Yukishiro Tomoe - Plot Overview

Plot Overview

Yukishiro Tomoe was the elder daughter of a samurai, a low-level bureaucrat who served the Tokugawa Shogunate in Edo. Her only sibling was her younger brother Enishi, who viewed her as a surrogate parent because of their mother's death shortly after his birth; he threw a tantrum on hearing of her engagement to Kiyosato Akira, the second son of another similarly-ranked family. Her skills included the Edo-mae style of cooking (distinct from Kyoto cuisine), the flower-arrangement art of Ikebana, and beautiful calligraphic handwriting; her signature perfume was the scent of white ume blossoms (hakubaikō). As required by the Shogunate, she practiced Buddhism. Early on, Tomoe's closeness with the young Battōsai was compared to an iris flower, which blooms best in the rain, 'even in a rain of blood'. Kenshin later lays these flowers at her grave.

She kept diaries to record her inner thoughts and emotions, which she found difficult to express more openly. This reticence left Kiyosato unaware of how much she truly loved him. Thinking that he needed to please her with greater accomplishments, he went to Kyoto to join the Mimawarigumi and was killed by the Ishin Shishi assassin, Hitokiri Battōsai (a.k.a. Kenshin), but also gave the Hitokiri a single slash scar along the face.

Distraught with grief, Tomoe left home and came to Kyoto, where she was recruited by Shogunate spies to win her way into Kenshin's confidence. The Imperialist leader Katsura Kogorō (known as Kido Takayoshi after the Meiji Restoration) also sensed that she was a key to Kenshin's more human side. After the Ikedaya Jiken, Katsura sent both of them away from Kyoto to an isolated house near the town of Ōtsu.

To mislead enemies who might ask about a single newcomer, Kenshin and Tomoe were instructed to live as husband and wife; in the manga, Kenshin realised by then that he had fallen in love with Tomoe, and told her that their marriage did not have to be for show, and that they could be 'together...till death do us part'; in the OVA, their marital status was less clear. At the time, weddings were largely a matter of civic registration rather than religious ceremony, but one of the first acts of their shared life was a short pilgrimage from Ōtsu to the remains of the Buddhist temple complex on Mount Hiei (Which, coincidentally, would later become the Kyoto headquarters of Kenshin's future nemesis Shishio Makoto). She also traveled with him around the nearby countryside as part of his further disguise as a seller of herbal medicines.

In reawakening Kenshin's former gentle nature, Tomoe became conflicted about her own feelings for him, and once even came to tell him some bits of her true story (mainly about Enishi and her father). She came to realize that she no longer harbored any bitterness and even hoped to keep healing Kenshin, admitting that she wanted him to live and even herself to live beside him. When Enishi arrived to tell her that the time has come for Kenshin's death, she sent him away, and that night revealed her past to Kenshin (though she did not mention the conspiracy) and broke down crying in his arms. They make love (in the OVA, for the first time) and Kenshin promised to protect her happiness. In the English dub, he asks her to marry him "for real" and she agrees. The following morning, Tomoe had made up her mind that Kenshin must not die, and visited her Shogunate spymasters in the hopes of misleading them and saving his life, only to find that she was nothing but a pawn in their plans, and ended up being used as bait to draw him in for the kill. By the time Kenshin reached her, he had been weakened by several preliminary ambushes, so that he seemed likely to lose the final duel until Tomoe threw herself between the two combatants, intending to protect him. Blinded with pain, Kenshin was unable to see her until it was too late, and delivered a fatal blow to his opponent and to her with the same slash of his sword. The second half of Kenshin's cross-shaped scar was cut by Tomoe's dagger, although the exact circumstances differ between the OVA and the manga. In the manga, it was an accident as she released her dagger after being injured. She then smiles and tells him 'It's all right, so please don't cry' before dying. In the OVA, she cuts his face in her dying breath after apologising to him for her betrayal. Although these scars never disappear, by the end of the manga they have faded, symbolising that the grudges and regrets from his past as the Battōsai are gone. In the Samurai X: Reflection (Rurouni Kenshin: Seisōhen) OVA, however, both scars disappear when he dies, to show that he has truly been forgiven and the pain of his past no longer exists.

