tl;dr: A manga with great action and great character development in its main cast, though it drags on quite a bit in the middle.

Rurouni Kenshin is a manga originally released in the 90s, but that remains popular to this day. I myself did read the manga before when it was first released in the United States in the mid 2000s, but that was ages ago and I barely remember it outside of key plot points. As such, seeing as we have just passed the 25th anniversary, I felt like it was worth reading again.

I would have to describe the manga as containing three distinct thirds, though they have varying lengths with the first being somewhat shorter than a third and the second being somewhat longer. The first is a series of short stories that establish the main characters associated with the Kamiya dojo and various short stories branching off of those. In the case of Sanosuke and Yahiko it feels like it starts their character arcs. It begins exploring the concept of the difference between Battousai and Kenshin and how the vow not kill affects him. It goes into some background on Kenshin and the revolution, but not a lot. It also begins developing the romance between Kenshin and Kaoru, but it's really subtle. The action is also decent, but not as good as the later portions. Overall while not completely lighthearted, it's lighter compared to where things go afterwards. In general the plot and action too were pretty minimal and there was a lot more focus on the characters involved and in that it did a pretty great job at keeping good pacing and keeping things interesting.

The second third drops the short story type storytelling from the first third and tells a single extended story centered around stopping a singular villain, Shishio. This portion I wasn't really fond of. Its much more plot focused and provides a lot of background on the revolution to support said plot, but the plot still isn't especially strong. Shishio felt like a pretty 2D villain, which was fine for the smaller villains during the first third, but with him being the main villain for an extended period of time it felt pretty weak. And the narrative surrounding facing him was also pretty simplistic. While the first portion didn't particularly have a good plot either, it had its focus on characters to hold it up, but here the focus on plot seems to mean that there was less of a focus on characters. Kenshin does get some background and development, but it didn't feel like it was enough considering how long the arc took. Ultimately, his personal stake in things was too light to really go in depth into his character. There was also relationship development with Kaoru, but that too was still really subtle and felt like it didn't really go far enough considering everything that happened. While Sanosuke and Yahiko did get stronger, it didn't particularly feel like they were developing as characters. Really, the only character that felt like they got proper development was the side character Aoshi, whose arc was decent, but it does kind of play into the standard shounen too easily forgiving former villains trope, which I'm not overtly fond of in serious manga. Lots of interesting new side characters were added to the cast as well that it did decent introductions for, but I felt that wasn't enough to mitigate the lack of progress in the main cast. The action was a solid improvement over the first third though and quite intense. Still, all in all this third felt like it was lacking substance and hence felt like it had bad pacing with things dragging on too long.

The final third was where I feel the manga was at its best. There's a central villain again, but they're more complex and far better developed than Shishio. He also has a very personal connection to Kenshin, so as such this portion of the manga is where we finally get extensive background and really good character development in Kenshin, where it fully explores where his vow to never kill came from and what he really wants to do. Additionally, the narrative also manages to weave in what are essentially side stories with Sanosuke and Yahiko that also provide background on them and complete their character arcs well. The plot is pretty simple with the larger focus being on characters, but the storytelling I think is still the best in the series and the big twist I thought was built up to properly and worked well in how it allowed the structure that the manga has which allows all the main characters to shine which also results in pretty great pacing. The relationship development in this portion still isn't amazing, and thus overall, I don't consider this a series with particularly good romance, but it was solid enough and ended really well. The action was also even more intense than during the second portion. Overall, I felt it did a good job of focusing on characters and managed to do justice to each of the main character's and gave everyone and the manga overall a solid ending.

The art I think worked really well in terms of showing the fast pace of the action. I also think it does a good job of fitting the time it was portraying. However, beyond that I didn't particularly like the art style or character designs, and it didn't feel all that high quality. Though that may just be because at this point my criteria are probably somewhat screwed up since I mostly read relatively new digitally drawn manga.