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The story of Rurouni Kenshin takes place during the early Meiji period in Japan. It tells the story of a peaceful wanderer named Himura Kenshin, formerly known as the assassin Hitokiri Battōsai. After participating during the Bakumatsu war, Kenshin wanders the countryside of Japan offering protection and aid to those in need as atonement for the murders he once committed as an assassin. When arriving in Tokyo, he meets a young woman named Kamiya Kaoru, who was in the middle of a fight with a murderer who claims to be the Hitokiri Battōsai from her swordmanship school. Kenshin decides to help her and defeats the fake Battōsai. After discovering that Kenshin is the real Battōsai, she offers him a place stay at her dojo as she notes Kenshin is a gentle person instead. Kenshin accepts and begins to establish lifelong relationships with many people, including ex-enemies, while dealing with his fair share of enemies, new and old.

After three months of living in the dojo, Kenshin discovers that his successor as assassin of the shadows, Shishio Makoto, plans to conquer Japan by destroying the Meiji Government, starting with Kyoto. Feeling that his friends may be attacked by Shishio's faction, Kenshin goes to meet Shishio alone in order to defeat him. However, many of his friends decide to travel to Kyoto to help him in his fight. He decides to accept their help and defeats Shishio in a fight, who dies in the process due to the rise in body temperature caused by his burns.

When Kenshin and his friends return to Tokyo, Kenshin finds Yukishiro Enishi, who plans to take revenge by killing his friends. At this point it is revealed that, during the Bakumatsu, Kenshin used to be married to a woman called Yukishiro Tomoe, who initially wanted to avenge the death of her fiancé, whom Kenshin had killed, but instead both fell in love and got married. When it was discovered that Tomoe was part of a group of assassins that wanted to kill Kenshin, Kenshin blindly swings his sword, killing both his assailant and Tomoe, who jumps in at the last minute to save Kenshin from a fatal attack. Wanting to take revenge for the death of his sister, Enishi kidnaps Kaoru and leaves behind a tortured figure bearing a stunning resemblance of the girl for Kenshin to find and momentarily grieve over. Once discovering that Kaoru is alive, Kenshin and his friends set to rescue her. A battle between Kenshin and Enishi follows and when Kenshin wins, he and Kaoru return home. Five years later, Kenshin has found true peace; he is married to Kaoru and has a son named Himura Kenji.

• Himura Kenshin is an ex-hitokiri with the title "Hitokiri Battōsai. During the story Kenshin wanders around Japan to help those in need in order to atone for the murders he committed during the Bakumatsu. When he arrives in Tokyo, Kenshin meets a young woman named Kamiya Kaoru who invites him to live in her dojo despite finding out that Kenshin is a hitokiri. Significant instances transpire from that point, and Kenshin establishes lifelong relationships with many people, including ex-enemies.
• Kamiya Kaoru is the teacher from a kendo school from Tokyo called Kamiya Kasshin-RyÅ«. The school starts to lose all its students when a thief from the city starts killing a large number of people and claims to be the "Hitokiri Battōsai from the Kamiya Kasshin-RyÅ«". Kaoru encounters him but before being killed by him she is saved by the real Hitokiri Battōsai, now a wanderer, Himura Kenshin, to whom she offers to stay in her dojo.
• Sagara Sanosuke is a former member of the Sekihotai who becomes a fighter-for-hire after its destruction. During his introduction he encounters Kenshin, who defeats him easily and makes him note he was just fighting to release his anger. Since that moment, Sanosuke becomes a friend of Kenshin and also his partner.
• Myōjin Yahiko is an orphan from a samurai family and was forced to work as a thief to repay the debt that he had supposedly owed due to his parents death before they could pay it back. When he meets Kenshin, he is saved by Kenshin and decides that he would grow up to be just like his savior. But due to Kenshin's strong beliefs in not teaching anyone else the sword style he had obtained, he enlisted Yahiko to be trained by Kaoru at the Kamiya Kasshin-RyÅ«. As the series progressess, Yahiko becomes skilled at the swordsmanship and comes to face many opponents.

A prototype series titled Rurouni, Meiji Swordsman Romantic Story[7] first appeared as a pair of separate short stories published in 1992 and 1993 in the manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump Special. The story released in the first manga features an earlier version of Kenshin helping a wealthy girl named Raikōji Chizuru.

