Akame ga Kill!

Night Raid is the covert assassination branch of the Revolutionary Army, an uprising assembled to overthrow Prime Minister Honest, whose avarice and greed for power has led him to take advantage of the child emperor's inexperience. Without a strong and benevolent leader, the rest of the nation is left to drown in poverty, strife, and ruin. Though the Night Raid members are all experienced killers, they understand that taking lives is far from commendable and that they will likely face retribution as they mercilessly eliminate anyone who stands in the revolution's way.

This merry band of assassins' newest member is Tatsumi, a naïve boy from a remote village who had embarked on a journey to help his impoverished hometown and was won over by not only Night Raid's ideals, but also their resolve. Akame ga Kill! follows Tatsumi as he fights the Empire and comes face-to-face with powerful weapons, enemy assassins, challenges to his own morals and values, and ultimately, what it truly means to be an assassin with a cause.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Akame Main

Amamiya, Sora Japanese

Mine Main

Tamura, Yukari Japanese

Tatsumi Main

Saitou, Souma Japanese

Leone Main

Asakawa, Yuu Japanese

Esdeath Supporting

Akesaka, Satomi Japanese

Lubbock Supporting

Matsuoka, Yoshitsugu Japanese

Chelsea Supporting

Nazuka, Kaori Japanese

Bulat Supporting

Konishi, Katsuyuki Japanese

Sheele Supporting

Noto, Mamiko Japanese

Kurome Supporting

Ohashi, Ayaka Japanese

Iwasa, Gaku Producer

Miyake, Masanori Producer

Yoshizawa, Takashi Producer

Yoshikawa, Tsunaki Producer

Reviews

Dec 15, 2014

HelghastKillzone

Recommended

Produced by White Fox Studios as 24 episode series, Akame ga Kill! is the anime adaptation of an unfinished manga that follows the exploits of an assassination group looking to overthrow the corrupt empire. While it doesn't even have good writing or the proper foundations, there is no denying that this show takes its audience for a wild ride that is filled with bloodshed and explosions.

Set in a fantasy world, Akame ga Kill! begins with a talented but rather naive swordsman named Tatsumi, arriving in Empire's capital city and dreaming of making a name for himself. He quickly finds himself being stripped ... of his meager savings by a certain feline-looking women called Leona but comes across a wealthy family who decides to graciously shelter him. That very same night, a group called Night Raid hits the household with the intent of assassination. Through a series of twists that exposes the family's atrocities, Tatsumi accepts the offer to join Night Raid and starts on the path towards to assassinating those who they deem to be responsible for plaguing the Capitol with corruption. However as he and his teammates continues their campaign against those who stand in their way, the Empire responses by creating their own unit of elite soldiers called The Jaegers to hunt down Night Raid.

Within each of their own respective arsenals are incredibly powerful weapons called Imperial Arms that were forged in the early beginnings of the empire. From suits of armor to hand-held weapons and gears, the power within each of these Imperial Arms is unique and the main element to the fighting is countering each others power. Tied in with the usage of Imperial Arms, the primary feature that set Akame ga Kill! apart from other action shows is the alarming frequency in which notable characters are permanently killed. As a general rule, when two or more imperial arms users enter into a fight, at least one of them will die giving the show an huge amount of tension when battles do occur.

With a focus of ridding the Empire of its corruption, Akame ga Kill! is a very edgy show with that knows no bounds when it comes to displaying the appalling crimes and cruelty that exists within the series. However, the tone that is given doesn't lend itself to be a mature analysis of the mankind's darkness. More time than not, it comes off as being cheap and I found myself laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of it all. The underlying reasons are mere context and background to the real draw of the show of how the bloody battles unfold.

