No, I finished Akame recently, and while I can’t say that it’s exactly deserving of all the praise that was heaped on it in late 2014, neither does it warrant the Sword Art level of hatred it got in due time. It is what it is, and it’s not what it isn’t… and it isn’t a whole lot of things- namely very good.
Akame takes influences from a lot of different anime- Dragon Ball Z, Neon Genesis Evangelion (Leone does the exact same animation for drinking her beer as Misato, and Allison Keith voices both, even!), Naruto, Inuyasha, a healthy dose of Sword Art Online, a dash of Kill La Kill, and basically every other shonen series in existence. In particular though, I find that Akame borrows heavily from Blood+, as well as Mirai Nikki and Fullmetal Alchemist. In fact, you could say that Akame Ga Kill is what would happen if Mirai Nikki and FMA had a baby- it would come out with a weird deformity, really wacky, tonally inconsistent, and with a few extra chromosomes… which is exactly what AGK is.
Now, I could probably talk for 10 hours about how many issues this show has with tone and characterization… but I’m gonna try to do it in 9.
If I were to describe AGK in just a few words, I would say “FMA lite with Mirai Nikki’s direction and characters.” It has similar tonal shifts to FMA; from dead serious (very literally) to stupid chibi comedy in the span of 10 seconds. A character crucial to the plot might die, and someone will drop a line like “oh well, it was a fair trade off- one of ours for one of theirs”, and then continue their meal… like someone’s death means absolutely nothing- despite the fact that most characters in the series have some major qualm about the moral righteousness of their killing duties as assassins. Also like FMA, everyone is given a very shallow, tragic backstory, but given the size of the cast and the length of the show, there’s just not enough runtime to flesh anyone out, which minimizes the impacts of deaths even further 95% of the time.
Coming back to tonal consistency; the tone in AGK is like very roughly shredded cheese on top of a dumpster salad- that is, pieces of trash bags, used toilet paper, and paper plates with old pizza cheese (and maybe another kind of cheese) stuck to it for the leaves of the lettuce. For a tastier, but perhaps less colorful simile: imagine Ergo Proxy was put into a blender: it came out nice and smooth, and homogenous. It carries the same dark and foreboding tone throughout its runtime. Akame is said dumpster salad- about as heterogeneously mixed tonally as they come; and a good ladle full of dumpster juice dressing on top for good measure.
The characters may be the best part of the show… and like the lack of stupid teenagers with superpowers in Spice and Wolf, it may be more of that lack of something in the show that’s good about it. That’s not to say the characters are good or anything, but that they could have been a whole lot worse. Nowhere in Akame do you have THAT character… you know, the loli character with huge boobs that exists only for fanservice and self insert pleasure? In fact, Akame is relatively low on fanservice in the usual sense- the fanservice is in the violence, but more on that later.
Akame herself isn’t even much of a character- particularly for a title character. Her presence is really only felt in the first handful of episodes, and then again at the end when the writer just outright stole Blood+’s climactic swordfight, but sans the meaningful drama, and tangible tension buildup between two characters we watched develop for the preceding 40 some odd episodes. She’s just kind of “there” for the bulk of the series, but this is a positive, in all honesty. Thankfully though, we never have to hear some half-baked sap pie about how she’s in love with the MC and talk about her future and what he means to her or how she’s feeling after having murdered thousands of people, or anything like that. Nah, she just kinda hangs out and eats… a lot. In fact, that’s basically how you can define the character: she kills people when necessary, and eats a lot. There were a lot of moments when I wanted the show to switch from
アカメ“が”斬る to アカメ”は”斬る。Japanese speakers- ayyyooooo.
The, hands down, two best characters in the show are easily General Esdeath (oh my, Satsuki has grown up, dyed her hair, and found a hobby in torture and murder) and Seryu Ubiquitous, who wins the LawlMartz Anime Award for “Most Anime Name”. Seriously, Esdeath is probably the second campiest character in the show, after Dr. Stylish, but her ridiculous character traits can be summed up as: “violent, but determined loving attachment”, and “murderous”. In fact, she says herself that she has only three interests: “murder, torture, and finding new methods of torture”. She adds a fourth later- the aforementioned love. This is the sum total of Esdeath, and boy does she ever live up to it. These are literally the only four things she does in the show! 10/10 characterization, positive development, and staying true to her ideals! What a woman!
