SharP' Unfinished Symphony.

THE MANGA
The manga began running in WEEKLY JUMP in 1994. It was the first published continuing series of author Watsuki Nobuhiro. According to Watsuki, the story was only supposed to run for ten issues of JUMP, resulting in a series of approximately three or four volumes. However, it was obviously more successful than that, as there are currently 23 volumes of tankuobon available to date. KENSHIN came to be when Watsuki decided that he wanted to do a fantasy-type manga. After some consideration, he chose to set his manga in the Meiji era, partially because he was inspired by historical novels he was reading at the time. When he was planning the manga to be only a ten-installment series, he decided to use the eleventh year of the Meiji Period because things were less tumultuous. Before then, there was too much going on, too much background that would be required to tell a good story, he believed.
However, there is still plenty of historical background that comes to play in RUROUNI KENSHIN, which is perhaps one of the reasons that the series continues its run. After all, there were a lot of political factions at the time, and the transition from an isolationist feudal nation to a fully-modern industrial power was not an easy one.