Sanosuke was one of the last major figures of the series to be created. Watsuki created him to be Kenshin's best friend, who is willing to punch him when he is sad to make him "wake up" from his sadness. Although Sanosuke is a main character in the series, Watsuki felt that he could not write everything he wanted about him, and thought that making him the title character of a series would prove interesting. The character is based on
Shinsengumi member
Harada Sanosuke. Watsuki describes Sanosuke's visual motif by referring to his design model, Lamp, the main character of Susumu Sendo and
Takeshi Obata's
Mashin Bōken Tan Lamp-Lamp. Watsuki, working as an assistant on Obata's manga, formed the character by doodling in sketchbooks, adding and subtracting elements from the proposed character "with blessings from the original artist, of course." An elder Sanosuke was drafted by Watsuki to appear in the manga's finale but this idea was scrapped. In the manga's final story arc, the design was used for Sanosuke's father, Higashidani Kamishimoemon. '' series. In July 2006, the Japanese publishers of
Rurouni Kenshin released the
kanzenban edition. In the fifth
kanzenban, Watsuki redesigned the character of Sanosuke in a draft version. To emphasize his hate of the Meiji Government, Watsuki drew the Japanese
kanji for on the back of Sanosuke's jacket in the original series, but on the kanzenban redesign, the tattoo is located inside his clothes. Unlike in the manga where Sanosuke uses an oversized
zanbatō as a weapon, Watsuki gave him a more historically authentic zanbatō; a sword notably thinner and longer in design. He also gave him an armor-like cloth to make him look more as a warrior. The fact that the CD book voice actors, especially
Tomokazu Seki and
Megumi Ogata, who portrayed Sanosuke and Kenshin in the CD books, respectively, did not get their corresponding roles in the anime disappointed Watsuki. Ueda, Sanosuke's voice actor in the Japanese anime, commented that voicing Sanosuke in the original video animations was very complicated because his character was notably older and he has not acted in the role for a long period. He also said that he would have liked to see more fights involving Sanosuke in the original video animations, but was happy to see that Sanosuke had matured as a character. Lex Lang, the voice actor of Sanosuke in the English adaptation of the anime, commented that his first impression of Sanosuke was as a fight-driven character motivated by anger, but as the story continued Sanosuke became friendly and more likable. Because his voice is noticeably different from Ueda's, Lang tries to create his own interpretation of Sanosuke's character. Lang has noted that the scene in episode 22 of the anime, in which Sanosuke is afraid of a train because he believes it is a demon, was the most enjoyable scene for him to record; he added "I recently saw it and had some big laughs." In producing the English dub version of the series,
Media Blasters chose
Lex Lang as Sanosuke's
voice actor. When writing Sanosuke's dialogue, Clark Cheng, the writer of the English dub script, noted that the character was smarter than he would have liked in the first few episodes, so Cheng tried slowly to change the character's dialogue to make Sanosuke seem less intelligent so he would be more similar to the equivalent in the Japanese version of the series. == Appearances ==