Characters

For all the horrific violence that the characters commits, the regular cast is a rather likeable bunch. Named in the title of the anime, Akame is the beautiful wielder of the Murasame, a sword that is guaranteed to kill its enemy with a single cut, and is a rather cold individual from onset. Once the series get underway, she does have some genuinely assuming moments and actually cares deeply for her friends but usually adopts a stoic demeanor during operations and for much of her downtime. Tatsumi, being the gullible and starry eye swordsman from the countryside , is the audience's introduction into the rotten and oppressive Empire and the fight bring about revolution. He starts off as fairly generic but develops into a much more powerful fighter with strong relational ties to others. Opposing Night Raid is the head of the Jeagers, General Esdeath, who is a very voluptuous and sadistic women that enjoys the thrill of the hunt. Believing in a very Darwinian principle of the strong devouring the weak, she is a very formidable foe and yet, is a little ditzy when it comes to the matters of the heart.

There are too many other characters to list off and go into details but they all share the common trait of being immensely brutal in their fighting while having comical elements attached to them. They themselves are representative of the strange dichotomy where scenes of slaughter, sexual exposition, and torture are offset by their playful comradery. While they don't having the most compelling back stories or development, the cast of Akame ga Kill certainly doesn't shy away from making their presence known by any stretch of the imagination. I would like to give a particular mention to Akame's VA, Sora Amamiya, for continuing to have an astonishing start to her career. In addition to her main role in Akame ga Kill!, she has taken on no less than four main character roles in Nanatsu no Taizai, Aldnoah.Zero, One Week Friends and Tokyo Ghoul. While her time being Akame has come to an end, I look forward what other roles she can play as she moves through the anime industry.

Visuals

Visually speaking, Akame ga Kill! is an above average effort with a very modern style, vivid colors and a few special effects thrown in for good measure. It does rely on conventional animation when going through its action sequences so there's nothing that makes it stand out in that aspect. Otherwise, the quality remains consistent throughout the entire series which is more than I can say for other series airing at the same time. In fact, one area that Studio White Fox have done a tremendous job on improving is rendering the background. While the manga does a decent job at framing its own surroundings, the additional detail and polish put in really elevates an aspect where the source material was lackluster.

Music

Taku Iwasaki, known for creating the soundtrack to Gatchaman Crowds, Noragami and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, is responsible the music behind Akame ga Kill!. Judging by his other works, he has been consistently been able to produce music that a bit quirky to listen to but still be able to enhance whatever show he works on. For this series, he incorporates a variety of musical styles from jazz to rock to orchestral music and he does a commendable job of engaging the audience with his music, no matter what the scene called for. I especially like the OST being played during the action scenes as a combinations of drums, tribal chanting and rock goes with perfectly with the unhindered primal violence being shown on the screen.

Manga Adaptation

As with almost all adaptation from manga to the anime, some things are bound to get lost in transition and Akame ga Kill! is no exception. Character interactions that gave depth to their relationship are left out but those scenes didn't really contribute in significantly in altering the core plotline. It is only towards the latter half of Akame ga Kill! that readers of the manga will notice that that the rather straightforward adaption will suddenly veer off into the original anime ending territory that leaves behind an entire arc unanimated and takes several liberties with the story. If you are only familiar with the anime TV production, it is unlikely that you would notice much of difference other than the accelerated pacing and build up. At this point, the manga remains unfinished and if the show decided to stay its original course, it would have ended in an awkward state and would have had to wait years before additional material would be available. For a show to tell a complete story in an age where anime shows are mere primers for the source material is a rarity indeed.

Conclusion

In the end, Akame ga Kill! sets out what do what it promises and that is to smother the audience with super powerups, violence and death up until the very end.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Dec 14, 2014

lollith

Mixed Feelings

One misconception in the anime industry is that when a show is dark and contains excessive amounts of gore. Many people automatically think the show is deep and thought provoking. The problem is that many anime studios get so hung up with making the show as badass and dark as possible that they forget about the more important problems that might plague the show, like character development and pacing.

Akame Ga Kill is a great example of this problem.

The story follows Tatsumi, a countryside boy that travels to the capital to join the military and earn money to send to his village suffering from poverty.To ... him the capital is a place filled with opportunities and a happy life. But after reaching the capital he soon realizes exactly how corrupt the capital is. After certain events he is recruited by Night Raid, A group of assassins that wish to overthrow the government and end this corruption.

