The story of Rurouni Kenshin takes place during the early Meiji era in Japan. It tells the story of a peaceful wanderer named Himura Kenshin, formerly known as the assassin "Hitokiri Battōsai". After participating during the Bakumatsu war, Kenshin wanders the countryside of Japan offering protection and aid to those in need as atonement for the murders he once committed as an assassin. When arriving in Tokyo in the 11th year of Meiji (1878), he meets a young woman named Kamiya Kaoru, who was in the middle of a fight with a murderer who claims to be the Hitokiri Battōsai from her swordmanship school. Kenshin decides to help her and defeats the fake Battōsai. After discovering that Kenshin is the real Battōsai, she offers him a place stay at her dojo as she notes Kenshin is a gentle person instead. Kenshin accepts and begins to establish lifelong relationships with many people such as Sagara Sanosuke, a former Sekihō Army member; Myōjin Yahiko, an orphan from a samurai family; and a doctor named Takani Megumi. However, he also deals with his fair share of enemies, new and old, including his rival from the Bakumatsu Saitō Hajime and the former leader from the Oniwabanshū, Shinomori Aoshi.
After several months of living in the dojo, Kenshin discovers that his successor as assassin of the shadows, Shishio Makoto, plans to conquer Japan by destroying the Meiji Government, starting with Kyoto. Feeling that his friends may be attacked by Shishio's faction, Kenshin goes to meet Shishio alone in order to defeat him. However, many of his friends, including a young Oniwabanshū named Makimachi Misao, decide to help him in his fight. He decides to accept their help and defeats Shishio in a fight, who dies in the process due to the rise in body temperature caused by his burns. The anime adapts the manga until this part, later featuring new story arcs which were not featured in the manga.
When Kenshin and his friends return to Tokyo, Kenshin finds Yukishiro Enishi, who plans to take revenge by killing his friends. At this point it is revealed that, during the Bakumatsu, Kenshin used to be married to a woman called Yukishiro Tomoe, who initially wanted to avenge the death of her fiancé, whom Kenshin had killed, but instead both fell in love and got married. When it was discovered that Tomoe was part of a group of assassins that wanted to kill Kenshin, Kenshin blindly swings his sword, killing both his assailant and Tomoe, who jumps in at the last minute to save Kenshin from a fatal attack. Wanting to take revenge for the death of his sister, Enishi kidnaps Kaoru and leaves behind a tortured figure bearing a stunning resemblance of the girl for Kenshin to find and momentarily grieve over. Once discovering that Kaoru is alive, Kenshin and his friends set to rescue her. A battle between Kenshin and Enishi follows and when Kenshin wins, he and Kaoru return home. Five years later, Kenshin has found true peace; he is married to Kaoru and has a son named Himura Kenji.
Local television showed a building in flames in Concepcion, one of Chile’s largest cities with around 670,000 inhabitants. Some residents looted pharmacies and a collapsed grains silo, hauling off bags of wheat, television images showed.
SANTIAGO - A huge magnitude-8.8 earthquake struck Chile early on Saturday, killing at least 122 people, knocking down homes and hospitals, and triggering a tsunami that rolled menacingly across the Pacific.
TV Chile reported that a 15-storey building collapsed in the hardest-hit city of Concepcion, where buildings caught fire, major highway bridges collapsed and cracks opened up in the streets. Cars turned upside down lay scattered across one damaged bridge.
Residents huddled in streets full of rubble of masonry and glass from destroyed homes. Many were terrified by powerful aftershocks and desperately trying to call friends and family.
Chilean President-elect Sebastian Pinera said 122 people had been killed and the death toll could climb higher.
Tsunami warnings were posted around the Pacific, including the U.S. state of Hawaii, Japan and Russia.
Telephone and power lines were down in much of central Chile, making it difficult to assess the full extent of the damage close to the epicenter.
Chile is the world’s No. 1 copper producer, and the quake halted operations at two major mines.
