Akame Ga Kill has been regarded by a wide majority of anime viewers as slightly below mediocre. However, Akame Ga Kill should get a bit more credit then it deserves. Although the ending was not the best, it certainly surpasses some of the worst. In this review, I would like to say that I will be ignoring how well the anime adapted from the manga because I will be rating the anime on its own.
General Synopsis:
Tatsumi, Sayo, and Ieyasu depart their home village in hopes of making money in the capital. Along the way, they are split up and Tatsumi is introduced to the capital and its corruption and the infamous, Night Raid. At first, Tatsumi assumes they are enemies, but later recognizes their need to overthrow the emperor for sake of the people and shortly joins them after a short clash.
Story:
The plot had a lot of potential, while it was not misused entirely, it had some of its bad parts. For the most part, Akame Ga Kill had relatively decent pacing. The story was really easy to follow and the fight scenes were very elaborate. One of the major issues with the anime however, was the ending. There was not enough justification for why Esdeath had failed her trump card move, the power to freeze time. In addition, Akame's trump card seemed to be a bit phony. For one, Lubbock did mention that Akame was supposedly unable to activate her trump card, however, her own consequence for activating the trump card was to "accept responsibility for the lives" she has taken with Murasame. Again, this was not explicit enough and it was hard to comprehend why she did not use her trump card long ago since it is hard to see why the consequence for activating it was bad in anyway because the anime did not stress that well enough. Besides from the ending, I thought the story was a above average because it did run decently well with the plot.
Story Rating: 7/10
Art:
Quite frankly, while Akame Ga Kill's art was not excellent, it was certainly very good. There were also some points in the anime where the anime froze on a very creepy, yet well done art of an enemy.
Art Rating: 8/10
Character:
This is one of the few aspects that just destroys Akame Ga Kill. The characters play a big role in any story and in this anime, the character development was just horrendous. The only character that really receives any development is Mine. Mine started off as arrogant, non-sympathetic, and condescending. However, towards the end of the anime, Mine develops a soft spot and finds people she ends up caring for. As for the rest of the characters, they received little to no development. However, there are some parts of the anime that really helped the characters shine in some way. Akame and Tatsumi both questioned their cause for joining Night Raid at some point, which was really good for contrast to those that were loyal servants to the capital that did not question any of their orders, ex. Esdeath. Unfortunately, little things like these are heavily overshadowed by the lack of character development. Every character seems to have the same resolve, same goal, same lines, same fights... It practically becomes repetitive after some time.
Character Rating: 4/10
Enjoyment:Watching Akame Ga Kill was really enjoyable. It had a lot more fight scenes than the average shounen given the amount of episodes Akame Ga Kill had. I felt there was a lot of action in every episode of the show. I also happened to binge watch this over a two day span (during my school days).
Enjoyment Rating: 8/10
Overall Average Rating: 6.75, which rounds up to a 7.