On the surface Akame ga Kill does seem to be different from other shounens because of it's dark theme and excessive gore. But when you look a little bit deeper Akame ga Kill is actually pretty similar to other stereotypical shounens. You have characters always blurting out the obvious. You have the naive yet strong protagonist that powers up over time. You have almost all of the female characters fall for the protagonist. Akame ga Kill tries to be different show with it's dark theme, but looking at it closer there isn't much difference.

Probably one of the more prominent problems in Akame ga Kill is the comedy. The problem isn't in the comedy itself. (Though I admit most of the humor was stale) but rather the execution. Apparently someone thought it was a good idea to slide in a petty joke in many emotional or dramatic scenes. Probably the best example of this would be a scene where Tatsumi finds out about the corruption in the capital and mourns over his loved ones that died to this corruption. This was supposed to be a very emotional scene but then Night Raid kidnaps Tatsumi and makes petty jokes along the way. It is scenes like this that make me unable to take the show very seriously.

The characters in the show are filled with problems too. Tatsumi isn't really much different from other stereotypical male leads. He's strong, kind, and has a great sense of justice. Something we see in pretty much any other male lead for a stereotypical shounen. The other characters in Night Raid don't fare much better either. You have Mine the tsundere, Bulat the "Aniki" type. Shelle the klutz, Leone the "Onee-san" type, Lubbock the perverted guy, and Akame, the cold assassin. Now considering the show has Akame's name in the title. You would expect Akame to be one of the most important characters of the show. Sadly, the only background we do get to know about Akame is her backstory. She didn't seem to have much development and emotions except for a few scenes.Almost all of the characters feel pretty one-sided and unoriginal. There are two new additions to Night Raid later on in the show. Chelsea and Susanoo. And probably out of all of the characters in Akame ga Kill, I found Chelsea to be the most memorable.Why? Because she actually feels realistic. Although Chelsea seems to be very confident and powerful. She is just like any other girl at her age. She likes to use make up, she has her own beliefs, and she felt like an actual person.

On the other side you have the Jaegars. A special squad led by General Esdeath which goal is to anhiliate Night Raid and any other group that resists against The Empire. The Jaegars seem to be an awkward bunch. You have Bols, who looks like a psychotic murderer with a mask. Kurome, who apparently loves to eat. Dr.Stylish, a crazy mad scientist. That doesn't mean there aren't normal people there. There is Wave who doesn't really have any special qualities and Run, who seems to be the calm and collected person in the group.

And then there's Seryuu...

If there was a person who could embody the word "crazy". Seryuu probably fits the word perfectly. Probably the most hated character in the entire show. Seryuu is a person who has a completely twisted view on justice. She believes that everything the empire does is right and that everyone who goes against the empire is evil. Now although she is indeed twisted as hell and it is a normal response to hate her guts. I find that she brings a different point of view to the word "justice" in the show. To her the empire is her sense of justice. This outlines the different sense of justice between the two groups and what they are fighting for. Something that the show fails to do in many other places.

The characters of Jaegar mostly seemed to be interesting to me, but lack of character development led them to be pretty underwhelming characters. An exception to this would be Esdeath. Probably the most popular character of the show. Esdeath is loved by viewers for her icy demeanor, beauty, and her love of battle. She kills only because of her lust for war and her sadistic nature. She does have a softer nature too, as can be seen when she is searching for love.

One thing that I find annoying with Akame Ga Kill is apart from the Jaegars (which mostly were pretty average). Every other villain was bland,exaggerated, and unoriginal that I couldn't help but laugh when I saw them. Most of the supporting villains are either complete psychos or are so obsessed with power that they don't even seem human. This does get better after the introduction of the Jaegars but is it really too much to ask to get a decent villain that I can take seriously?

The part that makes Akame ga Kill "different" from other average shounens is that unlike other shounens, characters die and although this is apparently what makes Akame ga Kill "special". This is exactly what makes Akame ga Kill fall short. The problem is that characters don't get nearly enough development before there death.It is usually give the character some screen time in the previous episode. Give them a flashback on there backstories, and send them off. Killing off characters isn't a bad thing at all. In fact, this is exactly what I want from shounens with main characters that either get revived or are invincible. But at least give the characters enough development to actually make the viewers feel something, or else the death scenes feel meaningless.

