「逆刃刀 初撃」 (Sakabatou Shougeki)
“Sakabato First Assault”
For the file, I went into this episode just about chilly turkey. I’ve by no means learn “Sakabatou Shougeki”, the particular chapter Watsuki Nobuhiro wrote for Ruroken’s twenty fifth Anniversary celebration in 2023. Till per week in the past I didn’t even understand it existed (or if I did, I’d forgotten). In precept I’m wonderful with adapting any materials that hasn’t been tailored earlier than, particularly because it makes it that a lot much less doubtless Lidenfilms was going to attempt to adapt all the Kyoto Arc in two brief cours. Nonetheless, there’s an unease with any main change to the narrative holy sanctum that’s the Kyoto Arc. If it ain’t broke don’t repair it, and shounen doesn’t get a lot much less broke than “Kyoto”.
I can say this unreservedly: no matter my expectations had been, “Sakabatou Shougeki” exceeded them. Comfortably. I just like the elements of the Hokkaido Arc I’ve learn, but it surely’s honest to say the fabric Watsuki wrote within the authentic timeline has been the most effective. However this – this was actually good. I might enterprise to say it was the most effective episodes of the collection. Not simply because it’s a terrific self-contained story, however as a result of it was one of the vital fashionable and exquisite episodes in all the reboot to this point. And it match completely the place director Komada Yuki positioned it within the narrative (I say that each when it comes to what preceded it and what’s coming subsequent). It was completely according to the principle story and completely related.
Kenshin’s backstory has been fertile floor for exploration, each in canon and non-canon channels. And that’s hardly stunning. When you might have a protagonist this excellent, one with a private story this exquisitely constructed, any cross-section of it’s more likely to show fascinating. The theme right here is – appropriately – Ken’s first expertise with a reverse-blade sword. He’s in Tokyo in 1868, simply after the Battle of Ueno. This was one of many last main skirmishes on the mainland, with a pressure of Tokugawa loyalists (often called the Shougitai) squaring off towards Imperialist forces led by Saigou Takamori (who gained a decisive victory, with a lot collateral injury within the space).
This being 1868 Kenshin would have been simply 19 years outdated (a reminder of how younger he was when he carried out his feats of assassination). Having renounced his Hitokiri title and sworn by no means to return to Kyoto, he winds up in Edo (with Shakku’s blade – which he’s by no means drawn – in tow). As we meet him right here Kenshin is sick with fever and sheltering from the rain in a tiny shrine corridor, within the firm of an deserted kitten. A lady named Satsuki (Koshimizu Ami) finds him (because of the cat). Somebody with a transparent tender spot for strays, she tells each of them again to their humble farmstead means out within the sticks (Tokyo was not but a megalopolis again then).
Satsuki lives her her husband Giichi (Majima Junji) and a number of cats, and the pair of them fairly naturally assume this haggard younger samurai is among the stragglers from the shedding facet within the Battle of Ueno. Imperial troops are trying to find them in the meanwhile, so hiding Kenshin is a significant threat for them (or so that they consider). Satsuki is pregnant, and Giichi farms his small patch regardless of having misplaced his proper arm. Misplaced to a band of paramilitary thugs committing crimes within the identify of the brand new Meiji authorities, thugs who ran afoul of Giichi in his former job as a personal eye.
These are themes we see bolstered again and again in Rurouni Kenshin. Regardless of the real want by some to create a greater, extra trendy Japan, many merely noticed this new order as a method for payback and self-enrichment. And kindness thrived on the fringes of society, individuals with little for themselves being happiest to offer to others even worse off. That is the place the strands of destiny, which at all times entangle Kenshin, pull him in reverse instructions. Basically his determination to be a rurouni is kind of operating away, however the issues he’s operating away from at all times discover him and pressure a call. It’s a sample we’ll see play out many occasions in his life, not least the Shishio rise up itself.
Giichi nonetheless has his jitte, however with one arm he’s not in a lot of a place to defend his spouse (or cats). Once we hear the outlaws describe a goal for his or her payback we’re meant to assume it was Kenshin, however actually it’s Giichi, an outdated nemesis. And it will pressure a alternative for Kenshin that he’ll face again and again. He has to behave, to attract that sword regardless of having sworn by no means to kill once more (and regardless of nonetheless being very sick). However to his shock this can be a unusual sword – the blade is on the fallacious facet. It’s a sakabatou in fact, Shakku’s message to him, however Ken has by no means held one earlier than. A sakabatou remains to be a sword, nonetheless, and he very a lot is aware of what to do with a kind of in his hand.
That is all beautifully staged and actually lovely to have a look at. However greater than that, it manages so as to add one thing new and very important to a narrative that’s been established as a masterpiece for 25 years. The best way Kenshin frames the expertise of seeing the reverse blade for the primary time – the way it says that the enemy is actually himself, the beast who took all these lives and is at all times slumbering inside him – is one I don’t recall Ruroken utilizing earlier than. And it’s a particularly highly effective thought, one which encapsulates Kenshin’s arc in a extremely elegant means. By managing to meaningfully embellish a deeply beloved and well-established story this episode is one thing of a revelation. And it seems like a press release of goal for this adaptation – discover served that it’s grown into the job and able to soar to even larger heights.
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