Fil-Japanese actress in The Legend Ends

MANILA, Philippines - A young, fencing mistress devoted to a reformed assassin. A beautiful healer making amends for her past. And a former courtesan madly in love with a psychopath. Meet Kaoru, Megumi and Yumi, the feisty women in Warner Bros.’ Rurouni Kenshin: The Legend Ends, the final chapter to director Keishi Otomo’s Rurouni Kenshin trilogy.

Popular Japanese actress Emi Takei plays Kaoru Kamiya. As the fencing mistress of the Kamiya Dojo, which she inherited from her father, she teaches the sword as “a way of life, rather than of death.”

Takei says, “They let me do some real stunts, so it was a lot of fun. People love the character of Kaoru, so I’ve tried to play her as someone who deserves that.”

Multi-awarded actress Ya Aoi is Megumi Takani. A brave, determined and also beautiful physician, the descendant of a long line of doctors whose family was wiped out in the wars accompanying the end of the Shogunate. She began making opium to keep herself alive, but reformed after Kenshin Himura saved her life, and now dedicates herself to the service of those in need.

Filipino-Japanese star Maryjun Takahashi appears as Yumi Komagata. A bewitchingly beautiful woman, deeply in love with Shishio and always by his side. Originally a courtesan in Edo’s Yoshiwara pleasure quarter, she took great pride in her work there, but when the new government, under Western influence, declared the sale of women to be barbaric, she was forced to leave. Declaring the new government to be comprised of sub-human animals, she joined Shishio in his hatred of it.

Based on the Kyoto arc of the popular manga series written and illustrated by Nobuhiro Watsuki, the Rurouni Kenshin sequels follow the story of Kenshin Himura (Takeru Satoh), a legendary swordsman in the wars accompanying the fall of Japan’s Shogunate who has adopted a peaceful life since the arrival of the “new age.”

But Makoto Shishio (Tatsuya Fujiwara), the successor to Kenshin’s position as deadly assassin, has since been scheming in the Kyoto underworld with the aim of overthrowing the new regime.

Rurouni Kenshin: The Legend Ends opens across the Philippines on Sept. 24.