"Never in my life have I experienced a quake like this, it’s like the end of the world," one man told local television from the city of Temuco, where the quake damaged homes and forced staff to evacuate the regional hospital.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake struck 70 miles (115 km) northeast of Concepcion at a depth of 22 miles (35 km) at 3:34 a.m. (0634 GMT).
The capital Santiago, about 200 miles (320 km) north of the epicenter, was also badly hit. The international airport was closed for at least 24 hours as the quake destroyed passenger walkways and shook glass out of doors and windows.
Chile’s Codelco, the world’s largest copper producer, suspended operations at its El Teniente and Andina mines, but reported no major damage and said it expected the mines to be up and running in the "coming hours."
Production was halted at the Los Bronces and El Soldado copper mines, owned by Anglo American Plc, but Chile’s biggest copper mine, Escondida, was operating normally.
Chile produces about 34 percent of world supply of copper, which is used in electronics, cars and refrigerators.
TSUNAMI
President Michelle Bachelet said a huge wave hit the Juan Fernandez islands. Radio stations reported serious damage on the archipelago, where Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk was marooned in the 18th Century inspiring the novel Robinson Crusoe.
Bachelet, who flew over the worst-affected area, said residents were also being evacuated from coastal areas of Chile’s remote Easter Island, a popular tourist destination in the Pacific famous for its towering Moai stone statues.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a Pacific-wide tsunami warning for countries in Latin America, and as far away as the U.S. state of Hawaii as well as Japan, Russia, Philippines, Indonesia and the South Pacific. French Polynesia was also put on alert.
"Chile probably got the brunt force of the tsunami already. So probably the worst has already happened in Chile," said Victor Sardina, geophysicist at the warning center.
"The tsunami was pretty big too. We reported some places around 8 feet. And it’s quite possible it would be higher in other areas," he added.
An earthquake of magnitude 8 or over can cause "tremendous damage," the USGS says. The Jan. 12 quake that devastated Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince was measured as magnitude 7.0.
Bachelet urged people to stay calm and to remain at home to avoid road accidents. "With a quake of this size we undoubtedly can’t rule out more deaths and probably injuries," she said.
FLAMES, LOOTING
Local television showed a building in flames in Concepcion, one of Chile’s largest cities with around 670,000 inhabitants. Some residents looted pharmacies and a collapsed grains silo, hauling off bags of wheat, television images showed.
Broken glass and chunks of concrete and brick were strewn across roads and several strong aftershocks rattled jittery residents in the hours after the initial quake.
In the moments after the quake, people streamed onto the streets of the Chilean capital hugging each other and crying.
"My house is completely destroyed, everything fell over ... it has been totally destroyed. Me and wife huddled in a corner and after hours they rescued us," said one elderly man in central Santiago.
There were blackouts in parts of Santiago. Emergency officials said buildings in the historic quarters of two southern cities had been badly damaged and local radio said three hospitals had partially collapsed.
In 1960, Chile was hit by the world’s biggest earthquake since records dating back to 1900. The 9.5 magnitude quake devastated the south-central city of Valdivia, killing 1,655 people and sending a tsunami which battered Easter Island 2,300 miles (3,700 km) off Chile’s Pacific seaboard and continued as far as Hawaii, Japan and the Philippines.
Saturday’s quake shook buildings as far away as Argentina’s Andean provinces of Mendoza and San Juan. A series of strong aftershocks rocked Chile’s coastal region from Valdivia in the south to Valparaiso, about 500 miles (800 km) to the north.
The United Nations and the White House said they were closely monitoring the situation in Chile and the potential threat of tsunamis in the Pacific.
A State Department official said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was being kept apprised of the situation in Chile, which she is due to visit on Tuesday on a Latin American tour.
Earlier this week, "Twilight" star Kristen Stewart was on jury duty, and now details about the case she sat on are emerging. Stewart was reportedly a member of a Los Angeles County jury that was deciding the fate of a man accused of trying to solicit a prostitute.
Stewart sat on a three-day trial; the defendant was found not guilty of trying to pay an undercover police officer for sex. The man pleaded not guilty, with his defense attorney arguing that since he does not speak English very well, he didn't understand the situation he was in with the undercover cop and was therefore innocent.
