Rurouni Kenshin OVA (Samurai X) - Part 2

This is actually my second page about the OVA, thus, if you chanced upon it directly, maybe you would like to visit the first page too, where I present a small summary of the plot (just click HERE). In this new page we will see the importance of symbols and details of the animation, such as colors and narrative structure.

In order to fully appreciate the dramatic force of Rurouni Kenshin OVA, one must take into account the Japanese tradition of communicating less through language and more through symbols and conventions. In her book about manga, the Brazilian scholar Sonia Bibe Luyten makes the following remark:

(...) the stories are full of symbolic elements and a great variety of conventions, all of them expressed non-verbally; they establish a very intimate communication between the artist and the Japanese reader. They are message codes already conventionalized throughout the years in the Japanese culture and have the same weight as words. If one does not have the keys to this language, part of the contents gets lost (...) (p. 172, my translation).

 

I agree that cultural differences are a great hindrance for total comprehension of Japanese works by Westerners, but some elements are so evident, that an attentive, sensitive eye certainly will not fail to profit a lot from them. Here we will talk about some of them as a first "push", so that we grow more attentive to the great symbolic wealth of the OVA. And we will start with one of the most important, the colors.

Colors

 
The color pattern of the OVA is completely different from the one in the TV series, as we can see in these two pictures of Kenshin.

 

thus we are led to think that we are not watching a mere "cartoon", but a real "movie" about the life of a man named Kenshin.

Drawing style in the OVA is much closer to reality. We do not have those "big eyes" any longer, that show all emotions clearly. Actually, the only way of perceiving the characters' feelings in the OVA is through symbols and associations, colors among them. A quotation from a Japanese scholar in Sonia Luyten's book about the role of colors in the Japanese culture:

If colors in Japan are soft, on the other hand they are very straight and do not cause a good impression at first sight. Japanese, in contrast to Westerners, see colors in a horizontal intuitive way and pay little attention to the influence of light. Colors, either intense or soft, are identified less on basis of reflexes of light and shadow and rather in terms of a meaning or feeling associated to them. Adjectives used to describe colors, such as iki (sophisticated or chic), shibui (subdued or repressed) or hanari (happy or jovial) stress more the sensibility than the value of colors among themselves (p.43, my translation).

 

This could be an explanation why the first feeling when we watch the OVA is that colors are a bit "sluggish". However, we soon get used to them because we start to see them through their symbolic meanings.

The first thing we notice is the overwhelming presence of red: everything is red: Kenshin's hair, the wonderful sunsets, the setting sun reflected on rivers and lakes, the flowers present in almost every scene and, of course, the blood that permeates the anime. It is no "ketchup red", it is a dark red (like fresh blood) that changes the colors of everything around. It is the joined effect of two symbols of life, blood and the sun. Both are indispensable for life and life is a struggle, it can not always be a rose garden (which, by the way, can also be red).

Other important colors are blue and white. And in a contrast to  the red color, the blue tones are usually very pale (it is interesting to notice that one of the Japanese words for blue, "ao", also means "pale"). Blue and white are very close here, as well as other pale shades, and thus linked to the notion of "pale" we have other elements such as water and snow. We can notice that, while red is associated to Kenshin (starting with his hair), blue/pale/white are associated to Tomoe. Take a look at this picture of them both and notice that their clothes are "changed": Kenshin wears blue, but a very dark one, that just makes the red of his hair stand off more, while Tomoe's kimono is a pale pink, a very diluted red, that actually enhances the effect of her blue scarf and pale skin. Just like Yin and Yang, Kenshin and Tomoe are opposite and complementary and both bear something that belongs to the other (see more about the meaning of colors in the page about COLORS and about the Yin-Yang symbol in the page about GOOD AND EVIL). More about the relationship between Kenshin and Tomoe and "their colors" will be said further on.

