Monday, January 29, 2007

Kenji

In Calger's inimitable Clearing Skies, Sanosuke returns to Tokyo after 17 years and finds Kenshin and Kaoru are gone... to Kyoto to care for a dying Hiko. Left behind on "house arrest" is their angry 15-year-old son, Kenji.

True in this story, Kenji is kind of a spoiled little prick. But despite that, I feel badly for him. He feels that he should have had the Sakabatou by rights since he is Kenshin's son. He doesn't understand that a sword like the Sakabatou and a style like HMR are passed on to those deemed worthy, not through bloodlines.

I think it's rather unfair that Kenshin and Kaoru are treating Kenji like a child even though he's 15. After all, at 15, they treated Yahiko like an adult. But Kenji's grounded to home even though he's past his gepunku.

Honestly, if Kenji dislikes Kamiya Kasshin and wants to persue HMR, that's his right. True it's Kenshin and Hiko's right to refuse to teach him, but if Kenji can find his own way to learn it, no one should be able to reprimand him for that.

Kenji undoubtedly has the ability to be a great swordsman and surpass his father. But what's scary is that with HMR, he could become something much worse than Hitokiri Battousai. What we have here is a young man with skill and power that surpass Battousai's and megalomania that surpasses Shishio's; a dangerous combination.

Personally, I'm going to go with Watsuki's idea and have Kenji indeed pick up at least most of HMR just by hearing about it and visualizing it. This in turn, makes Kenji into kind of an arrogant little prick.

Then I think I'll have him fuck up on his genpuku test and not get the Sakabatou. This will make him sulky and with that, at age 15, he'll split for parts unknown.

I'll say no more because I'm still hashing out the details. I can never seem to get my second arc to work properly. I want it to be believable, but I just don't know how to turn Kenji from the loving little boy I made him into this twisted, psychotic swordsman Watsuki envisioned.

What I need is something to bridge the gap from sweet child to angsty adolescent to evil adult. Hopefully if I wrack my brain, I can come up with something halfway decent.

Of course, I can't hope to touch Calger's level as an author. But that's another matter altogether.

Since I can't draw worth a damn, I took a picture of Kenshin as Battousai and recolored it as Kenji. This one best fits how I visualize him as a teenager.

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