TMZ further reported that when the trial was over, Stewart asked to keep her juror badge and was allowed to. However, a security guard who posed for a photo with the actress at the courthouse earlier this week may be in hot water for snapping a shot of Stewart.
The security guard reportedly asked to take a photo with Stewart, who did so. The photo was then posted online by the guard's friend's wife before it was quickly picked up by various media outlets and made public. Now it seems that the people involved may have violated some rules and may lose their jobs for taking a picture with the actress.
"Cancelled because unfortunately the photo that went up from Kristen in court was stolen and put on several blogs and got to the media and reached the ears of the court," the wife wrote online. "Right now my husband and the security guard are in trouble for it having gone up and second because it is confidential when celebrities are in court. Now I feel bad. ... I am really scared, because I think it is possible that they could lose their jobs."
Kristen Stewart has called her turn as a teen runaway-turned-stripper and prostitute in "Welcome to the Rileys" the most personal performance of her career. According to director Jake Scott, audiences will see an entirely new side of the "Twilight" superstar in the indie flick.
"It's an emotionally naked performance," Scott told MTV News at the Sundance Film Festival. "She really exposed herself in that way."
One way in which she didn't expose herself was in the flesh. While Stewart does show off some skin onscreen, she never appears fully in the nude, nor do any of the scenes play as sexy. Instead they're dark, often sad portraits of a young girl forced into compromising situations and the pitiful men who prey on her vulnerability. Highlighting these story elements, rather than salacious ones, was something Scott set out to accomplish.
"I don't think the film's about a stripper," he said. "I think the film's about a damaged child who happens to be a stripper. I actually de-emphasized that part of it. It's too easy to get caught up and seduced by the idea of the stripper."
Scott and Stewart did do some research in New Orleans. They visited strip clubs and talked to the dancers, learning their stories as a way to present an accurate portrait of a teen in crisis. "Some of them were more reliable than others," he said. "Kristen actually ended up working with a girl who was a very good, useful guide for her. She went and danced in the strip club. She learned the ropes.
"She went for it," Scott added. "She got dirty. I think she was dying to do something like this. I think it comes across, to really investigate something outside of her life realm."
Story : The story is something that I have never before experienced. Nineteen-year-old Takashi Amamiya dies after tripping on a bottle but is transported into a body of a cute girl, Akane Hagiwara. Amamiya goes through various trials and tribulations dealing with, being a girl, getting his body back, and dealing with old and new friends.
Story : Ruby Crescent is an ordinary girl. Her life is changed dramatically when her father dies and she becomes a treasure hunter as he was. Her objective is to find O-Parts: magical items hidden in ruins which grant people superhuman powers and can only be used by an O.P.T. (O-Part Tactician), Angel, or Devil. She soon meets a mysterious boy named Jio who, due to having a dark, lonely past, seeks to conquer the world. Jio is hostile to her at first, but ends up traveling with Ruby as her bodyguard. When Ruby is attacked by an O.P.T. claiming to be Satan, Jio rushes to her rescue and a battle occurs. Initially they are on the losing side, but Jio releases his true power and is revealed to be not only an O.P.T., but the real Satan. Thus, the two continue to travel together in hopes of unlocking their pasts.
Story : Ikuru is going to die soon. He lives today, because of another girl's body parts that were grafted to him long ago. The parts that had once saved his life now threatens to take it away. Weighed by the pain and loneliness of his condition and his dilemma, he decides to request the companionship of an AGH-RMS, an "Ai-Ren." These artificially generated humans have their personality and disposition artificially engineered to specification. Their origins are a mystery, but they currently serve to comfort terminally ill patients. When Ikuru's AGH-RMS first arrives, he is surprised by her decisively childish naivite. He names her "Ai" and rediscovers life, love, and how moments he once took for granted can take new meaning when shared with someone else.
