Zero is set months before the main series, following Akame’s journey as an assassin working for the Empire. The story is a collection of mini assassination arcs and lots of fighting, it does not have an interesting story, and the execution is hit or miss. You honestly do not even need to read Zero at all to understand Akame Ga Kill's story. The biggest benefit of Zero is that it strengthens Akame's character, giving her more characterization and depth as you start the main manga.
Much of Zero feels somewhat like a time waster, Takehiro seems to have gotten horny while writing it so he decided to add lots of fanservice and tetherball sized breasts on the abundance of female characters, as they get brutally slaughtered.
While the art is solid and the fight choreography flows well, the fights have no lasting impact mainly because the characters are worthless. A lot of them have a glaring flaw of seemingly only having a single personality trait. It may seem like an exaggeration, but it's honestly the case. Takehiro wishes to keep up the theme of having characters with no plot armor, lots of characters continue to die, but they do not receive much characterization or screen time before they die. Akame and her sister Kurome are the only character that have any important relevance to the story.
The characters are very cartoon like, they do not fit in the type of story that the Akame Ga Kill is going for. Guy is borderline molester wearing power range like suit to dig underground, Green is that glasses wearing virgin with an armpit fetish while the Oarburgh clan are the worst offenders. They are the main antagonists and, are quite literally a group of powerful, men hating, horny, lesbians, and a majority use maid outfits as their battle attire. This kinda of absurd idea would work in a series like Black Lagoon, but within Akame Ga Kill's world and tone it feels somewhat out of place.
The art style changes as time goes on, with characters at the begging having reasonable sized breasts and by the end Leone has breasts bigger than her entire head. I do not mind fan service, authors should be allowed to draw whatever females however they wish. But it's important for an author to know when to hold back, when you have giant swinging breasts while a character gets sliced in half and it's supposed to be an emotional scene? When the author doesn't show any self respect to such absurdity, why should the reader?
So is Akame Ga Kill Zero worth reading? If you're an immense fan of the series and wish to see some solid fights it is worth it. However this manga is ultimately a time waster and in the end feels pretty forgettable. I am giving it the final score of 5/10.
