New Rurouni Kenshin TV Anime's Visual Reveals July Premiere

Fuji TV announced on Wednesday that the new television anime project based on Nobuhiro Watsuki's Rurouni Kenshin manga will premiere on Fuji TV's Noitamina programming block in July. The anime's staff unveiled a visual featuring the four main characters:

©和月伸宏／集英社・「るろうに剣心 －明治剣客浪漫譚－」製作委員会

Sōma Saitō stars in the series as Kenshin Himura, and Rie Takahashi costars as Kaoru Kamiya.

©和月伸宏／集英社・「るろうに剣心 －明治剣客浪漫譚－」製作委員会

Taku Yashiro will play Sanosuke Sagara.

©和月伸宏／集英社・「るろうに剣心 －明治剣客浪漫譚－」製作委員会

Makoto Koichi will voice Yahiko Myojin.

©和月伸宏／集英社・「るろうに剣心 －明治剣客浪漫譚－」製作委員会

The anime will re-adapt the main manga series.

Hideyo Yamamoto (Strike the Blood, Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka, Cells at Work! Code Black) is directing the anime at LIDEN FILMS. Terumi Nishii is designing the characters, and Hideyuki Kurata is in charge of series composition. Yū Takami is composing the music.

Watsuki and his novelist wife/story collaborator Kaoru Kurosaki launched the Rurouni Kenshin: Hokkaido Arc (Rurouni Kenshin, Meiji Kenkaku Romantan: Hokkaido-hen) manga in Shueisha's Jump SQ. magazine in September 2017. The manga went on hiatus in December 2017 following Watsuki being charged for possession of child pornography. The series later resumed publication in June 2018. Shueisha published the manga's eighth compiled volume on January 4.

Viz Media had been simultaneously publishing the manga in English, but stopped after the manga went on hiatus in 2017.

Watsuki first launched his 28-volume Rurouni Kenshin manga in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump magazine in 1994. The manga has more than 72 million copies in circulation worldwide. The manga centers around Kenshin Himura, once a deadly assassin during the Meiji Restoration, who is trying to find a new life beyond violence.

The manga has since been adapted into a 95-episode TV anime series, an anime film, three original video anime projects, five live-action films, and a stage musical by the all-female musical theater troupe Takarazuka Revue.

Source: Rurouni Kenshin anime's Twitter account, Fuji TV's livestream