Akame ga Kill is a situation where the show... abuses a bit too much of it and reached a point where the show lost itself on the overuse of deaths and violent scenes along with the fast pace on the storyline and, in the end, its potential was gone.
Akame ga Kill is an shounen, action, adventure anime (and it does have comedy too even if it was out of place sometimes) made by the studio White Fox, an adaptation of the manga created by Takahiro. and it aired last year, containing 24 episodes.
Akame ga Kill involves the story around Tatsumi, the main character, who left his village in order to travel to the Empire and go to the capital to make sure he can get money and save people from the place he lives. What he doesn't expect is that the capital is a terrible and corrupted place, especially with this old bastard known as the Prime Minister, manipulating the Emperor, who is still a child.
Tatsumi eventually became another victim of that corruption but then, he got saved by the assassin group called Night Raid, who decided to recruit him to the group, and then the journey starts with them.
Soooo, basically, what to expect of this anime? Well, expect a lot of fights, action and deaths, and when I say that, I do guarantee that NOT EVEN the good characters are safe on these series, almost everyone there could pretty much die (and be sure that you won't be spoiled, or then it will just ruin everything if you decide to search anything related to Akame).
It's probably one of the charms behind Akame ga Kill. It felt like something refreshing to watch (I sounded like some creepy guy or a sadist by saying that), since some of the popular well known shounens don't really kill their characters and they don't have such a hard time.
And the series even gave a hint behind those possible deaths, since the assassins on the series use weapons called Teigus (Imperial Arms).
You can expect not only equipments, armor, weapons but also living creatures or organic teigus and some of these weapons were made by remains of Danger Beasts (who are creatures in Akame's world), and a form of magic was used to create them, not to mention that it was created by instructions of the First Emperor, scared by the fall of the Empire.
What is that hint and the thing behind the teigus?
"If two users of Teigu were to fight each other, one of them is guaranteed to die."
That "rule" basically made it clear why many deaths could potentially happen. You know, when those things started to happen after the first fights, there was that shock factor involving how the creator of that story had the guts and wasn't afraid to kill and remove almost anyone.
And when I started, it was really nice to see how Akame ga Kill made me get worried about some characters (not everybody though), even on the bad side. It's what I love.. and hate on the series too. I mean, if you enjoyed the series and you were following it weekly (or monthly if you read the manga), you won't be feeling so secure regarding the characters that you like so much, and that feeling given by the story was something interesting since it involved both sides.
BUT at the same time, you are going to miss characters who got killed, not that I'm bashing Akame ga Kill on something like that, it's the feeling for your favorite characters which you won't see anymore, that's understandable. What I will criticize IS that, after a certain point, some deaths weren't really well made, they were not executed properly, character development is important, screen time too, it makes you care and get those feels for a character, get attached to them and see their relevance on the series.
Akame ga Kill has a serious problem on these two elements that I mentioned regarding some characters, and it looked like some deaths, right after the first character who got killed in the series, were right there just for the shock factor almost every time, and throwing emotional or sad music randomly for someone who didn't have much screen time or development doesn't help much; there were a few deaths who were actually sad.
Also, that rule of one person with Teigus certainly going to die is soooo unforgiving. It's... a good and bad thing at the same time on AgK. The way that the story was literally following that pattern of Teigu users fighting caused those deaths that I mentioned, so yeah, some of the strong and weak points on the series involves that rule too.
Animation is.. okay, it got some good moments and it does get better on fights. I think the budget wasn't there that much though and it looked like that they invested A LOT MORE on the last episodes.. a decision that wasn't the smartest one out there since the last episodes had bigger flaws. I did like some of the character designs though, they were cool actually.
And guess what, THE EPISODES ARE UNCENSORED, so you can get some solid action scenes and understand what's happening on each fight happening on the series. Watching the series without the glorious censorship during an era of animes getting destroyed by censorship when they aired felt really good. It looked like the middle finger was being exposed to the censorship without giving a fuck (what did i just say). But hey that's just what was available for us...
After you get more informations about the series, the truth regarding censorship is exposed.
In Japan, Akame ga Kill was censored (there were even some censorship comparisons, and there were some weird things like it happened on Tokyo Ghoul and Terra Formars). You can imagine it was one of the main reasons that the anime didn't have success on Japan, and there were poor sales on the BDs too.
Okay, now I must talk about the world portrayed there. You probably heard of the series when the anime was airing and probably heard of the controversial stuff behind it.
"What do you mean by controversy"
Let's say that... Akame ga Kill has a lot of violent stuff and sometimes it tries a bit too hard to be dark. Come on, we already know the world here is evil, corrupt and it's terrible for everyone who lives there, we get it. Some people would even go "OH HEY THAT CRAP IS TOO EDGY FOR ME".
I can agree that Akame ga Kill tried a bit too hard on the violence and you would be like "that's going a bit too far " or "why is that here, that's just free and worthless violence". I can understand and see why people say the series tries too hard to be edgy and dark (it's even one of the reasons why you will find out haters of the series out there, especially on MAL too), although I think that the series doesn't try THAT much unlike other animes with a lot of gore scenes out there, but I must agree that there are some scenes who felt like they were random or just thrown there.