In the manga he cremated her body and after the Battle of Toba-Fushimi, consecrated her ashes in a gravestone erected in a Kyoto temple, where he also left her diaries. In the OVA Kenshin brought Tomoe's body back to the house they had shared near Ōtsu, where he remained for a brief period of mourning before razing it as her funeral pyre. Having realised fully the extent of the sorrow he inflicted on the loved ones of his victims, Kenshin vowed that once the war was over, he would never kill again, and would spend his life atoning for his actions. The epilogue of the OVA shows a lonely Kenshin, resting between battles, being comforted by Tomoe's spirit as he sleeps.

Kenshin did not return to Tomoe's grave until many years later, after Shishio's death. His master, Hiko Seijuro is somewhat surprised to see him at Tomoe's grave and Kenshin expresses happiness that he is finally able to lay flowers there. He also expresses regret at having killing the one he loved with his own hands and that Shishio had done something similar to his love Komagata Yumi.

In the Jinchū arc of the manga, 10 years later Tomoe's brother Enishi returned as an adult to visit her grave and pursue vengeance against Kenshin, whom he considered his beloved older sister's true murderer. Enishi's actions (which included the kidnapping of Kaoru and her replacement with a flesh-made doll that makes everyone, including Kenshin himself, believe that she was killed) sent Kenshin into near-catatonic despair that was broken when Tsubame asked him to help Yahiko who was losing the battle with Hyogo (one of Enishi's men). He realized that if there is anything else he can do after all that he had lost, it is to wield his sword as long as he can so he can protect the people around him. He helped Yahiko and took some time to rest. While sleeping, he dreams of Tomoe, who now smiles at him because he himself has learned how to smile and how to make peace with his present despite his ugly past. She told him then that she is worried for Enishi, who is still trapped in the past and doesn't know how to let go. Finally, she encouraged Kenshin to hurry and wake up because Kaoru, the one who wanted and needed most his smile, is waiting for him to rescue her. Kenshin wakes up with renewed strength and asks his friends to take him to where Kaoru is. In the island, many enemies await their arrival but Kenshin's "trustworthy companions" (Sanosuke, Yahiko, Megumi, Misao, Aoshi, and Saitou) are the ones who faced them so that Kenshin can conserve his energy for his battle with Enishi. Ultimately, Kenshin and Enishi meet again and fight. Though Enishi seems to have the upper edge, Kenshin becomes much stronger because he has already found his answer- "to use his heart and sword to fulfill his struggling life." Enishi asks Kenshin to take his life because he thinks this is the only fitting punishment for his crimes as hitokiri. Kenshin refused- his life, even though he had taken many lives, is not meaningless, he has to go on living, so that he can carry the ideals of those he had killed, so that he can atone for his sins by creating a more peaceful world with his sword, so that he can protect the happiness of the most important person to him (Kaoru), of his friends, and of all the people around him. In the end, Kenshin won and asked Enishi not to continue leading a miserable life so that one day he could find his sister's smile again. When Enishi is left a broken man after his battle with Kenshin, the former is given Tomoe's diary, which expresses all her true emotions during her time with Kenshin. Because he keeps the diary even after he arrives in the village of the fallen, "Geezer" (Oibore), a kind old homeless man who helped Kenshin out of his living hell (revealed as Tomoe and Enishi's father), remarks that Enishi will some day find his purpose again.

Tomoe makes a brief cameo in the sixth ending of the TV series (from episodes 67-82, featuring the song "1/3 no Junjou na Kanjou" by the band Siam Shade). In the first scene, the lower half of her face is shown scrolling in front of a brick wall. In the second scene, her face is shown in a starry sky, along with a 15 year old Kenshin. Also, it can be argued that the scene where a silhouette of Kenshin is seen in a graveyard is reminiscent of the scene in episode 62 where Kenshin visits Tomoe's grave in Kyoto. Although she is never mentioned by name, the anime writers have paid homage to her in episode 63, in which Kenshin meets a former manslayer who lost his beloved due to his quest for improving his sword skills.