Kenshin Himura

Kenshin Himura, known as the legendary hitokiri of the Meiji Revolution, Himura Battōsai (緋村抜刀斎), is the main protagonist and titular character of the Rurouni Kenshin series. Kenshin has spent ten years traveling Izumo as a rurouni in search of redemption, carrying a sakabatō with the vow to never kill again. In early 1878, he arrives in Tokyo and takes up residence at the Kamiya dojo, where his vow is tested as he fights to keep the country's peace. The reason for being an ally of Tifa Lockhart and Christopher Thorndyke was to find and rescue Kamiya Kaoru from the clutches of the Galactic Eggman Empire.

Appearance
Of small, slender build and with a youthful, feminine visage, Himura Kenshin cuts quite a different figure than would be expected of the legendary Hitokiri Battōsai and his appearance belies his twenty-eight years of age, making him look roughly ten years younger, but he is easily recognized by his infamous distinguishing features: mid-back length red hair tied in a thick ponytail and a cross-shaped sword scar on his left cheek. Kenshin's hair is thick and abundant, with all of the shorter frontal hairs falling across his face as bangs rather than being in the ponytail at the nape of his neck. During the revolution, Kenshin wore his ponytail higher and at the end of the series, he has cut the ponytail entirely (presumably to prevent his son from pulling on it) and wears his hair evenly at about chin length. Kenshin's eyes, too, are unusual, being a deep violet. In the anime series, when Kenshin's eyes change to reflect his psychological reversion to Hitokiri Battōsai, their color shifts from violet to gold.

Kenshin's cross-shaped scar actually consists of two separate scars--a long one running diagonally down his face from just below the outer corner of his left eye to just above his chin and a slightly shorter scar running diagonally across it in the other direction from just to the left of the bridge of his nose to his left jawbone. In a redesign for the kanzenban, Kenshin's scar has been altered so that the lateral scar is longer, stretching across his nose to just below the inner corner of his right eye.

Kenshin dresses simply, wearing a plain men's kimono of cheap, worn cloth with a white umanori hakama, zori and white tabi. In the anime series, Kenshin's kimono is almost always a soft red like burgundy, but in the manga, he alternates between this, a bolder red, purple and deep blue. His sakabatō is worn under his obi at his left hip in a black, steel saya.