Following its massive opening in Japan last week where it grossed fifty percent higher than “Kyoto Inferno,” Warner Bros. Pictures' “Rurouni Kenshin: The Legend Ends” arrives in Philippine cinemas this Wednesday, Sept 24 – fulfilling a promise to loyal fans of back-to-back bows of the twin sequels.

“Rurouni Kenshin: The Legend Ends” is the final chapter to director Keishi Otomo's blockbuster trilogy.

To stop Makoto Shishio (Tatsuya Fujiwara) who aims to conquer Japan, Kenshin Himura (Takeru Satoh) arrives in Kyoto and tries to face off against Shishio’s troops. However, his enemy has begun its course to start invading Tokyo with the steel-reinforced battleship. To save captured Kaoru (Emi Takei) who is thrown into the sea by Shishio’s men, Kenshin also dives in after her, but is washed ashore alone, unconscious.

Kenshin recovers with the help of Seijuro Hiko (Masaharu Fukuyama), the master of Kenshin who happens to find him on the shore. He realizes he is no match for Shishio unless he learns the ultimate technique of his sword style, and begs the master to teach him.

In the meantime, Shishio finds that Kenshin is still alive, and puts pressure on the government to find Kenshin and execute him in public for his sins during his days as the “Battosai the Killer”. As Kenshin faces his biggest challenge, can Kenshin really defeat his fiercest enemy Shishio, and be reunited with Kaoru?!

Directed by Keishi Otomo, “Rurouni Kenshin: The Legend Ends” stars Takeru Sato (Kenshin Himura), Emi Takei (Kaoru Kamiya), Munetaka Aoki (Sanosuke Sagara), Masaharu Fukuyama (Seijuro Hiko), Kaito Oyagi (Yahiko Myojin), Yu Aoi (Megumi Takani), Yosuke Eguchi (Hajime Saito), Min Tanaka (Nenji Kashiwazaki), Tao Tsuchiya (Misao Makimachi), Ryunosuke Kamiki (Soujiro Seta), Maryjun Takahashi (Yumi Komagata) and Tatsuya Fujiwara (Makoto Shishio).

The “Rurouni Kenshin” movie trilogy was based on the Kyoto arc of `Rurouni Kenshin,' the popular manga series written & illustrated by Nobuhiro Watsuki.

Besides Kenshin the Wanderer: the Romance of a Meiji Swordsman, Nobuhiro's manga hits also include Gun Blaze Westand Busou Renkin. His Embalming is being serialized in Jump Square magazine.

Of the manga's adaptation into feature films, Nobuhiro says, “Because there was too much in Kyoto Inferno to fit into one movie, I was ready for huge cuts and big changes, so I’d made up my mind right from the start, from the first movie, to respect the opinion of director Otomo. But the script has got everything into it very nicely. Mr Satoh has settled back into the role, and brings out that calm and gentle side of Kenshin even more. The action has jumped right over the first movie, and they’ve made it really amazing. Because Shishio’s face is covered in bandages, I thought it would require an actor who could bring a very strong emotion to his performance. I met Mr Fujiwara just before filming started, and he’d already gotten into the role so he was kind of frightening, and I went ‘He’s the guy!’ Mr Iseya’s perfect for his role, too, and he’s great in it. ‘Purgatory’ had to really jump out at you in this film, but in the original manga there was nothing for them to draw on. Unfortunately it was just an exit point with no real action. I’m really happy they adapted it. But the movie is very close to the original, so I hope that audiences will feel very close to it.”

“Rurouni Kenshin: The Legend Ends” is distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

A young, fencing mistress devoted to a reformed assassin. A beautiful healer making amends for her past. And a former courtesan madly in love with a psychopath. Meet Kaoru, Megumi and Yumi, the strong women characters who make their mark in Warner Bros.' “Rurouni Kenshin: The Legend Ends,” the final chapter to director Keishi Otomo's blockbuster “Rurouni Kenshin” trilogy.

Popular Japanese actress Emi Takei plays Kaoru Kamiya. As the young fencing mistress of the Kamiya Dojo, which she inherited from her father, she teaches the sword as ‘a way of life, rather than of death’. She is strong-willed but also capable of great consideration for others. She refuses to ask about hero Kenshin Himura’s past; ‘Everyone has things they don’t want to talk about,’ she says, but she is terrified that Kenshin will return to his old ways, and wants him to keep his vow.

“Director Keishi Otomo asked me this time to play a Kaoru who has matured a little,” explains Takei. “And this time, Kaoru fights, too! Not with a wooden sword, but with a halberd. They let me do some real stunts, so it was a lot of fun. People love the character of Kaoru, so I’ve tried to play her as someone who deserves that. On these shoots, you have to be living in the world of the film, and the director gives hints, but he never tells me exactly what the answer to any questions that arise might be. You have to find it in yourself and express that. I’m really honored to be in a film like that.”

