Kinda feels like the author just went "I'm going to resolve this plot point right now . . . BAM!".
Lucky for me, this kind of resolution is to my tastes (given the setup, at least).
All that's left is to never really explain why it happened in the first place and I think the author'll have...
I think the one weakness of the time skip is that it's just a tad harder to believe that he still wants to fight Kenshin. Maybe that did change and we don't know it yet, but I would assume it hasn't for now.