Symbols

This is a very common word. In the OVA we can easily recognize many symbols that have great importance for the plot and the involvement of the public with the anime. But then again, what is a symbol, anyway? A quick look in a dictionary may help:

The Softkey Infopedia 2.0 (the one I used because it is already installed in my computer...) tells us that the word comes from the Greek symbolon that means something like "token, sign". Among the definitions we find:

"something that stands for or suggests something else by reason of relationship, association, convention, or accidental resemblance; a visible sign of something invisible: <the lion is a symbol of courage>".
 

"an object or act representing something in the unconscious mind (...) an act, sound, or object having cultural significance and the capacity to excite or objectify a response".

 

Well, we can see that a symbol is something that, through a cultural or  unconscious convention, brings about some associations and emotional reactions. Many symbols are strictly cultural and cannot be correctly interpreted by people that do not know that specific culture. However, many symbols seem to be universal and belong to the human psique in general.

 

Symbols can also be "constructed" or manipulated in a specific context. Thus, the strongest symbols in the OVA end by imposing themselves despite cultural differences, just through their constant presence and association with the facts of the plot. This will get clearer further on, when we speak about the notion of Leitmotiv , but let's now see the symbols themselves.

Blood

In the East, blood is seen rather as a symbol of life and therefore its sight is not so shunned as in the West, where it is seen only as a sign for the loss of a life. Anyway, blood is always associated to strength and vitality. Of course it always has the two sides of presence and loss of life, just like the element "fire" (that shares its red color in the universal symbolism). Bloodshed is a central theme of the OVA from the beginning, when Hiko kills the bandits that had murdered the other travelers in Kenshin's caravan. The main question is: is it just to shed people's blood so that others can live on? Is it just to kill for a cause? Is it fair to kill to defend other people? Can we do good to some without hurting others? Is it part of human nature to kill?

Beyond these questions, we always have blood associated to Kenshin and his actions. As Hiko once told him, once Kenshin decided to shed blood for a cause, more and more blood will follow, in a crescendo that he cannot escape from. Blood follows Kenshin from the beginning of his adventures: the blood of the women that try to protect him from the bandits; his blood on his hands when he buries all the bodies, including the robbers, and when he undergoes the hard training under Hiko; his victims' blood when he kills them; his own blood shed in the battles, Tomoe's blood mingling with his. However, the most important is the fact that his (first) scar starts to bleed again every time he kills or is forced to assume an assassin's mood. The cut has been made by Tomoe's fiancé in a desperate attempt to keep his life and to meet her again. Kenshin had nothing against the young man and even admired his tenacity, but he couldn't let him live. Thus, Kenshin felt this death to be, in some sense, "more wrong" or "less justified" as the others, which had political reasons or were brought about in self defense. That one cut was different from the many others he certainly received before, since it left a scar that would not heal as expected.

In some site of the Web (unfortunately I do not know where...) I read that in the third phase of the Rurouni Kenshin manga (where we learn about Tomoe's story) Kaoru mentions a belief that a scar can only heal when the thing that caused it has been assuaged. In Kenshin's case, his (double) scar can only heal when he is forgiven by the spirits of those who made it (Tomoe and her fiancé). Following this reasoning, in the OVA Kenshin's scar bleeds because he cannot forgive himself for his deeds and the deaths he caused.

In the OVA blood is also frequently related to another important symbol that we will see next: water.

Snow/Water

As well as blood (and even more so to us Westerners), water is also a symbol of life. It has much in common with blood: both are fluid and indispensable to life; both flow through channels (veins/arteries and rivers) and both can "rain" upon other things.

However, water is quite a different symbol than blood: water is usually cold and is considered "calmer", more "passive" or "feminine" (while blood is always warm when it is flowing and is usually associated to "impetus", to the "active", "male" principle). Water has also a purifying character (while blood, even for the Japanese, has always a connotation of impurity, since it is also associated to death). In Japan, the purifying character of water is even stronger when associated to its other form, the snow, which also plays a very important role in the OVA.
 

