SINGAPORE — It surely sucks to be Kenshin Himura.

First, you miss out on your teenage years because you basically spend it being Japan’s most vicious assassin. Then, when you finally think of “retiring” from the job, you can’t because everyone thinks you’re Mr Fix-It with a katana.

And now the stakes have been raised in Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Inferno, the second instalment of the trilogy based on the hugely popular ’90s anime and manga historical-fiction series about a redhead samurai-turned-wanderer who doesn’t want to kill and has an X-shaped scar on his left cheek (hence the anime’s English title Samurai X).

Japan is at the brink of civil war thanks to a bandaged madman ex-samurai named Shishio Makoto (Death Note’s Tatsuya Fujiwara, who incidentally was in Singapore last year playing a samurai in the play Musashi). Shishio wants to instigate a reign of fire and the fledgling, fragile Japanese government of the Meiji era turns to Kenshin (Takeru Satoh).

If you thought the first movie was enough of an action-packed romp, that was just director Keishi Otomo warming up. In taking on the manga/anime series’ best story arc, he takes it up a notch or two, upping the violence and toning down its light moments. He still has the tendency to get overly dramatic, but it’s offset by lots and lots of pretty intensely-choreographed swordplay. The veritable parade of characters (and the overlapping sub-threads and cliques) might confuse those who aren’t familiar with the series but the movies does try its best to streamline things and you’ll eventually get the hang of it. And you’ll probably pick up some fave characters along the way: The ice-cool, cigarette-puffing anti-hero Saito Hajime and the eerily all-smiles, polite young assassin Seta Soujiro stand out for me.

At the heart of it all, obviously, is the reluctant hero Kenshin, whose newly pacifist ways are constantly challenged by the brutal injustice around him (and often designed to goad him into reverting into his legendary “hitokiri” or slasher persona). Switching between weary soul and enraged swordsman, actor Satoh dutifully personifies this moral tug-of-war as we witness more and more the explosive skill hidden underneath that rather frail-looking body.

Mind you, after all that excitement, there’s still one more movie to go. Thankfully, it will be released in October — leaving you just enough time to catch your breath before entering the climactic end of what’s shaping to be a thoroughly enjoyable samurai story.

(PG13, 139 mins)