However, the futuristic human society seems to be on the edge of an unavoidable apocalypse while Ikuru and Ai live in their own sweet little bit of paradise. Ikuru finds solace in Ai's love, but AGH-RMS can only maintain their engineered persona and memories for a short time. Ai faces death as well.
Struggling American skier Julia Mancuso got a boost Wednesday by posting the fastest time in an opening downhill training session.
Lindsey Vonn, a winner of the opening four downhills this season, was eighth.
Mancuso, seeking her first World Cup win in nearly three years, sped down the Olympia delle Tofane course in 1 minute, 40.17 seconds.
"I've had good training runs this year. I just have to have everything come together for the race," Mancuso said.
Swiss skiers Fraenzi Aufdenblatten and Nadia Styger placed second and third, 0.24 seconds and 0.44 behind, respectively. Overall World Cup leader Maria Riesch of Germany was fourth.
Mancuso posted the first podium finishes of her career in Cortina four years ago on the eve of the Turin Games, when she upset the favorites to win the gold medal in giant slalom.
"Right now, the speed is definitely in a better place for a medal than (giant slalom), but anything is possible," Mancuso said. "It would be a great deja vu if this weekend has some podiums on it."
Overall, Mancuso has one victory and six podium places in her career in Cortina. But last season, her results here were 24th, 29th and 30th.
Mancuso's best results this season were two 10th-place finishes, in a downhill and a super-G.
The session was run in perfect conditions, with hard snow and sunny skies. Still, the last skier on the course, Marie-Pier Prefontaine of Canada, fell through the finish line. She was carried away on a stretcher and taken to a hospital.
Another training run is scheduled for Thursday, followed by a super-G race Friday. A downhill is scheduled for Saturday and a giant slalom on Sunday.
After Cortina, the women have only one more weekend of racing — in St. Moritz, Switzerland — before the Vancouver Olympics, which open Feb. 12.
Julia Mancuso's image, calculated or not, was important to her. Winning an Olympic gold medal with a tiara on her head, reveling in the idea that her coaches called her a "princess," surfing and swimming and being the picture of good health in the waves of Maui, posing seductively in lingerie and ski boots -- it all became part of who she was and is, "probably the most honest athlete out there," according to Chemmy Alcott of Great Britain, her good friend and fellow World Cup skier.
Mancuso was to carry that image into this month's Vancouver Olympics. Mancuso, not Lindsey Vonn, is the only female American Alpine skier with an Olympic medal to her credit, the gold in the giant slalom won four years ago in the Italian village of Sestriere. Mancuso is the skier featured in fashion shoots in outdoors magazines, her hair done up, her clothes just so, the one with the blog and the Web site that features a "shopping" section.
A year ago, though, this was not at all what she was able to project. Her image -- fresh-faced golden girl from the hills around Lake Tahoe, Calif. -- was being tarnished by injuries that led to poor performances, not to mention near collapse.
"She was crying all the time at the end of her races," said Kazuko Ikeda, a former Olympic skier from Japan who now works closely as a Pilates instructor and coach with Mancuso. "People who have known her a long time, they said they never saw her like that, crying so much. It was very hard."
Mancuso enters the Olympics in something of an awkward position. Four years ago, her dominant, aggressive, gold medal-winning performance was overshadowed by the implosion of fellow American Bode Miller, who was supposed to win multiple medals and spectacularly won none. She is now 25 -- in what should be the prime of her career, the same age as multi-medal favorite Vonn -- yet she is coming off two injury-filled seasons, seasons filled with far more pain than progress. In 21 World Cup races this year, she has finished no better than eighth. She has failed to finish or failed to qualify for the second run nine times.
How, then, can she enhance her image in Vancouver when tough times have hit her leading up to what might have been a marquee Olympics?
"Timing is everything," Mancuso said.
Injuries and pain
This is a concept about which Mancuso has thought a great deal over the past few years. Her best season on the World Cup circuit came after her performance in the Olympics, when she finished third in the overall standings -- the rankings that show the most well-rounded skiers on the planet. She seemed to be progressing. No one outside of Europe, where skiing can seem like a lifestyle and Mancuso has an avid following, seemed to notice.
