Akumetsu

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Alternative Titles

Japanese: アクメツ

Information

Type: Manga

Volumes: 18

Chapters: 162

Status: Finished

Published: Oct 2002 to Apr 6, 2006

Genres: Action, Drama, Suspense

Themes: Detective, Psychological

Demographic: Shounen

Serialization: Shounen Champion (Weekly)

Authors: Tabata, Yoshiaki (Story), Yugo, Yuuki (Art)

Statistics

Score: 8.15¹ (scored by 21,695 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #483²

² based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #229

Members: 63,135

Favorites: 1,852

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Wikipedia

8.15

Ranked #483Popularity #229Members 63,135

MangaShounen Champion (Weekly)Tabata, Yoshiaki (Story), Yugo, Yuuki (Art)

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Volumes: /18

Chapters: /162

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Synopsis

Due to an economic downturn plaguing Japan, Shiina Nagasawa decides to take up prostitution as a means to support her family after her father goes bankrupt. To this end, she attends a party where the high-profile government members in attendance are all eager to satisfy their carnal desires.

As Shiina degrades herself, an intruder wearing an exotic mask crashes the party, and she recognizes him as her classmate Shou Hazama. Claiming to be "Akumetsu," he interrogates Japan's former finance minister about all the evil deeds the other has committed. He then proceeds to brutally murder the man and drag his body to the lobby. When Akumetsu is shot, he somehow blows his own head off afterward.

Still in disbelief, Shiina manages to go to school the next day. But in a shocking turn of events, Shou Hazama is there to greet her in the classroom. How is he alive, and what does he intend to do next?

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Characters

Hazama, Shou

Main

Katsuragi, Keiichi

Supporting

Mamoru, Yamada

Supporting

Shouzou, Iwasaki

Supporting

Iwata, Masami

Supporting

Murase, Shintarou

Supporting

Nagasawa, Shiina

Supporting

Kuronuma

Supporting

Horikiri, Hideki

Supporting

Yaguchi, Osamu

Supporting

More reviewsReviews

Dec 12, 2009

Quizerno

Recommended

To me. Akumetsu is everything Death Note should have been (in terms of Death Note's story). I hope I haven't angered anyone by saying that. I consider Akumetsu's story-telling to be wonderful.

The entire philosophy of "What is good? What is evil?" is something that alot of series integrate into their plot.

And so Akumetsu might seem to follow that, it takes a contemporary approach. Featuring science-fiction as opposed to magic.

Story: The details keeps you intrigued. They can be essentially divided into three parts that are all developed as the story progresses.
1. Akumetsu actions and political background of Japan
2. The people trying to understand Akumetsu and/or stop ...

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Oct 29, 2014

butako

Recommended

I started off really liking this manga and as it progressed, it became a little stagnant. It can become a little boring towards the middle as some of the mini-stories can be repetitive. But, I always feel the ending can either make or break something and in this case, it DEFINITELY made the manga.. Those who have not stuck to the end don't deserve to rate the manga. The final chapters leading up to the end were so dramatic and tense. Although the end was rather abrupt, I felt it was satisfactory as a conclusion that left little loose strings and was impactful. That being ... said, the story is far from perfect and there are some characters that were introduced then shoved aside without much development (eg. the girl that shou may have liked in the beginning chapters). Now for he actual breakdown of each of the categories:

art: 9/10
The art style is stylized and expressive. It conveys the emotions of the characters quite well and is rather good at causing moments of extreme epicness. The artist did a good job in expressing the ugliness of the "evil" through his drawings. I felt a true sense of disgust every time I looked at them. While the literal interpretation that evil is ugly might be over powering in other manga, it works well in this story where evil is shown to be so oppressive and overwhelming. Though, the art isn't especially impressive and detailed, it is well drawn and creative in how showing how the story is told.

story: 8/10
The story was rather simple and straightforward but had depth at the same time. It did not try to convince the reader that what the "hero" was doing was undeniably right. The actions of Akumetsu are questionable at best and downright immoral at worst. Though there was a "good" side and "bad" side, the story gave the reader room to ponder the actions of the akumetsu. It allowed us to understand nothing is inherently evil, but will undoubtedly become corrupted with time. There some flaws and issues that I could pick out throughout manga but non that are big enough that would ruin the manga. As I mentioned before, the ending though abrupt was good enough to give a feeling of completion. The story understands that there is no end all solution for "evil" and I'm glad that they didn't pull out some bullshit method to end all evil (I'm looking at you Code Geass R2).

