I've been obsessed with Rurouni Kenshin for years, and constantly find myself coming up with opinions, rants, and other ruminations about it, so finally, to give voice to all that creative energy, I decided to make my own Rurouni Kenshin episode guide!

My goal in this episode guide is to provide entertainment for fellow RK fans, so I'll be adding to the episode summaries my own comments, jokes, and rants. And of course, be aware that each entry contains **Complete Spoilers for the Corresponding Episode(s)**. RK also contains some mature content (mostly violence, but also some sexual references and swearing), and I'm not going to be pulling punches about that, so please be prepared for **Content in the PG-PG13 range**.

Check below for more general notes on this guide, but I imagine you'd all rather get right to business, so on with the show!

I thought about calling it "Laura-dono's" for the whole Kenshin effect, but recalling that this is a Soujiro site, I went with "-san."

In case you actually scrolled down here first, here's basically how the guide is set up. Each episode's entry contains, first, a summary of what happens in that episode, then a section of "Notes"---these are the more technical asides such as translation issues, anime/manga comparisons, notes on the OP/ED themes, etc. Then there's a section of "Ramblings" which contains my more freeform personal thoughts, and finally a few episodes here and there will have a section of "Omake" for any fun bonuses I decide to include, like fan-art, "out-takes," etc. (starting from the beginning, it may be awhile before you see one of these at all, but hey, "omake" means bonus, and it would hardly seem like a bonus if you got them all the time). At the bottom of each guide page, I'm also including links to Amazon.com where the reviewed episodes can be purchased---this is purely done as a service, for your convenience and because I'd like to see anyone interested enough to read my episode guide give the creators a little money (and despite my quibbles with the translation, the commercial videos are beautiful, well worth the price); I'm not part of any affiliate program or anything.

I'm starting from the beginning of the TV series (my own love of RK hinges on the TV episodes through the end of the Kyoto Arc); when I complete the TV series---or decide that I feel like it---I'll also make entries for the movie, OVAs, and possibly even the Revenge Arc of the manga, although that one will be a long time coming, in any case.

Also, something I'm sure most of you realize, but I want to go ahead and be clear. My guide pages do not match up to the distribution of episodes on the videos, nor do their titles, and as if that weren't confusing enough, I'm not above finessing the episode titles if I think Anime Works made them sound dorky (which I regularly do). I have tried to break the guide down into discrete storylines when applicable, or into two-and-three episode chunks. Drawing from my fan-subbed roots, I also use more Japanese than Anime Works. Here's a mini-glossary to try to keep everything squared away:

• "Bakumatsu": the revolution that ended the Tokugawa Shogunate and began the Meiji Era
• "Isshin Shishi": "Isshin Patriots," subbed by Anime Works as "Imperialists"; the faction victorious in the Bakumatsu, devoted to restoring power to the Emperor and modernizing Japan
• "Hitokiri": "Manslayer" (I just found that to be a really clunky word, I'm sorry.)
• "Rurouni": "wanderer"
• "Sakabatou": reverse-blade sword
• "Kenjutsu": Literally "sword technique"; swordsmanship, kendo
• "Ryuu": A school or style. I.e., "Kamiya Kasshin Ryuu" = "Kamiya Kasshin Style"
• "Ken-ki": "Swordsman Spirit"
• Unlike Anime Works, I transcribe names in Japanese order, surname first. For example, I say "Himura Kenshin," not "Kenshin Himura."

BTW, you might wonder after reading some of this, but rest assured this all does come from an RK fan. No matter how many gripes and sarcastic jabs I make, please do not doubt that I love this show. After all, I've been running this fansite for several years, and for all that time, I have considered RK the best anime series---no, actually the best TV series---I have ever seen. However, there are two things that, to me, are the truth: 1) I am a MiSTie and will riff anything, even good stuff; I crack the occasional joke while watching Miyazaki Movies for goodness' sake. 2) While I do think that RK---the good parts, anyway---is the best anime ever, that doesn't mean it's perfect. No one can be on-form all the time even in the good periods, and I will be the first to admit that it, well, has its off days, runs hot and cold, had some storylines that were Just Plain Bad (you know what I'm talking about; the filler), and in moments like these, I pull no punches. I love RK so much that I believe in my heart that the series can take the worst I can dish out. On the flip side, I will try to gush in a more praising way when I feel that it's appropriate.

As for my sources, I originally got hooked on RK via fansubs by Hecto/Shinsengumi (they're the same people as far as I know, they just changed the name). Most of the fansubs I have seen are really excellent work, but these were... well... terrible. They had lines like "He is died" and a penchant for handling translation issues by throwing swearwords at the problem. However, I'm glad to have seen them, if only to get another viewpoint on the material. I'm currently collecting the Anime Works VHS subs, so my comments are drawn from both subtitled versions, but I am a self-proclaimed, hard-core, flag-waving dub hater, so in most cases, I have not seen and cannot comment on the dubbed version. I also, unless otherwise noted, don't have the DVDs, so I can't comment on their notes or features. I am, however, working on collecting the manga and have most of it, so I'll try to fill in the gaps and catch up on reading it (with the help of Maigo-chan's translation) so that I can offer the manga-comparison perspective as well.

As noted above, some of the thoughts you'll find in this guide have been percolating for quite a long time, but there are some other events that led more directly to this project. I was sending the series little by little to a good friend in hopes of getting her hooked, and accompanied the tapes with my own little capsule descriptions, which generally included my own witty comments and asides. My friend found these so amusing that she told me I should try my hand at writing some RK-based humor pieces as well as my serious Soujiro fanfic (VERY serious; this guide begins as that story is deep in the dark, angsty Autumn Arc). I'd just had the vague notion of the episode guide a little before, but that and some encouragement from Kati finally got me to take the plunge and say "Yes, let's do it!" So this kind of started out as an excuse to do some RK-based "stand-up comedy," but when I actually started writing the episode entries, I found myself more serious about it than I'd planned, so in the end, I've tried to make this guide both amusing and substantially informative, and I hope you find it to be both.