Multi-awarded actress Ya Aoi portrays Megumi Takani. A brave, determined, and also beautiful physician, the descendant of a long line of doctors whose family was wiped out in the wars accompanying the end of the Shogunate. She began making opium to keep herself alive, but reformed after Kenshin Himura saved her life, and now dedicates herself to the service of those in need. She is enraged when the new government puts pressure on Kenshin to help them by threatening to reopen her past in the opium trade. Her habitual sarcasm masks a warm heart, and she encourages Kaoru to follow Kenshin to Kyoto by suggesting that she will regret not going. When Sanosuke is setting out as well, she gives him a healing salve, the secret of which is known only to her family.

Filipino-Japanese star Maryjun Takahashi appears as Yumi Komagata. A bewitchingly beautiful woman, deeply in love with Shishio, and always by his side. Originally a courtesan in Edo’s Yoshiwara pleasure quarter, she took great pride in her work there, but when the new government, under Western influence, declared the sale of women to be barbaric, she was forced to leave. Declaring the new government to be comprised of sub-human animals, she joined Shishio in his hatred of it. As one of his inner circle she benefits greatly from his care, but in her heart she regrets that she cannot be of more use to him in his battle.

Based on the Kyoto arc of the popular manga series written & illustrated by Nobuhiro Watsuki, the “Rurouni Kenshin” sequels follow the story of Kenshin Himura (Takeru Satoh), a legendary swordsman in the wars accompanying the turbulent fall of Japan's Shogunate in the 19th century. Once feared as 'Battosai the Killer', he has adopted a peaceful life since the arrival of the 'new age'.

But Makoto Shishio (Tatsuya Fujiwara), the 'Shadow Killer' and successor to Kenshin's position as the deadly assassin, has since then been scheming in the Kyoto underworld, raising an army of disaffected former samurais with the aim of overthrowing the new regime.

“Rurouni Kenshin: The Legend Ends” stars Takeru Sato (Kenshin Himura), Emi Takei (Kaoru Kamiya), Munetaka Aoki (Sanosuke Sagara), Kaito Oyagi (Yahiko Myojin), Yu Aoi (Megumi Takani), Yosuke Eguchi (Hajime Saito), Min Tanaka (Nenji Kashiwazaki), Tao Tsuchiya (Misao Makimachi), Ryunosuke Kamiki (Soujiro Seta), Maryjun Takahashi (Yumi Komagata) and Tatsuya Fujiwara (Shishio).

Opening across the Philippines on Sept. 24, 2014, “Rurouni Kenshin: The Legend Ends” is distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

MANILA, August 22, 2014 – Kenshin Himura is washed ashore and found by a mysterious man holding a sword in the teaser poster of Warner Bros. Pictures' “Rurouni Kenshin: The Legend Ends,” the final chapter to director Keishi Otomo's blockbuster trilogy, “Rurouni Kenshin.”

The second installment, “Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Inferno” is now playing to capacity crowds in Philippine theaters, and is trending to open at No.1 for the weekend box office.

Asked if “The Legend Ends” will be the same as “Kyoto Inferno,” director Keishi Otomo replies, “The theme of Kenshin’s atonement for the many people he’s killed does not change. A man who lives in atonement, and a man who does not, must inevitably do battle. But I want Kenshin to be falling apart. Kenshin doesn’t face Shishio as a straight-down-the-line champion of justice. He gets confused; his certainties are shaken.”

Based on the Kyoto arc of the popular manga series written & illustrated by Nobuhiro Watsuki, the “Rurouni Kenshin” sequels follow the story of Kenshin Himura (Takeru Satoh), a legendary swordsman in the wars accompanying the turbulent fall of Japan's Shogunate in the 19th century. Once feared as 'Battosai the Killer', he has adopted a peaceful life since the arrival of the 'new age'.

But Makoto Shishio (Tatsuya Fujiwara), the 'Shadow Killer' and successor to Kenshin's position as the deadly assassin, has since then been scheming in the Kyoto underworld, raising an army of disaffected former samurais with the aim of overthrowing the new regime.

“Rurouni Kenshin: The Legend Ends” also stars Emi Takei (Kaoru Kamiya), Munetaka Aoki (Sanosuke Sagara), Kaito Oyagi (Yahiko Myojin), Yu Aoi (Megumi Takani), Yosuke Eguchi (Hajime Saito), Min Tanaka (Nenji Kashiwazaki), Tao Tsuchiya (Misao Makimachi), Ryunosuke Kamiki (Soujiro Seta) and Maryjun Takahashi (Yumi Komagata).

