Rurouni Kenshin: The Beginning Review — The Tragedy That Forged the Legend

Is Rurouni Kenshin: The Beginning worth watching?

Yes — 81% Celluloid Score, the finest film in Keishi Otomo’s live-action saga. The 138-minute 2021 prequel is not a victory lap. It is the origin wound: Battosai before the reverse blade, Tomoe before the vow, a love story that makes every later mercy look expensive.

Watch it after the 2012–2014 trilogy if you want the legend first, or first if you can live with tragedy before triumph. Either way, pair it with The Final — they are one emotional arc split by a production calendar.

What does the prequel add that Origins could not?

Cost. Takeru Satoh plays a colder Kenshin without losing the man who will choose not to kill. Kasumi Arimura’s Tomoe is the film’s quiet miracle — grief as a plot, not a flashback caption. Otomo shoots the Bakumatsu as lantern light and rain; the action is precise, but the camera prefers faces.

This is the chapter that makes the reverse-blade philosophy feel like a scar instead of a superpower. If you only know Kenshin as a wandering do-gooder, The Beginning is the argument you were missing.

Who should skip The Beginning?

Skip it as a first action night if you wanted Kyoto Inferno’s army scale — this is intimate and cruel. Skip it if doomed romance is a hard no. Do not skip it if you have already fallen for the trilogy; the 81% is the site saying the prequel is the soul, not the leftover.

Title page: movie page. Start the 2012 film here: Origins.

Verdict

The saga’s soul laid bare — tragic, gorgeous, unforgettable. The finest Rurouni Kenshin film, and the one that makes the others hurt correctly.