spoilers for Akame ga Kill Akame ga Kill is an endearing case of stupidity and an inability to take itself seriously when it needs to while taking itself seriously when it shouldnt. Its far too edgy for its own good and its a riot to indulge in thanks in no small part to its incompetence blatant spelling out of already black and white matters and its tonal incoherence...or at least it starts that way. It then grows into a more generic and edgy anime that tries and largely fails to wring intended emotions out of us with mostly generic and bad characters equally badly inserted humor and improper backstory dumps that are either too early and never reinforced or too late and never reinforced. Alright so just how bad can it really be with all of that said? Is it some part of Akame ga Kills plan to kill our brain cells until all we can say is ga? Well with that little conspiracy theory out of the way lets find out shall we? There is something to be said when your first episode is so rushed edgy and tonally incomprehensible that it automatically informs you that this show is not gonna be pleasant. I mean the first episode is schlock at its finest hence my accusations at the preamble. I mean it doesnt even name a single location and in fact not a single location in this series has a proper name which really sells how horrific the worldbuilding for this show really is. After Tatsumi is roped into joining Night Raid episodes 28 are for most part asshole of the week type episodes at least until two of its members die: Sheele in episode 6 and Bulat in episode 8. It is here that we encounter a few more problems one of which sorta surfaced in episode 1 but couldve been rectified. First the Danger Beasts. We know not of much of the species present here and there are no real defined danger tiers. Theyre just there for people to kill while being acknowledged as powerful beings. Second and thankfully this goes away but this section of the series is so blatant about being black and white that when a terrible person is having a villain monologue the anime decides to visualize them as literal monsters because the audience of gore and boobloving 14yearolds apparently needs to be blatantly told that these awful people are monsters. Subtlety its what this series rarely has. Thirdly the goddamn toneshift comedy moments. Episode 1 is a major example of this with the show constantly cutting its serious or even sad mood short in order for a quick unfunny gag and then it cuts back. Its really jarring and tonally incomprehensible at times. Finally and this is the most pervasive and problemencompassing of the issues the Imperial arms. There are 48 of them yet we never see even half of them and for some reason none of these can be recreated with modern day AGK technology and magic because of course a magic gun cant be manufactured that would make sense and they each have hidden abilities that are often conveniently pulled out of a characters ass especially Akames from episode 24 which somehow doesnt poison her like it does for anyone else who gets cut Esdeaths from episode 21 which freezes time for an unknown amount of time for the will of the writers to screw her or someone else over and Tatsumis golden Incursio form from episode 23. Dont get me started on Mines Pumpkin Pinch which almost always occurs when she decides that shes in a pinch without actually being in one because outnumbered automatically equals pinch. Also the Imperial Arms are only compatible with a user if said user has a great first impression of it which is insanely dumb since that means the only way for it to choose you is for you to geek out over it and nothing else. And if you allow me to jump ahead for a bit episode 23 introduces an asspull in which there were this secret Divine Imperial Arms all along jacking up the count from 48 to 49 and being strong enough to fuck over the unnamed city you heard me. Well return to this travesty moment in a bit since we gotta move on with the actual plot of the series which is also a travesty. Episodes 919 are effectively part 2 of the show with part 1 being what i described earlier and part 3 being...well get there. This new part brings out a new organization by this evil empire that Night Raid has fought against called the Jaegers comprising of 7 powerful members of the Capital most notably the brutal ice wielder Esdeath. Tatsumi gets his ass captured escapes and then Dr. Stylish like an Idiot leads an assault on Night Raid with his bio army not even informing or bringing along the other Jaegers like a smart member would do and of course after Susanoo is introduced to fight alongside Night Raid Stylish gets his ass killed by Akame. Then after Chelsea comes in and both she and Susanoo are indoctrinated into the group and Tatsumi and Esdeath are teleported to and back from an