Opening across the Philippines on Sept. 24, 2014, “Rurouni Kenshin: The Legend Ends” is distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

Before finding fame and success with the “Rurouni Kenshin” film franchise, recent Manila-visitor director Keishi Otomo paid his dues studying scriptwriting and directing in Los Angeles. On his return to Japan, he directed a series of NHK TV programs from 2001 to 2010, receiving multiple awards for some of them – including an International Drama Festival in Tokyo Award for Best Drama, the Nikkei Hitmaker of the Year prize, and a Director’s Award from the Hoso Bunka Foundation.

Leaving NHK in 2011, he established himself as an independent director with the 2012 smash hit “Rurouni Kenshin” following this with “Platinum Data” in 2013. Also last year, NHK Publishing released his book “How to Fight Creatively.”

Now, Otomo-san returns to continue and conclude the “Rurouni Kenshin” saga with its two-part sequels,” Kyoto Inferno” and “ The Legend Ends.” Find out what the director’s thoughts about the sequels in the following interview.

Question: While “Rurouni Kenshin” is an action movie, it also appeals as a human drama. Is this intentional?

Keishi Otomo: A script is kind of like a mathematical formula. Into this world of mathematical logic are placed actors —the kind of actors I like, anyway—who won’t be persuaded, unless it has a sense of body, unless there’s some skin in the game. That’s because we want to transform what was a very successful original manga story. Things that don’t happen on the page—people sweat, they sweat when they move, they get out of breath, their hair gets all messed up—what happens as a result of that? How do we get that kind of atmosphere into the movies? We give it shape, not by imagining the characters in our heads, but by understanding the characters as they do battle. What we’re trying to do is make a movie out of flesh and blood. The most important thing is that all of the characters express themselves through the battles they find themselves in.

Q: The story doesn’t seem episodic, everything seems to surge on that great stage of the Kyoto fire.

Otomo: After the first movie, we knew we could go ‘this far’, and it was very much in our minds at the script-writing stage for these films that the action and the drama would emerge with the same intensity. And that’s hard to do. When you’re shooting action, you’re basically shooting motion. When you’re shooting drama, you’re basically shooting emotion. But in motion there is emotion. You have to find it, and join motion and emotion into one, and film it with the sense of the feeling and the expression uppermost in mind. That’s a pretty high hurdle to get over. With the first movie, our motto was ‘do the impossible’; this time it was ‘overdo the impossible’ (Laughs). Anyway, I want to see the real thing. OK, so what is the real thing? It means that everything on the screen is great, and you push that as far as it will go. Everybody, the entire cast and staff, kept that feeling all the way through. That energy, I think, is what really surges.

Q: And Takeru Satoh really pulls everything together.

Otomo: There are roles that mark a turning point in an actor’s career. The encounter of Takeru Satoh and Kenshin was an encounter of very rare timing. A miracle among miracles, I think. He’d played an assassin in Ryomaden, and the extension of that line intersected with my going independent. For Takeru, it was a once-in-a-lifetime role. A lot of things had to be perfectly timed for that to happen. I think that’s always very important in things like stories or movies. And strangely, that background always comes out somehow in the picture. Takeru Satoh is of a generation that doesn’t really know period-piece movies. As a guy like him plays Kenshin, through the Kenshin he portrays, you can find young people’s aesthetic idea of what is a ‘cool guy’. And by doing that, ‘cool’ as they define it combines with our generation’s definition of the samurai as ‘cool’. That dynamism, that interest, creates an approach to universality whose potential you can really feel.

Q: So will “The Legend Ends” surge the same as “Kyoto Inferno”?

Otomo: No, we’ve made that one a little different. I think it has to be different from both the first film and “Kyoto Inferno.” “The Legend Ends” starts quietly. Things happen that are off the main axis. The situation evolves with Kenshin not there. How will Kenshin return to do battle with Shishio? Perhaps he has another card up his sleeve. But the theme of Kenshin’s atonement for the many people he’s killed does not change. A man who lives in atonement, and a man who does not, must inevitably do battle. That fateful battle—somewhere there are people waiting expectantly for Kenshin and Shishio to climb into the ring together—that ‘cannibalism’ is the structure I’m thinking of. Maybe someone is using some kind of dynamic to make the two of them fight. To that end I want to inject a little bit of ‘poison’. I want Kenshin to be falling apart. All the fighters get hurt and fall to pieces. I want that to be merciless. Why are these guys fighting? If that question doesn’t rise up within us, the theme of the killer’s atonement doesn’t emerge. People tend to think that ‘entertainment’ means stripping away the fat and the complications, but I don’t think that’s true. I don’t want to fix on turning points in the story; I want to fix on turning points in the lives of the characters. Kenshin doesn’t face Shishio as a straight-down-the-line champion of justice. He gets confused; his certainties are shaken. When you’ve finished watching “The Legend Ends,” what’s left? Something heavy, I hope.