In the anime, blood and water are usually mingled: when Kenshin washes his bloody hands, when the combatants' blood mixes with the water or the snow that covers the ground and, very explicitly, in Tomoe's first meet with the Battousai , when the blood of the man he just had killed falls on her umbrella and she tells him that he verily is the man that "makes rain blood". Kenshin's final battle (when Tomoe completes his scar but also forgives him for having killed her fiancé) takes place in a snow field. Blood "seeks" its purification in the water/snow, it is the only thing that can placate it, just like Tomoe would be a sheath for Kenshin's sword. Again we see clearly the Yin/Yang duality, feminine and masculine, nullifying and completing each other. Just as Kenshin is associated to blood, Tomoe is associated to the water, even through their colors, as we have shown above.
 

In the OVA we also have another attribute of water: its capacity of reflecting images. As I said above, people in the anime (true to the Japanese etiquette and aesthetics) do not show their feelings openly and even hide their faces in such situations. Frequently we can only see their faces when they are reflected in some liquid: tea or sake in a cup, the surface of a lake or river and - only once - in a mirror. This mirror has a special meaning, since it was a gift from Kenshin to Tomoe. Mirror symbolism is also classical, it is a way of seeing oneself as the others see us, as well as a moment of introspection, an opportunity to make contact with our true, inner self. Just as Tomoe's mirror, all other reflexes show the characters' true feelings, but in a veiled, indirect way, as if we had caught them unaware by chance, thus becoming an "accomplice" of a well hidden secret.

Flowers/Nature

Nature has an enormous symbolic importance in Japanese life. Traditionally everything is ruled by the seasons: the colors of the clothes, the flowers used in the arrangements, food and drink to be served. In the big cities of the modern world, far way from the fields and forests and where time is defined by the clock and not any longer by the sun, elements of Nature acquire more and more a symbolic value: even if one does not remember that there is something such as "autumn" (since we do not have to harvest madly before winter any longer), an ikebana done in that period will have the traditional flowers and colors for the season. As for the role of nature in Japanese movies and manga, let's see another quotation from Japanese experts in Sonia Luyten's book:

Scenes of Nature express the philosophy, uncertainty, compassion and instability of human life. Scenes of Nature in Japanese movies are, therefore, symbolic, just as in painting and poetry (...) (p. 172, my translation).

 

In the OVA, the presence of Nature, and even stronger, of flowers, is very impressive. There is hardly a scene without a river, trees or flowers. In my opinion, there are three main reasons for the presence of Nature:
 

The passing of time

Through the changes in plants and flowers we can feel the passing of time. Sometimes there are direct allusions, as when the leader of the revolutionaries points to the flowers of a rowan tree and says that it is summer, and then we see, in other scenes, that same tree changing as the year goes by. The same happens to the forests, whose trees start green and gradually loose their leaves, being covered in snow in winter. It is interesting to notice that, although the whole story takes place through several years, the OVA begins in summer (as we deduce from the magnificent sunset in the first scenes with Hiko) and reaches its end in winter, with Tomoe's death in the snow (I know it is not really the end of the anime, but it IS the end of the plot. What follows are just scenes from Kenshin's life after all that happened, as a bridge for the beginning of the manga).

"Hidden" information

Sometimes flowers are used as a means for leading the public to "complete" the information presented by the characters or the scenes. I would like to use as an example a scene from the second part of the OVA: the messenger of the rebels has investigated about Tomoe's life and tells his leader that he couldn't find out anything about her. While we listen to this conversation, there are two scenes that intermingle: the conversation scene and another one, in which Tomoe makes a flower arrangement together with some other women of the inn. When the messenger says that Tomoe may be a spy from the shogunate, we see Tomoe cutting a flower. Thus the association flower-woman-spy-cut-death is done by the public alone, it is not put into words and we don't even see the men's faces while they are discussing the issue. That increases the dramatic effect of the moment: we start to wonder whether she is really a spy, whether they will consider her as one and whether they will kill her or not.