The second story, which though released second in the manga format was indeed the first 'Rurouni' one-shot, has Kenshin saving the Kamiya family's dojo from a corrupt crime lord who seeks to marry the family's oldest daughter, Megumi (later to become Takani Megumi), with the aid of her younger siblings, Kaoru and Yahiko (the heir to the Kamiya dojo, later to become Myojin Yahiko). While Kaoru and Yahiko's characters are similar to their incarnations in Rurouni Kenshin, Megumi's personality is distinctly different as she is more timid and submissive than her eventual incarnation in the series.

Watsuki said that he remembered the difficulty experienced when he condensed "everything" into 31 pages for the first Romantic Swordsman story. He said that he "put all my soul into it" but he sighs when he looks at the story from his perspective after the publication of the Rurouni Kenshin Volume 1 graphic novel in Japan. During the development of the 1st Rurouni: Meiji Swordsman Romantic Story, Watsuki and his editor argued over Kenshin's speech pattern. For the story they settled for a "slangy" pattern. Watsuki said that he wonders what the story would have been if he had permission to add two pages to the story. Watsuki describes the first Rurouni: Meiji Swordsman Romantic Story as receiving mediocre reviews and about two hundred letters.

Watsuki said that if one thinks of the first Rurouni story as a "side story," then one would consider the second story, echoing the "Megumi Arc," as a "pilot" for Rurouni Kenshin. According to Watsuki, the final Rurouni Kenshin series did not being entirely from his free will. Describing the creation of historical stories as "hard," Watsuki initially wanted to make his next series in a contemporary setting. An editor approached Watsuki and asked him to make a new historical story.

With the historic concept, Watsuki intended to use the Bakumatsu time period from Moeyo Ken with a story akin to Sugata Sanshirō. Watsuki experimented with various titles, including Nishin (Two-Hearts) Kenshin, Yorozuya (Jack-of-All-Trades) Kenshin, and variations of "Rurouni" and "Kenshin" with different kanji in that order. According to Watsuki, it took him eight months to write the 45-page second Rurouni: Meiji Swordsman Romantic Story. Watsuki originally planned to create a Hokkaido arc and a sequel, but felt it would be better to start with another manga and so ended the series with the Jinchū arc.

Written and drawn by Nobuhiro Watsuki, the first chapter of Rurouni Kenshin premiered in Weekly Shōnen Jump in 1994 and was serialized in the magazine until 1999. The 255 individual chapters were collected and published in 28 tankōbon volumes by Shueisha, with the first volume released on September 9, 1994 and the last on November 4, 1999. In July 2006, Shueisha began re-releasing the series in a twenty-two kanzenban special edition volumes. A single chapter follow up to the series that follows the character of Yahiko Myōjin, Yahiko no Sakabatō, was originally published in Weekly Shōnen Jump after the conclusion of the series. Left out of the original volumes, it was added as an extra to the final kanzenban release.

Rurouni Kenshin was licensed for an English language release in North America by Viz Media. The first volume of the series was released on October 7, 2003, with volumes released normally every other month until July 5, 2006, when the final volume was published. In January 2008, Viz began re-releasing the manga in a wideban format called "VIZBIG Edition", which is a collection of three volumes in one.

The anime, directed by Kazuhiro Furuhashi, began airing on Japan's Fuji TV on January 10, 1996 and ended on September 8, 1998. It was produced by Aniplex and Fuji TV, and was animated from episode 1 to 70 by Studio Gallop, whereas the episodes from 70 onwards were animated by Studio Deen. The final episode, episode 95, did not air in Japan, but was a bonus episode for the VHS and DVD releases. The TV series was later licensed in North America and released on DVD by Media Blasters. It started airing in the US on the Cartoon Network as a part of the Toonami Block on March 17, 2003, but ended at the completion of the Season 2. Episodes 63-95 did not air, but were included in the DVD release. The twenty-two English DVDs from the series were released from July 18, 2000 to September 24, 2002. Each of them contain four episodes except for the volume 22 which contains five episodes. The seasons were later released in three premium "Bento box" DVD boxes on November 18, 2003, March 30, 2004 and July 27, 2004. They were released again, but in new packaging as "economy box" sets on November 15, 2005, January 17, 2006 and February 14, 2006.

