Samurai X: Reflection

[Gypsy]

Thanks so much, CDLviking for this excellent review!

http://christiananime.net/reviews.php?display=134

[Kisa]

Nice review! Sounds interesting.

[Heart of Sword]

I'm halfway through it.

SADNESS!!!!!!!!

Does anybody know exactly what disease Kenshin's got?

[EKmisao]

Does anybody know exactly what disease Kenshin's got?

The usual guess you'll hear is leprosy. For many reasons this isn't the best guess. The most satisfying guess I've seen is syphillis, reaching final stages. This jives with the symptoms presented, as well as the history of the time.

EK 8 )

[Shao Feng-Li]

Hmm... that kind of sucks... I somewaht wanted an awsome fight or something. Call me crazy, but isn't syphilis something you usually get from fooling around? Yahiko's mother was said to have died from it in a brothel.

I looked it up at m-w.com...

[Yeshua-Knight]

well, if you wanted to be poetic about it, you could say that he died of regret, from regretting all the lives that he took, and that once he shared his pain with kaoru, she suffered from his regret as well, not because she directly felt the regret like kenshin did, but because his pain burdened her so much

[EKmisao]

You can also get syphilis from an infected wound, you see, which is the most probable way Kenshin got his. Kaoru then would have gotten it, the way you saw in the OAV.

This guess I got from discussions at rkdreams.com/rk_forum. It was from a while back, and is a combination of information from a working nurse and a good researcher.

EK 8 )

[Heart of Sword]

Kenshin does NOT fool around...he's a good boy.

well, if you wanted to be poetic about it, you could say that he died of regret, from regretting all the lives that he took, and that once he shared his pain with kaoru, she suffered from his regret as well, not because she directly felt the regret like kenshin did, but because his pain burdened her so much

He didn't, though......

A word of warning to those who haven't seen it yet: it's higher on the sexual content scale than the review said.

[SPOILER]
The first kiss...they were clothed yes, but Kenshin was...on...top...*ponders whether to throw up or not*

I'd say it gets a 3.

And the open Kimono scene doesn't really count. It was less than half a second worth of a scene and it showed VERY little.

Just a warning...
[/SPOILER]

[CDLviking]

I went back and took another look at the scene, and I still stand by my review. I don't know exactly what you are implying in the spoiler, but I found nothing to be sexually explicit about it.

[Heart of Sword]

Not explicit, no. But...a kiss standing up is quite different than a kiss...like...that one. Yeah. However, when the scene first came up, I thought it was going to be worse than it was. But they kept it very clean. Kudos to them! ^_^ (I don't think Watsuki would have given the "okay" to anything worse than that.)

[CDLviking]

Not explicit, no. But...a kiss standing up is quite different than a kiss...like...that one.

I still fail to see how body orientation makes it dirty.

[EKmisao]

And it's between two married people, so I don't see how it could be dirty. As it was, how much can you get out of two HANDS?! ^_^

EK 8 )

[Heart of Sword]

I just get grossed out easily, I guess. (But if that was in a G rated movie, that movie should be rated PG...y'know??)

[Shao Feng-Li]

Kenshin does NOT fool around...he's a good boy.

I was thinking of Tomoe at the time... *shrug*

[Christlover]

[quote]

The usual guess you'll hear is leprosy. For many reasons this isn't the best guess. The most satisfying guess I've seen is syphillis, reaching final stages. This jives with the symptoms presented, as well as the history of the time.

Weird, I was thinking AIDS because Kaoru got it from,... yeah.

[CDLviking]

Well, it's long before the time of AIDS, and there are quite a lot of different STDs out there. It doesn't even have to be that. It could have been just the close personal contact.

[Shao Feng-Li]

Okay, let's change the subject...

[EKmisao]

It's not AIDS (and yes, that was my first personal guess too), because you can only catch it by intercourse, and as has been pointed out previously, Kenshin won't be unfaithful.

Syphillis CAN be caught both sexually and by infected wounds. And it's correct, that AIDS is only the most recently discovered of the many STDs.