And no, the series isn't deep or mature for trying to setup a dark theme and many gore scenes, it's not unique, it's just a shounen like many others despite making use of some factors that were not so explored on some shounens like making sure almost nobody is safe there.
Talking about the characters, first of all, an advice: do not research anything about them, you may potentially get huge spoilers. Soooo, we got that group, Night Raid, a bunch of assassins trying to make justice against the Empire by getting rid from their members and also kill the typical cliche and generic bad guys, assassins or psychopaths. There are some interesting characters but there are also the generic ones, or even the characters who did not have enough time to be on that story so we couldn't get to know more about them.
On night raid we got members like, Tatsumi, Akame, Leone, Lubbock, Bulat (Aniki), Mine, Sheele, Najenda and after some time on the anime, there are two new Night Raid members, Chelsea and Susanoo. Night Raid wants to cleanse the capital as the good guys on the story, BUT the thing is that some of the members are wanted dead on the Empire, because of the murders and the fact that some people from Night Raid actually worked for the Empire before realizing that it was corrupted. Even though they want to get rid of the corruption and the evil stuff from the empire, and they are shown as the bad guy, stuff like murders and killing people come to play. I even remember a dialogue of the series where Tatsumi says that they are heroes doing justice and Sheele just says that they aren't doing nice stuff and they are just assassins doing their job.
It was an interesting dialogue since it brought Tatsumi to the reality of that world, it exposed to him what would be coming after he left his village, it showed to him that not everything would be the paradise and the nice thing that he imagined by working to them, it wasn't that hero complex thing that he thought Night Raid was and it showed the honesty from some assassins of NR.
Well, now that I talked about the NR, and the bad people (the Minister and the Emperor), we have another group, which was an interesting one but unfortunately didn't get much development and some characters did not get more time on the animation. Jaegers, the police squad working for the Empire and it's goal is to get rid of Night Raid, and yeah, they are also Teigu users... their members are Wave, Ran, Kurome, Dr. Stylish, Seryuu, Bols and Esdeath.
The interesting detail about the Jaegers is that, even though they work for the dark side of the series, not every member is actually that crazy, evil or fucked up (unless Seryuu is mentioned, she is a crazy psycho and there is a reason why she is probably the most hated character of the series with her twisted concepts involving what is justice in her point of view, pretty much a victim of the Empire's system on Akame ga Kill) and even some characters know what they are doing is clearly wrong, like on Bols's situation.
Wave and Ran are examples of characters who are not exactly the bad guys that you would typically see, but unfortunately they weren't explored on the series, and Wave is a great example of another character who got butchered and ruined on an anime adaptation again.
Now I will talk about Esdeath, the leader of the Jaegers under the orders of the Prime Minister. Esdeath is actually the main villain on the series, one of the reasons why I had to mention her here,, she is a high-ranking general of the Empire and through the anime, it shows how much she is broken beyond belief on her strength/ power and, besides that, Esdeath is sadist, evil, she enjoys stuff like murder and torture, she doesn't have empathy for people who are considered weak by her, since she lived on that philosophy of "only the strongest ones survive". But she is not a completely heartless monster, I mean, she does cares about her comrades, she adores them, she even comfort her comrades if they go through some pain or hard time. Also, Esdeath has another thing that I didn't mention before... although she does a lot of twisted things, she is actually looking for love.
As you can see, Esdeath is probably one of the interesting characters on the series and the anime shows why she is so popular on the series and loved by many fans and followers of Akame ga Kill. She is not particularly one of the best villains ever though.
Soundtrack is solid and enjoyable, the openings and the endings are really good, especially the first ones, the original soundtrack does fit well on the series, and there are some emotional and epic songs on important scenes. It's not something amazing, incredible or 10 out of 10, but hey it does the job. Voice actors did also do a good job on their characters.
Don't expect the series to be incredible, I kinda fell for the hype when it came out.
I must admit, at the start of the animation I was enjoying this show a lot, then later I saw its flaws and main problems, but I must say that I did still have a really fun time with the anime until the end of episode 19.
Now, for the last episodes... the anime original content showed up and it gave a lot of disappointment in the ending since the story was already fast paced and a lot of events would be happening on many episodes, but then the last ones with that alternative route (not following the manga) felt like a roller coaster.
Because of that fast pace, problems regarding character development and screen time for them showed up even MORE than before and it ruined the story. So many things would be happening so fast (even to a point where some of the craziest asspulls ever seen in a long time happened and the logic behind some events just wasn't there, especially on Akame's trump card) that even Sonic would be jealous, you know, GOTTA GO FAST.
There were a few good things, although almost none on the last episode... anyway, the ending of the anime was disappointing.
Is it worth watching or checking out? I would say that Akame ga Kill isn't really made for everyone. You can maybe check it out and see if you like it, but after some experiences, it's not really an anime that I would recommend to many people out there, because of the content and the settings I mentioned about it and especially the last episodes.
