A fansite dedicated to one of the greatest animations ever produced: The Rurouni Kenshin OVA.
This site contains information about the OVA series (Tsuiokuhen), details about various
collectable figures and resin statues of the Hitokiri Battousai that I have come across over the years, as well as recommendations of other anime, movies and games for Kenshin fans.
I've been working on the media section these past couple of days, and it's finally up. The media section contains recommendations for different Anime, Movies, and Games for Kenshin fans.
It also contains AMVs, and my collection of Cels and Swords. The update took a lot longer than expected, mostly because I had to track down a lot of old videos and take screen caps from them. It also didn't help that I was listening to Longview for motivation on a hot summers day.
After many months of delay, it's finally done. So what are you waiting for? Check out the new media section right now!
I've finished the Kenshin music video that I had been planning for a while now. This video combines my favourite animation with my favourite song from my favourite band. The song is And All That Could Have Been by Nine Inch Nails, and when I first heard this song, it brought back images of Kenshin as he struggled through the snow in search of Tomoe. Now, I can share that experience with this video.
This was my first, and probably last anime music video. I had spent a day planning it out, and wasted a huge amount of time converting the video format back and forth while trying out many different video programs. I found iMovie very intuitive, but too simplified and impractical for AMV production, while Final Cut was too complicated and confusing. I finally settled on Adobe Premiere Pro, and spent a full day of intense, non-stop editing. The final product was then compressed, and placed on Youtube for your viewing pleasure:
I bought a new cel recently. It's from the 4th episode when Kenshin is fighting his way to see Tomoe. It's an amazing cel that has came with an extra layer for the breathe. The seller was also a Kenshin OVA fan, and he was nice enough to send me an unmatching background for free.
The cel cost me a pretty penny, so I was relieved that customs didn't charge me taxes on it when it crossed the border. I still need to put up the media section, but for now I'll have to leave you with just a picture of my cel with the corresponding image from the video.
Been extremely busy lately with finals and haven't had the chance to work on updates lately. I'll probably get the media section done after my last exam on Thurs.
Some good news though, I got my first animation cel. For those of you who don't know, cels are hand drawn and painted transparencies which are photographed and put on film to produce animation. Since thousands of cels are needed for the production of one animated film, many cels find their way onto the market. The point of owning a cel is that you actually get to hold an original piece of the artwork that went into making your favourite anime. Recently, animation has become computer based, eliminating the need for cels.
Fortunately, the Kenshin OVA was produced using cels. Unfortunately, they are quite rare and go for a very high price when they are sold. I managed to find one recently for a fair price. As my first cell, I didn't want to spend too much money since I don't know that much about cel collecting and didn't want to get ripped off.
Anyways, here it is:
Not the best cel ever, but I like it and I like the fact that I own a physical piece of the OVA now.
Now I just gotta find one of Kenshin.
It is with great pleasure that I announce hitokiri.net's affiliation with Destiny's Embrace. DE is one of my favorite RK sites, and has been around since 2001. It is a high quality site that is updated constantly and has an extensive gallery, so be sure to visit DE at http://www.twilighthush.com/sora/.
It's been a while since my last update. Things have been real busy now that I've started engineering. Anyways, I've been thinking of doing something original for the media section. There are already a lot of great RK sites with huge galleries, so I think that instead of putting up pictures, I will provide recommendations and reviews for movies, anime, games and manga that fans of the Kenshin OVA would enjoy. Sure, nothing beats the Kenshin OVA, but I think some new material for those obsessed with the Bakumatsu era or Samurai action would be nice. Hopefully I can get get the update done in the next few days.
Stay tuned.
After many hours of work, I managed to get the forums up and running. This forum is powered by Phorum, which I chose because of it's simplicity. I know that these forums won't be that heavily used or populated, so I wanted something streamlined that I could integrate into the site properly without looking too clunky. It took forever getting everything to look right, but I think it was time well spend since the results aren't bad at all. I'm planning on linking this to the home page via rss feeds or something so I can just update here from now on instead of editing html everytime I want to make an update.
August 25, 2008
Updated the figures section, and added lots of pics for the Amie-Grand resin statue, toycom PVC figure, the yamato figures, and others. Also added stuff to the OVA an Links pages. Forum and media will be coming soon.
August 24, 2008
Website is finally complete and online! Spent forever hunting down various pictures to use for the top navigation menu, but it I think it turned out all right, so it was worth it. The Tomoe and Kenshin profiles were taken from images of animation cells. For the background, I tried to re-create the scene where Kenshin is fighting Kiyosato and he slashes a wooden wall, leaving a large slash across it. I actuatally took an image of several pieces of wood and then arranged them properly, and applied several filters to get them looking right. Finding a good image of a katana was difficult. I wanted the hamon to be prominent, but most photographs of swords have too much reflection from the flash, so people use scanners to get good images. But scanners make the sword look kind of dull and dead. For the menu, I wanted the letters to look like an engraving on the actual sword, so I played around with photoshop a bit to get the desired effect.
