Rurouni Kenshin is a series I've just recently read and enjoyed a lot so I thought I'd give it a shot! My overall rating for the manga is a 9/10, and here is why:


Story (8/10): The story might not have been the most original but I believe Watsuki made the best of it.
The manga is separated into 2 main arcs.
Personally I prefer the first one. The characters are more interesting to me and I think it was developed better. However, the 2nd arc is a lot of fun to read as well.

What I don't like about the first arc is that the end feels like it was stretched a bit too much. No matter how much I enjoyed it, during the last few chapters I kind of wished it would come to an end already. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't boring. I just feel like it could've been a bit shorter.

The second arc started off slowly to me, though it had great development and a nice plot twist.

Compared to a lot of similar manga who tend to go on forever, Kenshin ended at exactly the right time. Of course, it was possible to add tons of chapters if you wanted to but the end was set where it was fitting. The end was at a point when the story wasn't stretched out to a point where it became repetitive and boring.


Art (9/10): I'm not so experienced with art in manga but I know for sure that I don't read manga if the style doesn't appeal to me. It's obvious that I really liked that art-style.
I also think that the art had a perfect balance between being detailed and simple. It was detailed where it was pretty and was simple where being detailed would've been distracting or would have made things complicated and hard to understand. You can also see development during the manga without the style changing so much that you feel like reading something entirely different (which tbh does not happen a lot but it still happens in some manga).


Character (10/10): What I believe is the strongest point in Kenshin.
The characters are all so realistic & understandable that you have a hard time hating any of them. They aren't separated into good & evil either - everyone has their motivations and reasons to act the way they do, as well as those twists that make a character round and interesting.

Nobody lacks development and the background stories of most of the characters are my favorite part of the manga. What I love is that the type of characters who usually wouldn't develop much still do.
This goes for a lot of less important characters and I really wish some of them were given more time and appeared a second time at least. They were too amazing to just appear and leave again, some of them would've even made great main characters!

The characters are all so different and yet most of them just fit so well in to the story (when I gotta admit that there is indeed some that don't really fit into the setting, but considering that they are amazing characters nonetheless, you can overlook that.) There's some really unique ideas that you don't see often in other manga. (I would give examples but I really don't want to spoil anyone.)

I probably sound like a stupid fangirl here but really, I was so in love with the characters in this manga - there's barely anything I can criticize.


Enjoyment (9/10): Well, I really loved the manga a lot. I got it from a friend who borrowed me all the volumes. I must have been so annoying because I always borrowed 3 or 4 at the same time and I had them finished the next day, asking for more and being really annoying when she didn't bring them along. The manga is just addicting like that. It's very deep and has both, emotional and goofy moments without either of them being out of place.

The setting is great and it really makes you interested in the time period. You already find out a lot about it and even want to find out more because it looks so amazing.

The only reason I gave it a 9 out of 10 is what I already mentioned - in the story, there's the one part where it's kind of slow which is the transition between the two arcs with one ending being too long and the next one starting a bit too slow. Other than that, it was a lot of fun reading it.