| Sanosuke Sagara |
| Sanosuke was the first enemy of Kenshin, and had a underworld name as Zanza, the fighter for hire, when he appeared in the Rurouni Kenshin series. He fought Kenshin with his zanbatou, a gigantic sword. His reasons for fighting him were very personal. Sagara fights him because Kenshin is an imperialist, and, when he was young, was part of a group that was betrayed by other imperialists called the Seki Hou Tai. He seeks revenge on any imperialists that he fights. When Kenshin fought Sano, Kenshin won, and Sanosuke saw the error of his ways. In the end, Sagara decided to ally with Kenshin, and thus so became part of the Kenshin group. |
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| Kenshin Himura |
| Kenshin, before the Meji Era, used to be a cold-blooded assassin in order to "bring peace" to the bloody times. He was trained and brought up as a swordsman at a very young age by Hiko, a master swordsman, whom he had his life saved by. He became known as the hitokiri battousai (which means something in japanese like master swordsman or something like that). At a certain period, he vows to never kill again because of a single tragic event that happened when he was an assassin. He then became a rurouni (or wanderer). Since he was never to kill again, he took up using a reversed-blade sword. During the Meji Era he befriended Kaoru, Yahiko, and Sanosuke, and stopped wandering forever and proceeded to the challenges ahead with these new friends. |
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| Character Profiles |
| Kaoru Kamiya |
| Kaoru is the first person Kenshin truly met after he became a wanderer. Kenshin was accused of being the battousai by this woman and she was going to arrest him. Kenshin said that he was nothing more than a wanderer, and showed her his sakabatou (reversed-blade) sword She let him go, and later she almost got killed by the sword of a man impersonating the battousai, but was saved by Kenshin. Near of the end of the episode, Kaoru is kidnapped by the impersonator and his band of evil rebels. At the nick of time, Kenshin defeats all of them, including the fake battousai, and saves Kaoru from their clutches. Kenshin reveals that he is indeed the hitokiri battousai, and is saving and defending as many people as he can to try and repent of his evil deeds. Kaoru, as a fighter of the Kamiya Kasshin style in swordsmanship (using wooden swords)joins with Kenshin and they become great friends. |
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| Yahiko Myojin |
| Yahiko is first introduced in the series pick-pocketing a father of a son looking in a toy store window gazing at a toy. He feels guilty taking it so he puts it back in the man's pocket and walks away. Kenshin sees this and says "That was a very nice thing you did". With that, he takes Kenshin's moneybag from his sash and runs away. It turns out that he's pick-pocketing because he's been told by a gang his mother had owed them money, so he's trying to repay it, but it all ends up being a lie. They were just earning money for nothing! Kenshin frees him later from the evil gang. And so, once again, a new member joins the Kenshin group, and is a Kamiya Kasshin style sword fighter, with Kaoru as his teacher. |
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