The first sequel, “Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Inferno” will open across the Philippines on Aug. 20, 2014, to be followed by “Rurouni Kenshin: The Legend Ends” on Sept. 24, 2014. Both films are distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures.

A powerhouse cast of famous Japanese actors is assembled by director Keishi Otomo for the epic action thriller “Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Inferno,” the first of two sequels to the 2013 blockbuster “Rurouni Kenshin.”

Appearing for the first time opposite the hero Kenshin Himura (Takeru Satoh) as the crazed Makoto Shishio is the popular character actor Tatsuya Fujiwara. Performing in hot, heavy, stifling bandages that even make it hard for him to hear, he becomes the personification of pure evil. And Fijiwara gives justice to the role with a powerfu, terrifying performance.

Originally a Choshu clan samurai known as ‘the shadow assassin’, Shishio fought alongside Kenshin against the Shogun’s Shinsengumi police. Viewed as Kenshin’s successor, he was known to few people. He and Kenshin never met.

Fighting, as was Kenshin, at the battle of Toba-Fushimi that sealed the overthrow of the Shogunate, Shishio was then betrayed by his own side and his body set on fire, the new government wishing to conceal certain assassinations he had committed. Miraculously, however, he survived, and has assembled a private army of mercenaries from within the Kyoto underworld with a view to overthrowing the new government and ruling the land himself. The burns he suffered destroyed his ability to perspire, and his body radiates a tremendous heat. He lives by the law of the jungle, and in his vast ambition he will stop at nothing to achieve his ends.

“This was the first time I’d worked with Director Otomo, and Shishio was a special kind of character so I had some worries, but both the director and Satoh were very welcoming,” Tatsuya Fujiwara says. “Shishio is a character the filmmakers built up with visuals and everything else over a long time. The action team also worked hard with me, so I felt really under pressure to respond to that. The director and Satoh and I talked about how to embellish the last battle between Shishio and Kenshin in great detail until we all agreed on how it would happen. And even though a lot of that was hard to put into words, it came together when we filmed it, and I think everyone was happy with the results. It’s a big thing for me that I’ve been involved with a truly world-class level movie, one that only comes along every decade or so.”

Born May 15, 1982 in Saitama Prefecture, Tatsuya Fujiwara made his stage debut in London, England in director Yukio Ninagawa’s 1997 production of “Shintoku-Maru,” and much of his career has been spent on the stage. With Battle Royale he shared a Best Newcomer Award of the Japanese Academy and won a Best New Actor Blue Ribbon Award, and was widely praised for his portrayal of Soji Okita in the 2004 NHK Sunday night historical drama series “Shinsengumi!” A powerful performance in director Takashi Miike’s 2013 Cannes International Film Festival Entry “Shield of Straw” established him in the top ranks of Japan’s younger character actors. In October of 2014 he will appear in a stage production of “Julius Caesar.”

Other film roles include the two “Death Note” films (06), the “Kaiji: Ultimate Gambler” series (09, 11), “Parade,” “The Incite Mill” (both 10), “I’m Flash!” (12), “The Chart of Love,” “One Third,” and “Monsterz” (all 2014).

Based on the Kyoto arc of the popular manga series written & illustrated by Nobuhiro Watsuki, the “Rurouni Kenshin” sequels follow the story of Kenshin Himura (Takeru Satoh), a legendary swordsman in the wars accompanying the turbulent fall of Japan's Shogunate in the 19th century. Once feared as 'Battosai the Killer', he has adopted a peaceful life since the arrival of the 'new age'.

But Makoto Shishio (Tatsuya Fujiwara), the 'Shadow Killer' and successor to Kenshin's position as the deadly assassin, has since then been scheming in the Kyoto underworld, raising an army of disaffected former samurais with the aim of overthrowing the new regime.

Agreeing to a request by the new government to defeat Shishio, Kenshin leaves his beloved ones in Tokyo and sets out for Kyoto. He and Shishio are a match in skill and in wits, but their aims are opposite. Can Kenshin preserve the nation without breaking his vow that he will kill no more...?

The films also star Emi Takei (Kaoru Kamiya), Munetaka Aoki (Sanosuke Sagara), Kaito Oyagi (Yahiko Myojin), Yu Aoi (Megumi Takani), Yosuke Eguchi (Hajime Saito), Min Tanaka (Nenji Kashiwazaki), Tao Tsuchiya (Misao Makimachi), Ryunosuke Kamiki (Soujiro Seta), Maryjun Takahashi (Yumi Komagata) and Tatsuya Fujiwara (Makoto Shishio).

The first sequel, “Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Inferno” will open across the Philippines on Aug. 20, 2014, to be followed by “Rurouni Kenshin: The Legend Ends” on Sept. 24, 2014. Both films are distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures.