When last we left our heroes/heroines, Enishi, the long-lost brother of Kenshin's first wife was stalking towards Kaoru, Kenshin's second/current love, with a murderous gleam in his eyes... in the aftermath, all that's left is a body, eyes glazed over in death... it is enough to send Kenshin over the edge of despair and the rest of the Kenshin-gumi into grief and mourning...

Say it isn't so... Kaoru dead? Perhaps Kenshin truly is doomed to a life of perdition. All I can say is, while the cliffhanger and it's elements are predictable, it is no less disturbing to continue to see Kenshin in his fugue despite the efforts of all concerned (save for the anti-social Saitoh, of course).

Aoshi and Misao show up, too late to stop the events at the Kamiya dojo, of course, but not too late to investigate the circumstances surrounding Kaoru's murder, a task Misao and Yahiko take to with a passion and Aoshi takes with quiet deliberation.

The art is just as crisp as it has been over nearly the entire run (allowances made for the series' introductory style developing into it's permanent form).

The few drawbacks of this volume tend to be in plot and flow, as new characters are introduced rather haphazardly and old characters tend to regress to their former patterns of behavior without any real insight into their psyche... just a matter of convenience, I suppose, so the reader doesn't get bogged down by introspective flashbacks and whatnot that such delving would entail... and we do get a little, such as in Enishi's case, but the volume as a whole is just a long bridge between the important event early in the book and the TRUE fallout from it to come in the next volumes.