The first opening of Akame ga Kill "Skyreach" is pretty average to be honest. Sure it isn't bad but the song just isn't much better than other opening songs. The second opening is a big step up from the first one with the early part sounding quiet and gentle, but slowly grows into a louder song with guitars and the chorus. Which I found to be pretty fitting to the show. Both the ending songs are pretty good,both bringing contrasts to the opening with softer, smoother tunes.The soundtrack ranged from average to pretty good. The songs in the battle scenes weren't anything special but did there jobs of increasing the tension, but the the best parts are the piano tracks for the moments of death.The piano tracks were pretty simple and weren't complex at all, but the tune the tracks carried brought out the tone perfectly.

The animation is mostly pretty good.I guess the best word would probably be "efficient". Akame ga Kill looks good where it counts and it cuts back in parts that weren't that important. And I respect that. Not every anime has a gigantic budget to work on. (Unless its from KyoAni). The fight scenes looked great and although there were a few scenes that were cut back. Those scenes were mostly negligible and not very noticable.

Now it may seem like I hate the show due to all of my criticism towards the show, but on the contrary. I did enjoy the show to a certain extent. The show isn't terrible by any means, but there were just so many places where Akame ga Kill could have improved on that I find it a shame that it wasn't adapted better. That said though, this show isn't for everyone. If you don't like excessive gore and killing then feel free to steer away from the show. But if you like dark themes and don't have a problem with watching some blood. Akame ga Kill isn't a terrible choice. (Can't say its a great one though.)

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Feb 10, 2015

ZephSilver

Not Recommended

A lot can be said about a show's 1st episode. It's our first encounter with the world presented, and could often be used to gauge whether or not the content on display could be something that would interest you moving forward. Of course, this isn't to say that that's always the case, but for the most part, it serves as a helpful jumping off point and is often the reason why studios place so much stock on its television pilot. And nowhere is that more evident than with Akame ga Kill! With just one episode, it manages to establish a myriad of things, all of ... which interesting in their own right, but perhaps more entertaining when viewed as a whole. There's comedy, fanservice, ultraviolence, corrupt politics, eccentric characters, melodrama, and a sleuth of other tidbits littered throughout. All of these aspects by themselves are fine, but it's the assembly in which these ideas are presented that gives way to content that's comedically problematic.

Like ingredients for food, it's not a matter of what you have to work with but what you choose to make out of it. In the hands of capable creators, I'm sure all the elements of Akame ga Kill could have been turned into something of high-end value, but to no one's fault but its own, what this title decides to do instead of measuring out its ingredients was to dump it all in at once with no rhyme or reason. A tasty stew in the hands of credible creators was effectively turned into a cauldron of foul witches brew. A slimy substance bubbling up, one that sees gruesome deaths followed by comedic fanservice, politics served on a platter layered in melodrama, reanimated corpses of shows prior refusing to die off, their festering lack of "character" like primordial ooze, desperately seeking out originality to munch down on. A Schlocky, sleazy freak of a thing, over-the-top, and violently lashing out, its drool dripping with hackneyed writing and a complete disregard for decency as it spazzes about on the floor.

What we have here was a Frankenstein of lowbrow content, and boy was it entertaining!

The story is very straightforward, if only by design. A corrupt kingdom takes advantage of their citizens through tyrannical rule, and to fight against this oppression, rebel forces send aid by hiring a band of assassins tasked with killing off high-ranking members of the capital. It's like Assassin's Creed, but with a lot more boobs and nakama power involved. Our protagonist, PussyBetaMale-kun, or Tatsumi, if you prefer, joins this hit squad.