Another good example are the flowers used by Tomoe for that same ikebana: all that happens in a rainy day and Tomoe tells her hostess that all she could find where some irises (blue flowers like the ones in the picture by Van Gogh - unfortunately I don't know the symbolism of this flower in Japan...). The woman tells her it is all right, and that the iris is very similar to Tomoe, since "the perfume of both is stronger under rain". We have a lot of associations here: the flowers are blue, that is, they have "Tomoe's color" and their perfume is stronger under rain, that is, Tome's true strength is revealed under distress, in the "rain of blood" that Kenshin brought upon her life. Thus we know that Tomoe, although fragile-looking, is really strong in adverse situations, as will be proved true in the rest of the anime.

Refrained emotions

Flowers permeate the anime. There is always a kind of "flower frame" in the scenes: it can be a tree branch in flower, or flowers in a vase, flowers being held in someone's hands or even petals in the wind. According to  Sonia Bibe Luyten, flower petals in the wind (specially from cherry trees) stand for nobility and evoke images of a honorable death. Indeed, flowers are strongly attached to death in the OVA, specially the beautiful red ones that I can't recognize... (I don't know which flower it is, it looks like a poppy). This is the flower that Tomoe's fiancé was taking to her as a present when Kenshin killed him and it appears throughout the anime, always associated with death and blood but, at the same time, transmitting a message of delicacy and forgiveness. It is one of those flowers that Kenshin smashes with his foot during the fight against the young man, as well as the flower that Kenshin lays upon the young man's body as a tribute for his will of living. Those are the flowers that the delirious Kenshin sees swirling in the wind and transforming into blood during the final battle, and that is the flower that Tomoe sees in the hand of her fiancé, as she has a vision of his serene spirit, offering her the flower as a tribute to her new life.

(P.S.: After this page was posted I received a very nice e-mail from Julie Lim, who informed me that those red flowers may be a kind of red camellia called tsubaki, which seems to be a symbol for death in battle. Julie quotes a text from the site Asai  that says: “Unlike cherry blossoms in spring that flutter gracefully to the ground, the red camellia flower drops in one single fall. Its thud and color have been compared to that of a man loosing his head in battle.” Julie also points out that another source says that the same flowers have another meaning for woman: the loss of virginity. She suggests that could explain why Tomoe sees Kiyosato’s ghost offering her one in reproach after her night with Kenshin. I don’t think Kiyosato is really threatening Tomoe, since his face and smile are very similar to that of the Buddha statue behind him, what would mean that he has forgiven her, however, I do think it would fit well into a scenario where he shows Tomoe that he has died thinking of her and that he is aware of her new love, but that he is above pain and jealousy now. Anyway, there will always be many interpretations for the same symbols, but I am very happy that such discussions are taking place. Thank you very much for your comments, Julie!)

It is really a pity that I couldn't find any images of the beautiful flowers in the anime to put on this page, but people usually concentrate on the characters and not on the small details that lend depth to their actions, thus, who would come to the idea of making a caption of a flower scene from a OVA?

Sake
Well, sake is not exactly a symbol, it is rather another element used to pass "hidden information" about the character's state of mind, in this case, about the relationship between Kenshin and Tomoe. In a scene where Kenshin drinks sake in an inn, he remembers a time when he was still a child: Hiko is drinking sake under the stars in his mountain. He tells Kenshin that sake tastes better in the spring, and that someday Kenshin will come to know love, and that day he and Hiko would drink together to celebrate. After remembering this, Kenshin notices that the sake he is drinking tastes bitter.

Next time we see Kenshin drinking sake he is with Tomoe in the same inn he first saw her drinking alone in a corner. Now Kenshin notices, surprised, that the sake tastes good and he comments on that with Tomoe. She, on the other hand, tells him that now she drinks less than before, and she thinks she does not need it any longer.

