Strawberry Fields Forever

It's past 12 midnight already.  I have not slept since 11AM when I woke up this morning (coming from a night shift from the office) and yet I am still sitting here with an idiotic grin on my face.  And this is all because I finally got the chance to watch the Live Action Rurouni Kenshin film!!!

What you guys should know about me is that I love watching anime.  I love it to the point of writing a paper in college, justifying why watching anime is way better than watching teleserye.  I love it to the point of making not one, not two, but FIVE anime websites:

• Tanuki Madness - a Kaoru Kamiya shrine that used to be hosted by a friend, then transferred to my then domain (tenseiga.net) then disappeared into oblivion when my domain expired.  Good thing that I have saved parts of it on free hosting so around 90% of my hardwork is still online here (a tad too unsightly because of the ads!): http://kaoru.enacre.net/main.html
• Towa no Mirai - a Kenshin and Kaoru shrine that was hosted on my domain and co-owned with my good friend Chibi Misao.  Disappeared into oblivion when my domain expired.  No online backup. :(
• To Be With You - an InuKag love shrine that luckily was backed up on a free web space.  You can see it here (also insightly because of the ads): http://inukago.sinfree.net/  
• Destiny - a Sakura-Syaoran shrine that was hosted on kinomoto.nu.  No online backup also.
• A YuuxMiki (Marmalade Boy) love shrine.  I forgot the name of this site and was fairly new (not much content yet) when the site was closed.

Anyway, I practically grew up with anime, my heart breaking for the star-crossed lover of Daimos, Richard and Erica, laughing at the antics of Doraemon and Mojacko, pretending to be a Sailor Soldier either in high heels or knee high red boots, and even trying to be 'macho' and funny at the same time while trying to switch between Gundam Wing and Akazukin Chacha, when they were aired on the same afternoon timeslot.  I have seen a lot of anime, both good and bad, and I can say with absolute certainty that my all-time favorite anime is Rurouni Kenshin.  Always has been.  Always will be.    I guess that pretty much is obvious on the first ever two sites I made.  There are so many things that I loved so much about RK and I will blog on these reasons on a separate entry.

Anyway, given how I feel about the Rurouni Kenshin anime and manga, I was absolutely ecstatic when I heard that a live action film was gonna come out.  It was a long wait from the initial announcement to the actual showing here in the Philippines (I was even scared that PHL was not included in the list of countries where it will be shown.) but I believe that it was worth it: I was very satisfied with the final product that I just saw a few hours ago.

Casting wise, I think that they picked the perfect people for each character.  Takeru Sato was perfect as Kenshin:  what I loved about this guy is how he can look convincingly stupid (think Kenshin ORO moments), but still be successful on projecting Battousai when the scene calls for it.  He was just perfect and I could not have asked for a better Kenshin.  Emi Takei was also a very nice Kamiya Kaoru.  She was just so pretty and refreshingly innocent.  She can also be strong but at the same time appear very feminine and vulnerable.  I thought that she was really pretty.  Another character that was perfectly portrayed was Sagara Sanosuke: Munetaka Aoki was tough but idiotic at times.  He's just the Sano I imagined: strong, dirty, looks like he smells bad, uncouth (but in a funny way), generally just the very refined Megumi's worst nightmare (or maybe most secret desire, LOL).  Speaking of Megumi, she was beautiful, graceful, elegant, but very devilish when she wants to tease Kaoru (I can practically see her kitsune ears).  My only complaint was what happened to her eyebrows?  As for Yahiko, he is just what I wanted that kid to be: very accurate appearance and portrayal of the young swordsman.  And Saito????  Looks a LOT younger than his anime counterpart but every bit as badass.  When he assumed his trademark Gatotsu stance, people actually cheered/sighed in the moviehouse ( me included, at least on the sighing part, LOL).

Here are pics of the cast of RK:

Storywise, I think it is better to set one's expectations that there will be changes... major changes, considering that the production folks only had around 2 hours to work with.  One minor nitpick that I had was that they picked different characters from the different story arcs and made them to be one team of villains:  basically the team of villains was headed by Kanryu (Tokyo Arc), with Gein (whom I initially thought of as Hanya because of the mask and based on the side comments, my fellow otaku also had the same thoughts) and Banjun Inui (both from the Jinchuu Arc) as his hechmen.  On a sidenote, Gein looked like a trying hard K-Popper, LOL.  Anyway, Udo Jine was also part of this villain group, and instead of Hiruma Gohei pretending to be Battousai, we have Jine do that.  Despite all these changes, the filmmakers were able to capture the essence of Rurouni Kenshin: the story of a former assasssin's atonement for all the killings that he has made and his constant struggle to stay true to his vow of non-killing and to protect the ones that are dear to him.

And the best part of all, the filmmakers stayed true to the K&K WAFFY moments! That's Kenshin&Kaoru for you who are new to the fandom! I loved the scene where Kenshin saved Kaoru from Jine and vice versa.  And I also luuuuuved the Okaeri Nasai-Tadaima scene.  K&K is my OTP couple and I swear I wanted to melt in my seat while watching all those sweet K&K moments. <3  Being a true blue K&K fan, I think that these were even better than the action scenes, which were pure AWESOME by the way.  I'd say that the choreography for the swordfights was topnotch!

Well, what else can I say?  If you have not guessed by now, then let me say that I really really loved the movie.  I highly recommend it for any fan of the series.  And I think that people who did not follow the series closely will enjoy this movie too.  I'd give this movie a two thumbs up and 4.5/5 stars!

I heard that the producers have given the go signal on the sequel: needless to say, I am very excited about this and can hardly wait til it's out in theaters.

Rurouni Kenshin is <3!