The series also has a movie called Samurai X: The Motion Picture, known in Japan as Ishin Shishi e no Requiem which tells a story where Kenshin meets a samurai who was very close to a man Battosai murdered in the war. The samurai is trying to start a revolution to overthrow the Meiji government. The film was directed by Hatsuki Tsuji and it premiered in Japan on December 20, 1997. In North America, the film was released in DVD on March 27, 2001.

The OVA series, which features a number of historical characters, attempts to be more realistic and accurate than the TV series. The OVA made use of live footage spliced with animation cells giving the series a different feel than straight animation. Both OVAs were re-released internationally in "Director's Cut" forms that spliced the separate "episodes" together into continuous movies, as well as adding some extra footage. The order of musical cues in both director's cut OVAs were significantly lessened and altered, although the tracks themselves were not altered or omitted.

The first OVA series, Samurai X: Trust and Samurai X: Betrayal, collectively known in Japan as Tsuiokuhen and later edited into a movie as Samurai X: Trust & Betrayal -Director's Cut, was set during the downfall of the Tokugawa shogunate and telling of Kenshin's childhood. Only a few characters from the TV series appear in this OVA. The OVA mainly depicts the life of Kenshin as Battōsai and his time with his first wife, Tomoe.

The second OVA series Samurai X: Reflection, known in Japan as Seisōhen and later edited into a movie as Samurai X: Reflection -Director's Cut. It was set both during and after the timeline of the series and tells of Kenshin and Kaoru's later years, much of which is not derived from the manga. It also differs from the manga on some points, such as details in regard to the Jin-e and Enishi fights. The OVA is seen as a montage of singular events surrounding the life of Kenshin, told from the point of view of Kaoru.

All of the series music was composed by Noriyuki Asakura and several CDs have been released by Sony Records.[30] The first, Rurouni Kenshin OST 1 was released on April 1, 1996 and contained twenty-three songs that were used during the first episodes of the series. The second one, Rurouni Kenshin OST 2 - Departure was released on October 21, 1996 and contained fifteen tracks that were first used before the start of the Kyoto Arc. The next one, Rurouni Kenshin OST 3 - Journey to Kyoto was released on April 21, 1997 and contained the thirteen tracks that originally used in the Kyoto Arc. For the next arc, Rurouni Kenshin OST 4 - Let it Burn was released on February 1, 1998 and contained twelve tracks.

For the OVAs series, all themes were composed by Taku Iwasaki and the Cds were released by Sony Visual Works. The first, Rurouni Kenshin : Tsuioku Hen OVA OST was released on March 20, 1999 and contained sixteen tracks that were used in Samurai X: Trust & Betrayal. For the Reflection OVA a sondtrack called Rurouni Kenshin Seisouhen OVA OST was released on January 23, 2002.

Several compilations of the anime songs were also released in collection CDs. Thirty tracks were selected and joined in a CD called Rurouni Kenshin - The Director's Collection, that was released on July 21, 1997. Rurouni Kenshin Best Theme Collection was released on March 3, 1998 and contained ten tracks. All of the opening and ending themes were also collected in a CD called Rurouni Kenshin OP/ED Theme Collection. The Japanese voice actors of the series also composed songs that were released as two Cds Rurouni Kenshin Songs Album. All of the anime, including OVAs and films tracks were collected in Rurouni Kenshin Complete CD-Box that was released on September 19, 2002. It contains the four TV OSTs, the two OAV OSTs, the movie OST, the two game OSTs, an opening & closing theme collection, and the two Character Songs albums.

Two encyclopedias of the Rurouni Kenshin manga were released in Japan. The first one, Rurouni Kenshin Profiles, was released first in Japan in July 4, 1996 by Shueisha and in the United States by Viz Media. Kenshin Kaden, released on 1999 is includes the story Haru ni Sakura, which details the fates of all of the Rurouni Kenshin characters. The story takes place years after the manga's conclusion, when Kenshin and Kaoru have married and have a young son, Kenji. Many of the series' major characters who have befriended Kenshin reunite or otherwise reveal their current whereabouts with him in a spring picnic.[40]

The Rurouni Kenshin novels were originally from Shueisha's Jump j-Books. They were written by Kaoru Shizuka. Most of them are original stories and was later adapted in the anime. Others are adaptations of manga and anime stories. Only Volume 1 has been translated into English so far.