The official website of the upcoming Rurouni Kenshin anime dropped character visuals for Myojin Yahiko and Sagara Sanosuke on Dec 17, 2022.

Yahiko is a boy from a low-ranking samurai family, orphaned at an early age. He was rescued by swordsman Kenshin and becomes a student of Kamiya Dojo to hone his skills in order to become a stronger swordsman. Sanosuke Sagara known as Zanza, is a fight merchant who has made a reputation in the underworld. He later joins Kamiya Dojo. He is also a close friend of Kenshin and his partner in crime.

These visuals are also being displayed at the Aniplex booth in Jump Festa 2023.

Moreover the cast for Yahiko and Sanosuke will be revealed during Jump Festa Rurouni Kenshin panel taking place on Dec 18, 2022.

The new Rurouni Kenshin anime will stream on Fuji TV’s Noitamina programming block in 2023. 

Soma Saito will be voicing the protagonist Kenshin Himura, while Rie Takahashi has been roped in to voice Kaoru Kamiya.

The anime will adapt the manga from the beginning. Aniplex’s official YouTube channel says that this work will use latest technology to reconstruct the original story from the first episode to create an anime that can appeal to the current anime fans.

Original author Nobuhiro Watsuki will be personally supervising the entire anime, including character design and scenario.

The anime adaptation of Rurouni Kenshin is being done by LIDEN FILMS, with Hideyo Yamamoto helming the series. The other staff members who have been announced include:

• Series Composition: Hideyuki Kurata
• Character Designs: Terumi Nishii
• Music: Yuu Takami

Rurouni Kenshin: Meiji Swordsman Romantic Story is a manga written and illustrated by Nobuhiro Watsuki. It was serialized in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump from 1994 to 1999, with its chapters collected into 28 tankobon volumes.

The manga has over 72 million copies in circulation.

MAL describes the plot of the anime as follows:

Ten years have passed since the end of Bakumatsu, an era of war that saw the uprising of citizens against the Tokugawa shogunate. The revolutionaries wanted to create a time of peace, and a thriving country free from oppression. The new age of Meiji has come, but peace has not yet been achieved. Swords are banned but people are still murdered in the streets. Orphans of war veterans are left with nowhere to go, while the government seems content to just line their pockets with money.

One wandering samurai, Kenshin Himura, still works to make sure the values he fought for are worth the lives spent to bring about the new era. Once known as Hitokiri Battousai, he was feared as the most ruthless killer of all the revolutionaries. Now haunted by guilt, Kenshin has sworn never to kill again in atonement for the lives he took, and he may never know peace until killing is a thing of the past.

Now in the 11th year of Meiji, Kenshin stumbles upon Kaoru Kamiya, owner and head instructor of a small dojo being threatened to close its doors. The police force is powerless to stop the string of murders done in the name of her dojo by a man claiming to be the famous Battousai. Kenshin’s wanderings pause for now as he joins Kaoru to clear both their names. But how long can he stay before his past catches up to him?

The manga’s first anime adaptation was done by Studio Gallop, Studio Deen and SPE Visual Works. It aired in Japan from January 1996 to September 1998. The manga has also received an anime feature film and two OVAs.

A series of five live-action theatrical films adaptations were released from 2012 to 2021, which earned over 19.3 billion yen.

Source: Official Website