Rurouni Kenshin - Fanlore

General

Rurouni Kenshin: Meiji Kenkaku Romantan is a manga series set in early Meiji period Japan that has been adapted into both an anime tv show and OVAs. It concerns an ex-assassin (the eponymous Kenshin) trying to make a place for himself now that the chaos and violence of the Bakumatsu era are over. The series features numerous historical figures and real political conflicts, though most of the main cast is fictional. The name is typically abbreviated to RuroKen in Japanese and Rurouni Kenshin, Kenshin, or RK in English.

Like many popular manga series, Rurouni Kenshin was adapted into an anime series which was translated before the parent manga. Prior to its official release in English, fansubs and text translations were widely available, but scanlations were much less complete. Consequently, Kenshin fandom has generally revolved around the animated series (which diverges in plot two thirds of the way through).

The Fandom

The heyday of the fandom was in 2000-2002 with a proliferation of pairing and theme-specific yahoo! groups. Many of these still exist, but when yahoo removed adult groups from its search function in 2001, they became much harder to locate and have tended to dwindle in size and activity as old fans leave for newer fandoms and new fans are unable to find them. Other communities of fans, often ones who got into the show when it aired on US television, archive their fic at fanfiction.net. Yahoo! groups users also used fanfiction.net extensively in the past, but many left for pairing or yaoi/het/AU universe-specific archives after the site banned explicit content in 2002. Most of these archives are hand-coded personal pages, many of which will no doubt disappear with the closing of Geocities. Many RK fans also archive their fic at MediaMiner, but usually as a backup for other sites.

The canon will-they-or-won't-they pairings have always been overwhelmingly the most common in RK fic, followed by m/m pairings between main characters, and with other m/f pairings a distant third. Yuri and gen fic was much less common in most yahoo groups due to their narrow (popular) pairing-specific focus.

There is also some crossover between RK fandom and Shinsengumi fandom due to the appearance of numerous relevant historical figures in the RK canon.

RK was a popular subject of doujinshi during its original run (1994-1999), but its Japanese fans had largely moved on to other series by the time it developed an English-speaking fandom. Nonetheless, some fan-translated doujinshi did circulate around 2000-2002.

Pairings

In the manga canon, a few characters have crushes on each other, but only Kenshin's romances are featured prominently. (These include flashbacks to his marriage to Tomoe and his relationship with Kaoru at the end of the series.) The anime series added much stronger hints that various other characters were interested in each other. This led to quasi-canon shippers who supported a set of non-conflicting straight pairings. These usually included some combination of the following:

• Kenshin x Kaoru
• Sano x Megumi
• Aoshi x Misao
• Yahiko x Tsubame
• Saitou x Tokio

The most popular alternate m/f pairing was Sano x Kaoru.

Yaoi and some yuri pairings were also popular. By far the most common was Kenshin x Sano. Various pairings of Kenshin, Aoshi, Sano, Saitou, and Hiko were also popular, including Hiko x Saitou (notable in that they never met in canon).

Pairings among specific sets of side characters and enemies were also common, particularly works featuring the Oniwabanshu, Shishio's organization, or the Shinsengumi.

Though not the most popular pairing on big lists or archives, Saitou x Sano had a devoted following in the yahoo group SXSAS (The Saitou/Sano Appreciation Society). The group was most active in 2001-2003 and was all but abandoned by 2006. A later LiveJournal community of the same name^[1] continues to see a small amount of activity.

AMVs

One example of an often recommended AMV is Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely^[2] by Kestrel who posted this vid to her website in September 2000. Compared to more recent AMVs the file size of just 4.5 MB seems very small, but back then it could take hours to download it and the size was close to the limit of what was still accessible.

References

1. ↑ SxSAS LJ community, founded in January 2004. Accessed 15 May 2009.
2. ↑ Kestrel. Kestrel Sempai Music Videos, September 2000.