island we get Kuromes ability to revive fallen members and danger beasts and she couldve brought Chelsea and Bulat back to really hamstring our heroes but she isnt that smart and both Bols and Chelsea die. Then the 4 Kouken Temple Rakshasa demons 3 of which are killed by Lubbock in the exact same episode theyre introduced which is just plain pathetic. I mean the Garou Knights from Fairy Tail were a more credible threat than these guys at least the Garou Knights lasted for more than one episode. The final demon member gets killed by Tatsumi really easily in the next episode in the anime not in the manga and Seryuu is killed. Now for the final 5 episodes: the anime original episodes. Here both groups are brought down to 2 living members with the deaths of everyone except: Akame Najenda Wave and Run. Even main character Tatsumi dies which is rare. That guy who teleported Tatsumi and Esdeath his name is Shura and Lubbock kill each other after a Night Raid Plan goes wrong and Tatsumi is captured by Budou who kills and is killed by Mine and Susanoo sacrifices himself against Esdeath to get everyone including Tatsumi out of a wrecked colosseum. Akame and Kurome duke it out Kurome apparently is slowly dying from the drugs she was injected in when she was a kid and she still didnt try to summon anyone from Night Raid to really torment Akame in battle like a smart wielder of her weapon would do in her situation and then that new Imperial Arms appears with the young boy emperor using it to wreck everything in episode 23 where the story takes one final plunge from awful to rock bottom. Then Akame and Esdeath duke it out with asspulls aplenty and then we actually...get a satisfying finale. I mean it when I say that the finale to this series is genuinely good at least the second half of it after the whole Akame vs Esdeath fiasco. The horrible prime minister who made the empire toxic ended up getting his head smashed by Leone who get shot a bunch of times by him Leone says goodbye goes back to her now happy city or something we dont know the name or even if its a city town or village and the dies there while knowing the difference her and her groups efforts made and the empire gets a new mode of government with both main groups Jaegers and Night Raid or whats left of them dissolve and join together except Akame and Najenda says one last goodbye to the already dead Lubbock carrying his headband. Despite the idiotic final fight and the edgy and even more idiotic nature of the series the finale is genuinely satisfying and sweet which is far more than I can say for any anime of or near Akame ga Kills admittedly low caliber. A majority of the characters in Akame ga Kill barely do anything to avoid being totally onedimensional especially our protagonists and a lot of them do incredibly stupid things including my Dr.Stylish and Kurome examples from earlier. Another problem with these characters is that backstories are handled horrendously. They are often used as death flags like with Bulat and Bols in which they die either the same episode or the next episode afterwards almost never actually animated since we either see them explain it with no flashback footage or theyre so short that they only last up to 25 with little animation with the only exceptions being Sheeles Akames Kuromes Najendas and Esdeaths backstories 2 of which are mainly done in the episode Kurome dies where the backstories of both her and Akame are fully shown instead of partially shown and the rest barring Najendas never really being reinforced except at one key moment with no better example than MInes generic raised and bullied in the slums backstory that has no remote elaboration on anything like why she joined Night Raid. Its bad enough that one of these backstories are used for episode I die in scenarios in which we never really got to connect with a character and see many facets of him/her and its bad enough that some of them like Wave and Lubbock dont even have backstories but some are down with literally no provocation or narrative reason like Leones and Mines until MInes gets reinforced in episode 19 so that she can kill Seryuu. In fact I cant even remember Leones backstory just the fact that she has one. The protagonists of the series Night Raid are pretty terrible and largely generic and its pretty sad when most of the notable villains are better written and more likable than them. Lets start with Tatsumi. In the beginning he an unlikeable and pompous idiot and through development he becomes a very very generic protagonist. Bulat his bro has 2 traits: manly and gay thats all there is to him aside from his death flag backstory. The two have a brotherly dynamic akin to Simon and Kamina frkm Gurren Lagann and it lasts an eerily similar amount of time as Simons and Kaminas with eerily similar impacts