A third scene shows Kenshin and Tomoe drinking together in their mountain cabin. Kenshin says that, that night, sake tastes sweet and pleasant.

The changes in the taste of the sake show how Kenshin and Tomoe come closer and closer and appreciate more and more each other's company, which makes everything else seem better. Again we notice that they never "say" they are falling in love, the only allusion to that is the remembrance of Hiko's scene, many years before they met each other. It is up to the public to build the bridge between all those facts: Kenshin has finally come to know love, although Hiko is not there for them to celebrate together.

The Top

Little Shinta's toy is a good example of how a symbol can be created and be valid only in a given context: the top is as good as the first thing we see associated to Kenshin, as the little Shinta plays with it in the slave caravan: a child and his toy, keeping his innocence even in the middle of the horrors of slavery. During the difficult training under Hiko, Kenshin plays with it in the few free moments. Even after he becomes a hitokiri, Kenshin still keeps the toy, the only token of his childhood. It lays on the ground near Kenshin as Tomoe once finds him asleep in his room, and it makes her think that he still keeps much of a child. In the brief time of happiness that both experience in the small mountain cabin, Kenshin again plays with it. The top became thus, a symbol for Kenshin's innocence that he still keeps even after killing so much. The revolutionary leader himself once comments on it, saying that Battousai hadn't lost his innocence and that it could destroy him someday.

Some other recurrent elements are not really symbols nor have the function of transmitting "hidden information" about the story, but they have the important task of standing for some characters or feelings, even when those are not clearly presented. This is usually called a Leitmotiv ("light-moteef"). The word is German in origin and has become popular mainly through Richard Wagner's music dramas, although he has not  used the term himself. In a nutshell, Leitmotiv  is a recurring element, musical theme or motive that represents or symbolizes an object, a living being, an idea or emotion. That is well known as a character's musical "theme" in a movie or anime: when we hear the music, we immediately think of the character, even if he/she is not there. The same happens for "danger music" in many series. In the OVA, a good example (not thinking of the music, of course) is Tomoe's perfume. The same kind of perfume was used by the girls that sacrificed their lives to save little Shinta as the caravan was attacked and it is mentioned again when Kenshin, already grown-up, feels Tomoe's perfume in the middle of the crowd in the city: even before seeing her, he was already "predisposed" to her because of that. Later on, he feels it again when he sees her drinking alone in the inn, and the perfume is mentioned again when Saitou sees Tomoe briefly, leaving Kyoto with Kenshin, but he does not think the man with her could be Battousai.

Tomoe's perfume is hakubai-kou, a perfume used by prostitutes of that time (I also read it somewhere in the Web...): it becomes a "token" for Tomoe, making Kenshin notice her even without knowing her and tying her to his memories of childhood. One wonders why Tomoe used a prostitute's fragrance, but one must also think that she had to make a living someway after she run away from home, and that there was little a lone woman could do at that time. Maybe it is another clue for the reason why she considers herself so unworthy of Kenshin's love and care, as she often thinks during the story.

There are certainly many more symbols in the OVA, but if I were to start talking about all of them this page would have no end... Well, I think you've got the point, so watch the OVA and find out the rest. I will only give some clues: pay attention (among other things) to the associations caused by the atmosphere in the cabins (the mountain one and that of the ninja captain), by the statue of Buddha (in the 4th episode), and by Tomoe's scarf and dagger...

Let's now see how the elements are combined to form the structure of the story.

