The film franchise consists of five films: Rurouni Kenshin, Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Inferno, Rurouni Kenshin: The Legend Ends, Rurouni Kenshin: The Final, and Rurouni Kenshin: The Beginning.
Focusing on Kenshin Himura and his vow not to kill after his days as an assassin in order to help bring about the Meiji Restoration, the story came to an end with the release of the fifth film.
Keishi Otomo’s adaptation of Nobuhrio Watsuki’s classic manga is widely regarded as one of the greats thanks to its faithful retelling and intricately choreographed fight scenes.
While the story of the wandering samurai may be over, there are a number of other films to be enjoyed if you like Rurouni Kenshin.
Death Note
The Japanese adaptation of Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata’s manga Death Note is another classic live-action series.
Consisting of two films, Death Note and Death Note: The Last Name, which were both released in 2006, they follow Light Yagami, a university student who decides to rid the world of evil using a supernatural notebook known as a Death Note.
Much like the manga, the duology focuses on Light’s game of cat-and-mouse with world-renowned detective L, who is investigating the mysterious deaths caused by Light under the guise of mass-murderer Kira.
Starring Tatsuya Fujiwara as Light and Ken’ichi Matsuyama as L, the intense crime drama is a fantastic manga-to-film adaptation, even if it has an alternate ending to its original.
Blade of the Immortal
Another great manga adaptation is Blade of the Immortal, which was brought to the silver screen by Takeshi Miike in 2017.
The blood-drenched samurai epic follows the immortal samurai Manji (Takuya Kimura) as he travels across Japan to get revenge on the swordsmen who killed the parents of his orphan teenage ward Rin Asano (Hana Sugisaki).
Manji is also cursed to live forever, and he can only regain his mortality when he has killed 1,000 evil men.
It is based on the manga by Hiroaki Samura, which was published from 1993 to 2012 in Monthly Afternoon.
The action-packed film is full of intense fight scenes that are sure to excite fans of the original manga series.
Uzumasa Limelight
While it’s not based on a manga, Uzumasa Limelight is also an excellent film about the twilight era of samurai period films in Japan.
Made as a tribute to Charlie Chaplin’s Limelight, the drama follows Kamiyama (Seizō Fukumoto) an aging actor who is known for being a “kirare-yaku,” an actor specializing in dying on screen.
Starring real life “kirare-yaku” Fukumoto in the title role, the 2014 film is an epic homage to samurai films with a heartfelt story at its core.
Seven Samurai
Akira Kurosawa’s films are the pinnacle of Japanese cinema, and the filmmaker is one of the most influential directors in history.
He made 30 films during his prolific career, and his movies are a must-watch for any fan of Japanese cinema.
Seven Samurai is one such classic he has directed, an epic samurai film from 1954 about seven ronin, masterless samurai, who are hired by a village to protect them from a group of bandits.
Starring Kurosawa’s go-to actor Toshiro Mifune in the role of samurai Kikuchiyo, the film has become iconic in its own right.
Seven Samurai is available to stream on HBO Max and on The Criterion Channel.
Kundo: Age of the Rampant
Kundo: Age of the Rampant is an action-packed Korean period film set in the Joseon era.
The 2014 film follows the power struggle between a group of outlaws and the merciless nobleman who rules over them.
In a story akin to Robin Hood, the outlaws steal from the rich and give to the poor in this intense action flick directed by Yoon Jong-bin.
Starring Ha Jung-woo, Gang Dong-won, and The Eternals star Ma Dong-seok among its ensemble cast, the film is sure to delight fans of Rurouni Kenshin.
