Rurouni Kenshin: New Kyoto Arc

The second season of Rurouni Kenshin: Meiji Kenkaku Romantan (2023) . A phantom of the Bakumatsu who must be taken down. All the answers you desire are in Kyoto!

Kenshin’s history of death and destruction has left him known throughout all of Japan as the sword-bearing master assassin. Seeking retribution for his past, Kenshin wanders further away to a place he can call home. Although creating a time of peace through his actions, Kenshin continues to distance himself from the ones he loves. Kenshin’s wife, Kaoru, anxiously waits for the moment of his return. Will Kenshin ever return to his wife before she passes away from waiting?

Himura Kenshin is a vagabond with a dark past and sunny disposition. Not a ronin but a rurouni, he was never a samurai, but an assassin of utmost skill in the Meiji restoration, who in the turning point of the war simply walked away. His travels lead him to Tokyo in the 11th year of the Meiji era, where he befriends a female Kendo master, a former thief, a brawler and a doctor all with their own secrets. Together they fight off the enemies surfacing from the dark past that Kenshin cannot escape.

In the days before the Japanese Revolution, Hiko Seiijuro, a wandering master swordsman and hermit, encounters a bandit raid on a slave wagon. Hiko kills the raiding bandits in hopes of saving as many lives as possible, but only manages to spare one life from the massacre. Hiko leaves the child, advising him to go to the nearby village and have them take care of him. A few days later, as Hiko comes back to check upon the child he saved, he is shocked to see the child had created graves, both for the slaves he befriended and the bandits who killed them. Seeing potential in the young one, Hiko takes the child under his wing, names him Kenshin, meaning "heart of sword," and teaches him about the art of swordsmanship under the Hiten Mitsuruugi Ryu. Struggling in a constant challenge with his ideal beliefs reflecting against the harshness of reality, Tsuiokuhen tells the melancholic and dark story of Himura Kenshin as one of the most feared assassins of the Japanese Revolution: the Hitokiri Battousai.