The goal of these rebel forces are pretty basic; overthrow the governing body and establish a new order of equality. Seems like a simple enough story to execute right? Well, that's where you'll be sorely mistaken, with AGK, plunging your IQ down a few pegs is the only way to keep up with its scatterbrained thought process when it comes to figuring its own shit out. In substitution of a fairly paint-by-numbers plot, AGK decides to globetrot across its world, not out of a need to explore anything, no, that would be too "smart," but solely for the sake of encountering as many comedically vile people as possible. And in that regard, its meandering was a success. In place of a rebel uprising, what we got in its stead was a bunch of superpowered edgelords engaging in giant cockfights to see who was the strongest. Assassin Super Bowl was in full swing, and while they were duking it out like reject members of a Mad Max film, the highborn nobles were strolling along in the background, torturing its citizens with so much glee that you can't help but root for their cartoonish villainy.

The setting was never explored, feeling equally perfunctory as the characters inhabiting it. Attributes of its world bullying the audience into accepting it for what it is. Wild monsters with no domestic quality to their world and flying Manta-rays; just accept it. Giant mecha in a medieval setting with no prior inclusion of advanced technology; just accept it. Macroeconomics that's impossible to exist when the aristocratic class torture and kill their citizens, effectively crippling its economy's breadwinners; just accept it. Supernatural occurrences that happen at one minute to simply be forgotten by the next; you get the drill, just accept that shit.

They didn't even bother to properly flesh out the city or corresponding areas that our characters navigated across. Deciding to only let it serve as a backdrop for the Assassin Super Bowl to play out seemed to be the unified thought process that the creative team all collectively arrived at. And when that isn't enough to keep the viewer's interest, the show places a character's neck on its Guillatine chopping block, where it turns these Mad Max rejects into blood-splattered firework displays to keep things entertaining. All you end up remembering them for was their deaths and not who they were as people. But who got time to worry about proper characterization or decent writing? Fuck it! On with the show! More shocking deaths, more blood, more ultraviolence, more more more!

Crimson blood-spray animated with such vigor that it makes it readily apparent that the people behind this project are having as much fun slaughtering their cast as we as viewers get from watching them die. In a way, it's like this show's animators were a part of the noble class themselves, as they hyper-fixate on bringing these death sequences to life. Sadly, when no one is being turned into blood confetti, the actual quality of the animation drops off significantly. Stiff body motion. Lazily panning across flat landscapes. Shading devoid of effort or care. Scene compositions setup with zero creative foresight; all of it expressed with complete apathy. As if it was an impatient child twiddling its thumbs waiting for the director to give it the green-light for the next fight sequence or public execution to occur.

The same also applied to the soundtrack which was painfully uninspired. Tunes humming along without an inkling of interest shining through. A type of "pretending to care" in the way the orchestrations felt oddly familiar-sounding to many things heard in the past. But unlike the animation department, the disinterest expressed here was actually surprising once you discuss the person responsible for the bringing it together. Taku Iwasaki is not an amateur. This is a man with years under his belt. Why this wasn't audibly expressed was a bit perplexing, but then again, this is coming from a show named "Akame" ga Kill, where the titular character only gets 5 episodes worth of screentime. They must have been fans of The Legend of "Zelda" games to come up with such an absurd name choice.

The moment you start trying to "figure out" AGK's issues is the moment you're "doing it wrong," so let's proceed to dispell that idea right now by asking the impossible question: what the "purpose" behind this wonderful work of artistic vandalism was.

So what was it about? An active effort to discuss subserviency in society? The oppressive consequence that occurs when "absolute power corrupts absolutely?" A tale of personal ideals clashing, resulting in bloody politics? A sobering story of discrimination?... Well, honestly speaking, no. It was about none of that. Overthinking anything that AGK does would be no different than waxing philosophical for the reason behind Patrick Star's Hawaiian shorts. There's no pretense behind AGK's actions, and as long as the viewer doesn't graft any grandiose ideas onto it, it could be enjoyed for what it truly is: schlocky, over-the-top deaths with shounen characters that had the stylistic sensibilities of a seinen but the emotional authority of a 15-year-old's wet dream.

And you know what? That's just fine. I sure had fun watching it. A silly thing, flailing about with no sense of purpose or integrity. A good ole dumb time to be had, IQ-reducing, but worth every popped brain cell.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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