EK 8 )

[enishi]

reflections is amazing. i cried for a long time after that. the OVAs are just beautiful, and the story just chokes you up. and it had enishi in it ^_^ too bad the fight was so short. ah well.

[Ingemar]

Once again I am the dissenting voice here. I think Reflections is absurd and a monumental waste of effort. The whole thing is just a collection of flashbacks and Kaoru, Yahiko and Sano lose all their charm. And for all of Kenshin's development, I found him very unsympathetic as a character. He abandons his family for some self-important bleeding heart escapades in China, and because of that, his son grows up to be a self-absorbed angsty creep. The movie as a whole was very boring. Thumbs waaaaay down.

[EKmisao]

Erm..........the reasons you gave are the reasons even us hardcore fans frequently choose to ignore SeisouHen, especially when making fanfics. ^^ Many people were disappointed by it. It was really pretty, that I don't deny, but it was also disappointing. ^^ Kenshin deserves way better than to end like this, with people dissecting if it was syphillis or AIDS or leprosy that finally got him.

EK 8 )

[Heart of Sword]

too bad the fight was so short. ah well.

Well Kenshin wouldn’t fight back.

He abandons his family for some self-important bleeding heart escapades in China, and because of that, his son grows up to be a self-absorbed angsty creep.

Kenshin is a wanderer and Kaoru married him knowing that, though.

It's not AIDS (and yes, that was my first personal guess too), because you can only catch it by intercourse

Actually it can also be passed on through blood and saliva.




Reflections was a good ending…but I don’t think men appreciate it as much as us romantic women do. It was cool to see it all from Kaoru’s perspective because her feelings are hard to “readâ€

[CDLviking]

[quote="Heart of Sword"]Reflections was a good ending…but I don’t think men appreciate it as much as us romantic women do. It was cool to see it all from Kaoru’s perspective because her feelings are hard to “readâ€

[Yeshua-Knight]

yeah, seeing the scar gone once he passed was good, i think that if he'd died in a fight or something it wouldn't have ended as well, remember he was not only using his sword for repentance, but also to bring about peace in japan, so seeing him die in such a peaceful way at the side of the one he loves, it also tied up all the loose ends as far as his enemies go

[Crossdive]

agreed, the ending i think was perhaps both the most moving and most symbolic thing in it IMO

btw Yeshua Knight, I LOVE everything in your sig (funny, not many people call Him Yeshua, i do when I pray or talk with family, but i have to remember it is Jesus when i talk to other people. )

[Zane]

I have just seen it... and well the trailer had me expecting something totally different... like more then just 3 mins of fight scenes here and there. So yeah I was a little disappointed. Mind you I have only seen the Movie and nothing else of Samurai X or Ruoin (whatever) Kenshin, so thats also probably why I didn't get it.

I guess one could compare it to NGE death and rebirth, like an overview of the series?? The animation was great though.

[Steeltemplar]

A friend of mine who is a Kenshin fan to the nth power told me it was Tuberculosis. I don't know what he had to base that on, though. But he does seem to know everything that ever was known about Kenshin. lol.

[CDLviking]

I don't think TB leaves a mark like that. It's a respiratory disease, and he would be coughing up blood and stuff.

[shooraijin]

It's not AIDS (and yes, that was my first personal guess too), because you can only catch it by intercourse

Actually it can also be passed on through blood and saliva.

Let's nip this in the bud right now -- there is HIV in saliva, but it is an exceptionally difficult way to transmit the virus because the quantities are relatively low and the environment relatively more hostile. Blood can still be a vector, but it has to be blood-to-blood inoculation (e.g., things like needle sticks; touching a blood stain or even a pool of blood with intact skin, assuming your skin *is* intact and doesn't have any microscopic skin breaks, won't do it -- we just prefer not to take chances in the medical field, hence the gloves), and it has to be fresh blood.

[CDLviking]

Do you have any professional opinion on what could have killed Kenshin.