WARNING: poilers Below through the end of Rurouni Kenshin's Black Knights/Divine Medicine Story Arc

This page is a joke. But it's a joke I enjoy so much that I try to tell it to everyone I know when/if they see the Black Knights/Divine Medicine Story Arc, so I thought "Hey, you know, I should put this on my website!" You pretty much have to have seen the entire story arc to get the joke, and if you haven't seen it, that is, in my opinion, the main reason you shouldn't scroll down. It contains spoilers too, but it's for one of the "filler stories." Not exactly Rurouni Kenshin's brightest moment.

But, you say, Soujiro wasn't even in that story arc!

And

what's

this

about

him

having

a

twin

!?!

One of the Black Knights, named Schneider, seemed to act a little funny to me in here. I mean, Kenshin’s Hiten-Mitsurugi-Ryu Ultimate Psychotherapy is an incredible thing, but for it to have such a profound effect, he usually has to interact with someone for more than 45 seconds, or exchange blows with them, or maybe say something. Well, I was pondering, and I realized that there was a perfectly illogical explanation for this. You see:

Schneider and Soujiro are actually identical twins.

No, really. See, when they were born, their Mom was in dire financial straits and couldn’t afford to keep both (she couldn’t really afford to keep one, but she wanted to so bad she had to pretend at least that far). So, Schneider-to-be was given up for adoption, and was adopted by a rich German family, whereas Soujiro eventually had to be given up to his father's family had his infamously abused and impoverished childhood---hence Schneider is quite a bit taller, despite the common genotype. Also, Shneider’s adoptive parents didn’t really want to tell him that he was adopted, and they wanted him to fit in with all his German schoolmates, so when he was young they got him several cosmetic surgeries (notice he lost an ear when one of these was botched), which gave him smaller eyes, a longer face shape, etc. Moreover, his parents put a blond dye and a curling agent into his shampoo, but they told him it was normal shampoo, so although Schneider doesn’t know that he’s constantly dyeing his hair blond, he actually is. And thus, Soujiro and Schneider by this time look nothing alike, but they are, in fact, identical twins.

In fact, note the characteristic facial expressions of the Black Knights we meet:

Melders:	Renz:	Schneider:

And it is widely known that identical twins have a psychic rapport of some kind, and Soujiro was actually the “strong twin” when they were born (despite the worse environmental conditions he had to deal with afterward), which accounts for his superior speed and sword skill, and also for the fact that there’s some directionality in this psychic rapport. You see, when Soujiro joined up with Shishio, who was out to conquer Japan, it predisposed Schneider toward getting hooked up with some evil warlord-ish people bent on the conquest of a given geographical area---in this case, the world. And then when Soujiro was defeated by Kenshin’s Ultimate Psychotherapy Technique and left Shishio and started looking into finding his own way and forsaking the path of carnage and terrorism, it predisposed Schneider to the same thing, and then when Schneider actually saw Kenshin in person, well of course it must have seemed like Deja Vu and everything fell into place, and we get this.

However, the strong twin can take comfort in the fact that his mentor’s death in flames was immensely more dramatic and befitting.

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Rurouni Kenshin, Seta Soujiro, and all other related characters, copyrights, and trademarks are the property of Watsuki Nobuhiro, Jump Comics, Sony and other releasing companies. I am using them in a not-for-profit manner and without permission, in the spirit of transformative fair use.