The eternal returning 

We can notice that many elements are recurrent throughout the story, starting with the colors. As I've said before, the anime is as good as built upon the colors red and blue/pale/white and their associations:

• Red: Kenshin, masculine, blood, sun, flowers, warmth, death, guilt

• Blue/White: Tomoe, feminine, water, rain, snow, sky, cold, flowers (iris), purification

 
especially exploiting their mingling: blood on the snow, the sun reflected on the river. Let's see another quotation from Sonia Luyten's book:

According to Japanese tradition (...) red combined to white brings the idea of vitality and purity. When this combination is used, it immediately comes to the Japanese mind the idea of happiness or celebration, while green is the color of life and eternal spirit, since one of the strongest cultural characteristics is the integration with Nature (...). The color blue, due to the fact that Japan is an archipelago, stands from something maternal, involving, satiating (...) For the Japanese reader the presence of colors as story background is already  a clue for the meaning of the discourse and helps to create the atmosphere (p.44, my translation).

 

Therefore, the union of Kenshin's red and Tomoe's "pale" (white) stands for a final happiness resulting from redemption and purification, even through suffering, and that is the central idea of the anime.

As for the structure of the narrative, we can think of the structure of the classical Greek tragedy (that, by the way, is not exclusive of the Greek): he have a hero, a being gifted with great nobleness and special characteristics (in Kenshin's case, his ability with the sword and his determination in protecting the weak) that, someday, makes a mistake that will cause his fall. In the Greek tragedy the mistake usually involved a transgression to the laws of the gods, but in Kenshin's case the mistake seems to have been his not listening to Hiko's advice and his using of his sword for political aims. However, his "fall" only happens after his killing of Tomoe's fiancé. As we have already seen, Kenshin felt he shouldn't kill a young man that only fought to keep his life and see her fiancée again, but even so he couldn't let him leave. In this fight he got the first cut of the scar that was to mark him forever and would torment him every time he would kill. This episode was the cause of Tomoe's running away from her home and seeking revenge, and that led her to become a bait in the hands of the ninja. Just like Kenshin, Tomoe became "impure" by rejecting the "decent fate" of a young unmarried woman and, afterwards, falling in love with her enemy. Destiny then united them both so that together they could atone for their "faults": both had to find love and lose it again in order to purify themselves. Tomoe revenged her fiancé with the second cut on Kenshin's face, but she also saved his life, while Kenshin was the reason of her death, but also her second chance of happiness, and then he decided not to kill anymore after the war was over. Their tragedy evokes deep feelings in us and, trough the catharsis, that is, our experiencing other people's suffering (see again the explanation on the page about Good and Evil), both they and we can reach redemption, that is, inner peace.

We can also see that the narrative has a circular structure: many events remit to the beginning of a cycle: the story begins and ends in the place where Hiko first met Kenshin. The killing of Tomoe's fiancé and the first cut on Kenshin's face started all the events that came to a close when she made the second cut of the cross-shaped scar. Kenshin learned to use the sword to retribute the young women's sacrifice and to protect the weak and the ones he loved, but this only led him to be again saved by a woman's death. Only stopping the killing (which he does after the end of the war, becoming a wanderer) he could break the cycle he started with his disobedience to Hiko and be forgiven by the spirits of Tomoe and her fiancé, which only happens in the final arch of the manga.

Well, there is no way of transmitting all the details, associations and emotions in the first Rurouni Kenshin OVA. I can only advise you to watch it attentively and not to get scared with the amount of blood, since the final message is one for peace, forgiveness and redemption through love.

Images from OVA "borrowed" from the sitesThe 4th Avenue Image Cafe, Anime Inn - Rurouni Kenshin Image Gallery and KAEL on Rurouni Kenshin OVA I. Quotations from the book  Mangá - o poder dos quadrinhos japoneses by Sonia Bibe Luyten (São Paulo, Hedra, 2000). Paintings by Hiroshige (Plum) and van Gogh (Irises) from the WebMuseum. Rurouni Kenshin by Nobuhiro Watsuki is published in Japan by Jump Comics. Rurouni Kenshin OVA was produced by three Japanese enterprises whose names I cannot read... However, as usual, all characters and products named here belong to their respective legal owners and no financial advantages are being achieved through this page.

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