Rurouni Kenshin: Meiji Kenkaku Romantan - Seisou-hen

A compilation of anime that began airing during the month of December.


The month is most notable for the Directorial debut of Studio Ghibli Legend Hayou Miyazaki with the release of Lupin the IIIrd: Castle of Cagliostro, along with more recently the second season of Demon Slayer and part 1 of Attack on Titan the Final Season.

See Also:

January: https://myanimelist.net/stacks/15005
February: https://myanimelist.net/stacks/15006
March: https://myanimelist.net/stacks/15017
April: https://myanimelist.net/stacks/15029
May: https://myanimelist.net/stacks/15033
June: https://myanimelist.net/stacks/15041
July: https://myanimelist.net/stacks/15044
August: ttps://myanimelist.net/stacks/15051
September: https://myanimelist.net/stacks/15053
October: https://myanimelist.net/stacks/15101
November: https://myanimelist.net/stacks/15102

The OVA market dried up as straight to video releases became a thing of the past, which is unfortunate because a lot of interesting and unique anime were released in this format. The point of the list is to feature worthwhile OVAs that are more than just fanservice or shoddy extras for TV series. Sigh, due to the explicit content warning feature, I've excluded Mezzo Forte, but it would be on here otherwise. I should also probably make room for Yukikaze at some point.

--Not Included--
> Sobakasu (Music)

ADV Films, the former incarnation of Sentai Filmworks, produced most of their English dubs in Houston, Texas. However, from the late 1990s until 2005, ADV also employed a secondary studio in Austin, Texas, known as Monster Island.

Monster Island could be considered ADV's "2nd-string" studio, as many (though not all) shows they dubbed were lesser-known and perhaps lesser quality. Shipping them to MI may have been a cost-cutting move, as many of the dubs are marred by fast-and-loose scriptwriting, questionable name pronunciations, and a general sense of roughness and inexperience.
Still, a lot of them had their own sort of charm, and some are well-regarded. You can find some comments about the dubs from me on some individual entries. Some may be approaching "lost media" status, or are not commonly available online by legal or illegal means.

So if you've encountered an ADV dub from the early 2000s and wondered why the cast was full of names you hadn't heard of, or why it felt different from the average ADV dub, chances are it was a Monster Island show.

*Note: some related/sequel titles dubbed by MI are noted only in the comments, in order to stay under the 50-item limit.

Rurouni Kenshin: Meiji Swordsman Romantic Story is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Nobuhiro Watsuki. The manga was serialized in Shueisha's Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine from April 1994 to September 1999. The complete work consists of 28 tankōbon volumes.

The first eighteen volumes were adapted into an anime produced by Studio Deen, and aired in Japan from January 10, 1996 to September 8, 1998. Additionally, several parts of the following volumes were adapted into two original video animations series. A second anime television series adaptation by Liden Films premiered in July 2023.

The Rurouni Kenshin manga has over 72 million copies in circulation as of 2019, making it one of the best-selling manga series of all time. In 2017, Watsuki began a direct sequel titled Rurouni Kenshin: The Hokkaido Arc in Jump Square.

Kazuhiro Furuhashi is a Japanese anime director and supervisor. He is amongst anime's most foremost directors, having directed and helmed the Rurouni Kenshin series (including the original television series, and its subsequent original video animation iterations), Zipang, GetBackers, Hunter × Hunter, Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn, Dororo, and most recently, Spy × Family.