"There wasn't a lot of attention on ski racing because the Olympics were over, and it was like zero attention in the U.S.," Mancuso said. "It's almost like people don't even remember in the U.S. They have no idea.
"Then the next year, I still had some great results, but for some reason, it was really difficult because I was getting a lot of criticism because my year before was so good. And it's always like: How do you balance staying positive with yourself? Because I feel like that had a lot to do with the next year being even worse, because my confidence -- even though I ended up eighth in the world overall, I had a great season -- but it wasn't good enough for some people, and I let that get to me."
Her back also got to her. So did her hip. During nearly all of the 2009 season, Mancuso had one problem or another. Again, the timing. Why, in the season prior to an Olympic year, were her performances deteriorating? From 2006 through 2008, she had 18 podium finishes -- those in the top three -- across four disciplines. In 2009, when she could have built on the image of an Olympic champion as another Games approached, she finished no race better than sixth.
"The whole season was like: 'Do I keep going? Do I not keep going?' " she said. "Something would bring me down right when things were going well again. That was the most difficult part. . . . It was just a long process. What would take most healthy people a day to learn would take me four days or almost a week. It was a two-month period where things really sucked."
The bottom came at the world championships in Val d'Isere, France. She crashed in the super-G. Then, as she approached the finish area in the downhill leg of a super-combined event, nearly two seconds off the pace, she skied off course. She dropped out of the next day's downhill. She was beaten.
"I think it got to the stage where Julia didn't realize that you could ski pain-free," Alcott said. "She was fighting it so much because she loves the sport, and she loves to ski, but there was this block in her. Maybe she couldn't feel it consciously, but subconsciously, there was a big block there."
Into the water
This season, then, has been about removing that block. Part of Mancuso's prescription for healing, be it physical or mental, is heading home -- to Hawaii, where she has lived for five years. There, she takes up the kinds of activities that would seem taboo for world-class athletes -- think stand-up paddle surfing -- and tries to, as she said, "get in the water every day." Alcott, likely Mancuso's best friend on the World Cup circuit, joined her in Maui last offseason and continued her surfing apprenticeship under Mancuso, one that began during a trip to Bali a couple of years ago.
Those lessons, too, give a glimpse into why the pain and suffering of the previous few seasons could eat at Mancuso. She is a natural-born athlete.
"She's not the best teacher," Alcott said. "She just thinks that everyone should be as naturally talented as she is. She's just like, 'Just copy how I do it.' So a couple of times I got stuck out on the reef."
In-season, Mancuso says, she thrives on speed. In the offseason, she thrives on maintaining good health and being outdoors. So she has incorporated time in the water into her regular workout routine. "She works so hard," Ikeda said, "but she wants to figure out how to have fun when she's doing it."
"I don't really need a vacation when I get home, because I'm home and it is a vacation," Mancuso said. "I'm psyched to start working out again and playing. It makes everything a lot easier."
That, then, is the new image she is forging, with her third Olympics just ahead. She is healthy, she said, but now less a princess and more a survivor, just trying to get her timing back. And she has stopped worrying, she said, about what people want her image to be.
"Just by having such a bad season now, I'm able to build off little things and take the good out of it and sort of start over and not even think about what's good for me, what people would say is a good result for me," Mancuso said. "I'm going into it as a new person."
That new person knows a bit more than she did entering the Turin Games. She understands, of course, what it feels like to have a defining moment of your career. She also understands that she doesn't want that moment to define her. Even the people who remember she won gold four years ago might not understand what she has been through since. The complete picture -- the success, the injuries, the frustration, the rebuilding -- isn't part of her public image, not yet. But it is a part of who she is.
"I guess it taught me a lot about what it feels like to win, too," Mancuso said, "because it sucks to be in the position where you don't even think you can win when you leave the start gate. . . .
"I just have to remember: For me, the biggest thing is just to stay focused on myself, and remember that the year that I won two world championship medals, I went into the season not ranked. Anything is possible, and I know that, even if other people don't."
