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New Rurouni Kenshin Anime Confirms 2nd Season Adapting 'Kyoto Arc' Will Air in 2024

The Jump Festa '24 event on Sunday revealed that the new television anime project based on Nobuhiro Watsuki's Rurouni Kenshin manga will continue on into the "Kyoto Arc" starting in 2024. The anime will be titled Rurouni Kenshin Meiji Kenkaku Romantan: Kyoto Dōran (Kyoto Upheaval). The new season will again air on Fuji TV's Noitamina programming block.

The new anime aired its 24th and final episode on Friday.

The anime premiered on Fuji TV's Noitamina programming block and other venues on July 6. The anime ran for two consecutive cours (quarter of a year). The second cours began on October 5. Crunchyroll is streaming the series as it airs, and it is also streaming an English dub.

The anime re-adapts the main manga series.

Sōma Saitō stars in the series as Kenshin Himura, and Rie Takahashi costars as Kaoru Kamiya. Taku Yashiro plays Sanosuke Sagara, and Makoto Koichi voices Yahiko Myojin. Yūma Uchida voices Shinomori Aoshi, and Saori Ōnishi voices Megumi Takani. Satoshi Hino plays Hajime Saitō.

Hideyo Yamamoto (Strike the Blood, Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka, Cells at Work! Code Black) directed the anime at LIDEN FILMS. Terumi Nishii designed the characters, and Hideyuki Kurata was in charge of the series scripts. Yū Takami composed the music.

Watsuki and his novelist wife/story collaborator Kaoru Kurosaki launched the Rurouni Kenshin: Hokkaido Arc (Rurouni Kenshin, Meiji Kenkaku Romantan: Hokkaidō-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.

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: Jump Festa '24 livestream