its badassness. I think it is worth a watch and you should put it on your list of movies to see on Netflix.