to their respective MCs except Simon and Kamina are legendary characters while these two just suck. Akame is one of the better protagonist though all she amounts to is an edgier discount Saber with a twisted poison weapon. Lubbock is a generic badass pervert who manages to get the most amount of important kills next to Akame now that I think about it. Sheele is a typical hot clumsy who is more interesting due to her also being a savant in killing people and Leone is the energetic fanservice tease. Now Mine...where do we begin with her... Mine is the my most hated character in this show by a gigantic margin one of the worst Tsunderes in history and one of my most hated characters in fiction up there with the likes of Suzaku Kururugi from Code Geass and Shin Asuka from Gundam SEED Destiny I am not kidding here. Her levels of hypocrisy are unmatched in this show her bitchy and even lethal attitude and actions towards Tatsumi is infuriating to the point where I nearly dropped the show because of her on multiple occasions and by the end she just becomes a by the numbers tsundere in all aspects. There is literally nothing good I can say about this character except that Im glad the show killed her off. Fuck Mine and everything about her Chelsea conversely is my favorite character in large part due to how she manages to aggravate Mine and the fact that she has lollipops. Shes a bit harder for me to define in a singular characteristic but shes very playful cold and somber all at once thanks in no small part due to her backstory that is unseen of her previous team dying in front of her. Susanoo is very picky about details and is simply the stoic cool guy that has literally every single convenient housekeeping trait a woman wants in a man: the perfect husbando if you will which is the antithesis of Sheeles character. Najenda is simply a military leader who kicks the ass of anyone who offends her. That wraps up the Night Raid members now for the Jaegers...and everyone else...shit. Esdeath is a hot powerful yandere sadist who has this survival of the fittest mentality. Refreshingly she also feels great pity for any comrade who dies and often leaves a few people alive in hopes that theyll get stronger in order to provide a greater challenge for her since shes a blood knight. Unfortunately the filler episodes betray her character big time by making her only the bare bones version of what I described with none of the added remorse and illintended mercy I mentioned prior. Wave is basically Tatsumi but better in every way imaginable including fashion sense hair and Imperial Arms so we dont really need to go over him and his lack of backstory. Kurome is a more crazed likelier than Akame is and she also really really wants to be the one to kill her. SHes also dying from the drugs injected into her in her backstory that made her a better assassin which wasnt brought up or remotely hinted at until episode 20. Run was a teacher until his students died in which he decided to take the Suzaku Kururugi route of trying to change the government without actually doing anything other than becoming a soldier in their ranks and hes a very suspicious and uninteresting character. I cant really remember much about him other than his backstory methods and angel wing Imperial Arms. Skipping Dr.Stylish because all he is is a crazed and stupid mad scientist who really likes when things are stylish. Bols is probably the best of the bunch. His intimidating mask is to cover up how he is insanely shy to the point of not wanting to show his face until Esdeath takes the mask off and makes him eat with the very welcoming Jaegers in probably the most heartwarming scene of the show. He even has a wife and kid whom he communicates within an adorable and actually real manner. He basically carries the more human and successfully emotional side of Akame ga Kill and while the show tries to hard to be emotions it rarely works and Ill explain why later. Still while Chelsea is my favorite character here Bols is easily the best written even if that doesnt really mean much here. Im sure Im in a minority when I say that I dont hate Seryuu Ubiquitous. That doesnt mean that shes a good character but she easily couldve been. Plus I have a bias for anyone who manages to hurt or aggravate Mine consistently except Tatsumi cuz hes lame. They try to make us emotional for Seryuu and put her in a more sympathetic light despite her hypocritical knight templar tendencies but they fail miserably. They either do it too early or too late and no better example than with the death of Dr.Stylish. She didnt interact much with him but then we see her cry over his grave and have a backstory moment about how he was her patron and that he gave her multiple gun implants. If this series was written better we wouldve seen them have a really