The Shrine

Overall it's a decent anime, even if it's no Kenshin. The last 3 episodes were by far the highlight of the series, although the ending would've been FAR better if both Mugen and Jin had died. Jin by all accounts should've stayed dead in the water, the only reason he showed up again was to save Fuu from getting killed, which I admit would probably be too tragic for most people. But even then he should've died from that stab wound that he took to kill the "Hand of God" samurai. As for Mugen, if getting beat around with that scythe and getting gutshot wouldn't have killed him, the explosion from all that dynamite going off really should've done him in. But no, they had to pussify the ending with everyone recovering and then going their separate ways.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the series, the first 25 episodes are great. I'm just saying if they're going to try and emulate Cowboy Bebop, the least they can do is have the same kind of ending.

Meh, I actually was upset that Spike died at the end of Cowboy Bebop, note, that if they actually countinued the series they would have kept Spike alive, guy who made that always said he kinda regretted killing off Spike.

Yeah Watanabe directed both series, so who knows, maybe he wanted this one to have a lighter tone. Even still, there's plenty of dead bodies and tragedy to go around.