If you've read any of the other stuff on this site, you can tell I'm opinionated. Nor do I strive for a professional tone in my writings. You expected that on a site titled "Raccoon Girl"? But I thought I'd try to clear a few things up, because honestly, I don't despise the entire cast or anything.

Kenshin: Kenshin is wonderful. Kenshin is sexy. Kenshin can cook and do laundry and he is wonderful with children. I was married to Kenshin for a while. No one really believed me, so maybe it didn't count, but you get the basic idea, I think. No complaints about Kenshin, though I wish he'd talk about his positive feelings a little more. Or just let his hair loose and take his shirt off more often. Why, if I love Kenshin so much, is his paragraph so short?

Sano: Mmmmm, Sano. I wasn't married to Sano, but I thought about it. He's cool and funny and what with being perpetually broke and spending most of his time drinking and cussing, he's a fairly realistic 19-year-old guy, if you ask me. I suppose they don't all get in as many fistfights as he does. Nor do most of them crack me up like he does. "She's an asshole, but she's a good doctor." Heh. Sorry. Also, I like his song, "Ippatsu Yaro."

Yahiko: Y'know, I really like Yahiko as a character - he makes me laugh, especially when he starts gnawing on Sano's head or being cute with Tsubame. But I hate his fighting skills. He's WAY, WAY too overpowered for his age. Kaoru and Misao have both been training in their respective disciplines for years and years. Yahiko has a couple of month's training under his belt and suddenly he's better than the two of them put together? I hate shonen series. I want to see the girls fight, damn it! Besides the injustice, he is TEN YEARS OLD. Or 11, I don't remember when his birthday falls. But puberty is not even in full swing for him. He's a little kid. Little kids are not that strong - you get stronger as you get older. Really. Seriously. Did Watsuki-sensei flunk biology? Rrrrrg. This comes out most strongly in the summaries, when I have to go through "Yahiko fights SOME MORE while Kaoru stands around looking concerned"... Someone else might look at this situation and decide that Kaoru is a wimp, but I conclude that Kaoru is an innocent victim of a ridiculous, boy-centered plot and she is actually far tougher than Yahiko, she's just being stifled by the evil forces of editing. Yahiko's the reason I made this page, though - when I summarize, I make it sound as though I hate him, but really I don't. I just want him to stop kicking so much rear, because he shouldn't be able to.

Megumi: Oogh. I've been called on this before. Here goes. First of all, Megumi gets props for being a doctor. I like competent women. And I don't hate Megumi because of her flirting with Kenshin - it's all in fun, she knows her crush on him is one-sided, and she's mostly doing it because she thinks Kaoru's reaction is funny. She's sometimes bitchy, which annoyed me, but it wasn't the end of the world. She redeemed herself greatly with the Kyoto Arc; I felt bad for her, and she got Kaoru up and moving. What's to complain about? And afterwards, she remained cool, bickering with Sano and generally entertaining me. Then Kenshin explains about his past, and the three girls (Kaoru, Megumi, and Tsubame) are talking about it later on. "You're no replacement for Tomoe," Megumi says. Grrrrr! That was way out of line under ANY circumstances. That settled it; I hated Megumi. I'm not going to completely recant my feelings, but I WILL include an update; that line was from the translations at End of Summer. Maigo-chan's translations have an entirely different tone; Megumi says that Kaoru's "not a replacement" for Tomoe (and, ah... the preceding conversation makes more sense...) so it sounds more like Megumi's saying "Your situation isn't the same as Tomoe's." I don't know which is more accurate; whether Maigo-chan was trying to soften the blow or the translator at End of Summer simply didn't think about the way Megumi's line sounded. But either way, it made me reconsider slightly.

Aoshi: I always forget Aoshi. That says plenty right there. He is very sexy, and wears a trenchcoat well, and that Kodachi-nittou-ryu thing was nifty. But beyond eye candy, he makes no impression on me. This is weird, because when I do remember his existence, I think he rocks - especially in the later parts, when he's investigating the Kaoru incident and it's sort of for Misao's sake. But it's sort of an intellectual recognition of his coolness, not a "Wai wai, Aoshi-sama!" gut reaction.

Saitoh: Saitoh kicks butt and takes names. He kills with such style and lack of passion - he's like the Battousai without all the "I have no emotions but I hate myself" angst. The coolest moment of the entire RK movie was when Saitoh appeared and Aku-soku-zan'ed an annoying villain. He is also, in a creepy way, occasionally attractive.

Misao: I love Misao. She's cute, she's funny, she has the coolest-looking weapons in the whole series, funny attack names, and "Ice Blue Eyes" is a good song. She does a great impersonation of Kenshin, she cries rivers in really amusing ways, and she gets some of the greatest lines - "Makimachi Misao does not give out her name to villains!" Misao is wonderful. Why did I not make a Misao shrine, then, you ask? Ummm... 'cause? I felt Kaoru was under-shrined (at the time, there weren't any), and I knew more about her.

Enishi: Enishi is hot. I'm sorry, I know I'm shallow, but I can't help myself. He is. He's also one spooky boy, obsessing over Tomoe to an unhealthy degree (of course I think any degree of Tomoe obsession is unhealthy, but that can wait.) And he's had a hard life, so I guess the spookiness is understandable. In the end he redeems himself - so what if he's murdered lots of people in cold blood? He saved Kaoru's and Kenshin's lives! No, really, the series apparently wants us to think that too.

Tomoe: Yeah yeah, I know you all think I don't like her because I see her as Kaoru's competition for Kenshin. That's not it. I have no patience whatsoever for emotionally stifled characters. Emotions express themselves. As someone who's shy and has difficulty expressing emotions most of the time, I find it that much harder to believe her lack of REACTION. She might not be able to tell Kenshin she's falling in love with him, or to articulate her anger and sense of loss, but I can't believe that any human being, no matter how drunk, would be able to face the killer of the man she loved without so much as a change in expression. This alone caused her not to ring true to me as a character. It's not that I dislike her; she just strikes me as bland. Much like the Battousai himself. Grim, angsty stories, like the Tsukioku Arc, rarely engage me. I would like to repeat that I DON'T HATE HER, I just don't care.