character(s): 7/10
I felt this was the weakest part of the manga. Aside from the main character, the side characters get little if any development. They felt quite two-dimensional and they all lacked personality. An exception might be Katsuragi. Although he character wasn't even alive during the timeline of the manga, the chapters dedicated to him really fleshed out his character as well as the reason for Akumetsu's actions. I actually felt sorry that he had to die. Putting secondary characters aside, the main character was quite delightful and unique to learn about in the story. The reason I'm still giving this section a good rating is because the manga is supposed to be focused on the point of view of Akumetsu as a man that tries to take on evil by himself. The problem is when he begins relying on the power of the side characters in the end. Without much development of the secondary characters, their collaboration felt somewhat hollow. That being said, the finale was still nothing short of gratifying.

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Nov 13, 2014

Asfaria

Mixed Feelings

Spoiler

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

Akumetsu is a story of one man. And a horde of his look-alikes who collectively become known as Akumetsu. They are a terrorist group who kill off evil politicians and people ruining the country of Japan and causing it to accumulate around 7 trillion in national debt. After an Akumetsu kills his target, he dies as well.

The story is pretty simple and is mainly divided into arcs centering around Akumetsu focusing on a certain target and killing that target (pretty much always an old, corrupt, male politician) in a flashy way so that more and more people come to know of them ... and they can be one step closer to fixing the country. The story can be a little repetitive at times though it always spices up each arc with some new feature (car chase, barricading his target in a room with him, etc.) Akumetsu use the idea of one man, one kill. After they kill an evil person, they die as well because the act of killing is evil in and of itself.

As far as characters go, Akumetsu is about the only important one. Side characters, even if they seem like they will be important at first maybe as a rival to Akumetsu or ally, never become important whatsoever. At most they will pop up from time to time to show how someone with conflicting views on Akumetsu's approach to evil is reacting. The targeted people in each arc get more time spent being focused on than any character who actually survives for more than one arc. Akumetsu, as is shown early on to the reader, is a high school boy named Shou. He is a goofy, geeky, and extremely likable boy that no one around him would ever expect to be a murderer. He is really the only important character overall and gets plenty of development. Unfortunately he suffers from many problems with the biggest problem for me being that his backstory and how Akumetsu began and functions as an organization doesn't even get explained until about 100 chapters into the story. While it does work kind of well on keeping you wanting to know more about the story, that is a huge part of the story and really the only thing that wasn't made clear about how the story would go from early on. The Akumetsu are perfect at nearly everything they do. This relieves any tension the reader has that Akumetsu may fail (aside from only two parts of the story where things don't go as planned). This does still leave you wondering how Akumetsu will actually murder his target which is the main appeal of the story.

As for the art, I'm very mixed on my opinion of it. While it does look very well done for a weekly manga, it suffers from one big problem. It stereotypes things. The evil targets of Akumetsu are always old, disgusting men. Even the one time high school kids are shown shortly to have different views than everyone else, they are shown as disgusting looking people. The good people are not ugly whether they are old or not. However I did like how most of the evil people are created after real people who do look somewhat similar to their manga counterparts (albeit less over-the-top ugly). Still, the art has a very nice look to it aside from this with a style that reminds me more of western superhero comics than Japanese manga. It's got a bit of Batman-like style if you took the superpowered villains out of Batman and replaced them with corrupt politicians.

Despite my problems with Akumetsu, I did enjoy it. It can be very wordy at times about how politics work, and for someone who's not from Japan, can be confusing at times. Still, I found it read fairly quickly and was quite enjoyable especially during the more action packed scenes. In the end, it was well worth the read. Especially if you are interested in political or superhero stories, I recommend reading Akumetsu. Still, if you are looking for a story with a great character cast or an easy-to-understand conflict (one that doesn't involve complicated political views), then I would not recommend it.

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