If anyone could be more hardline than the infinitely badass, reskinned Satsuki Kiryuuin of AGK, it would be Seryu Ubiquitous, who somehow escaped banishment from the Shadow Realm and into an entirely new show. Honestly, Seryu Ubiquitous (yes, I’m going to keep typing her name out because it’s just THAT cool) would have been the best Yugioh villain, ever, period. She exists for one purpose: GREAT JUSTAAAAACE! She even has a chibi pet justice dog that morphs into a hulking steroid beast that eats people, and she also has all manner of gun implants inside her body, including in her stomach that she can hock up and somehow fire while talking. It’s truly a sight to behold how ridiculously over the top this character is- and on top of that, Kira Vincent-Davis absolutely MURDERS this role with a performance appropriately hammed up and oh so campy, darling on the level of Kurtwood Smith in Robocop, Tim Curry in Rocky Horror, and Nick Cage in… well, anything. Also Pegasus J Crawford. Don Patch. And DIOOOOOOO BRANDO!
Plot-wise, there’s not a whole lot to say but EDGY ALERT! You might cut your eyes on this one. The action stills and reaction shots that look like high res concept art are cool, and so are the hyper-detailed death shots, but these are highlights in an otherwise pretty dreary anime full of unimaginative, banal action. Think about that trainwreck Koutetsujou no Kabaneri, and you’ve got something close. It’s almost as though Akame Ga Kill doesn’t have an original thought in its entire body- as almost everything in it is lifted from some other anime. It’s basically a collection of setpieces, character archetypes, weapons, and scenes that were all cool or good ideas in another show and just rammed together (more of that dumpster salad. Sprinkle a little toejam on it, some dirty socks, and some moldy food for flavor). Indeed, I find that Mirai Nikki is probably the closest comparison to Akame with its completely nonsensical, crazy plot and equally absurd cast of characters. You’ve got the weirdo BDSM NiceGuy™, siblings who are trying to murder each other, a very scary lady who is super ultra strong and she’s in love with your MC, a gay dude, a gay scientist, an MC analogue who’s there to try and make you feel empathy for the bad guys, Scar from FMA, women with eyepatches, including a girl with a boob eyepatch, beast girl (for those animal fetishes), and other campy, themed villains who usually come in trios or quartets.
However, Akame prides itself on one thing, and one thing above all else: gratuitous bloody violence. Oh, and character deaths, like it’s Game of Thrones or something, but I talked about that before. Yes, Akame loves its jelly blood slowmo closeups. There are more dismemberments than Ninja Scroll, and disembowelments, decapitations, dissections, bisections, vivisections, bootlicking, cutting, snaring, crushing, slashing, slicing, whippings, beatings (including a hilarious beatdown of the MC with a plastic recorder), shootings, stabbings, and shankings galore. Yeah, that was a lot of adjectives.
However, gory, envelope pushing violence and grotesque imagery a story does not make. If you could rate quality in the amount of blood spilled, this would be an easy 10, but given the complete mess of tone from the first episode to the end, the punchless character deaths, and obsessive need to try and manipulate the audience into feeling something brings it down considerably. At least the last two episodes make up for it a little bit; they subverted my expectations almost entirely, and I was honestly rather satisfied by the ending, because it’s not something you see in every shonen battle series.
So, tl;dr
Art: Solid effort from White Fox, has some very pretty, high res stills and shots.
Sound: Kira Vincent Davis. That’s all I’ve got to say.
Characters: Transplant half of Mirai Nikki’s cast, a few from Blood+, and FMA, and you’ve got Akame Ga Kill
Story: A lot of people die in bloody messes.
Enjoyment: Much like Mirai Nikki before it, Akame is juuust far enough out there to be enjoyable if you turn your brain off and just go with the crazy.
New Chromosomes: 7