strong established connection like with Tatsumi Bulat. Her violent side is also cartoonish as hell to the point where I cant hate her reason being I can never take her seriously with those facial expressions that make Code Geass wince. I mean shark teeth? This is supposed to be taken seriously yet her face becomes the kind of expressive that feels like she belongs in a Saturday morning cartoon. But enough about her and why I cant take her seriously lets discuss the other people Prime Minister Honest why? is a manipulative fat gluttonous greedy monster as if he was the posterboy for his archetype. Though his dinner interactions with the child emperor who doesnt even have a name despite being important especially in episode 23 are genuinefeeling and nice. Shura is a typical complete monster treating peoples lives like toys and Budou is a general who randomly shows up in episode 20 while also being talked about in some of the middle episodes and hes just an OP general dude nothing more than that. Plus he a being who is supposedly stronger than even Esdeath is killed by Mine...wow. I already mentioned the 4 demon guys and Im literally not even gonna mention any of the minor characters from episode 18 or any of the guys summoned by Kurome theyre not worth mentioning whatsoever and have dreadfully dull characterization at the best of times. While this is not as well animated as say SteinsGate Studio White Fox still did a pretty good job with a lot of the animation and setpieces of Akame ga Kill even if their trademark White Fox eyes are unfortunately missing. There are some great looking setpieces like the destroyed Imperial Arms used in the background of the Akame vs Esdeath fight. There is also insanely minimal CGI which is a rarity in anime nowadays. The fights are often well animated and the different fighting styles of the weapons are all in full display from swords to gunplay to strings and what have you. Even the danger beasts look interesting to a decent extent. This isnt Fate/Zero or Unlimited Blade Works or anything but it still looks pretty good especially the Akame vs Kurome fight even if a lot of the earlier fights use the bad DBZ spam thing of characters pulling off an insanely unrealistic amount of hits with things. The OST is pretty decent with some really standout tracks like the amazing catchy Hindi track Sakaba the rusticfeeling Kinpaku or the amazing and most notable track of all: Le chant de Roma. Also the emotional Sheele OST and Yume Monogatari are just beautiful even if the show doesnt do as well in making the emotional moments work as well narratively. OP1 Skyreach by Sora Amamiya is a mostly generic OP but I always like the part right before the chorus and the final 13 or so seconds. OP2 LIAR MASK by Rika Mayama is bloody amazing and if used for a better anime that was long enough for it to feel like a journey would honestly be really gratifying and tearjerking it is that amazing even if this show is unworthy of it. Both EDs are mainly generic and not noteworthy despite trying to be emotional. The dub is pretty bad. I cannot recognize a single person in the cast list so I guess this was to be expected. Some voices work well and make certain insignificant moments better but the voices of Akame and Esdeath in particular are really not working for the characters and Akames often sounds flat as sin and some emotional moments are even ruined by the dub script and voices. Stick to sub for this one. Inevitably I was going to be really harsh on Akame ga Kill since its a pretty terrible show in and of itself. It manages to cycle through almost every single kind of bad you can think of but I could never bring myself to hate or or even truly dislike it. Youd think that I would since it has given me almost every reason to but I simply cant. The first two episodes were hilarious in how bad they were while 3 and 4 were infuriating and guess which character made them that way and nearly made me drop the show because of it. Then with aggravating and hilarious exceptions this show put me in this serene trance of mild boredom. I was never all that angry but never all that entertained just at peace in my mind while watching this show. I couldve never predicted that from a show like this and its because of that that Im not angry at it or showing no mercy even if the way I tackled the plot and characters may make you think otherwise. Akame ga Kill is an edgy silly show that tries way too hard to be cool and shocking while simultaneously trying way too hard to be emotional despite the script failing to make it work. It fails to establish a strong enough and compelling enough connection between a lot of its characters for their deaths to wring out the emotions they should like with the death of Sheele even if the music is just begging you to cry. It beseeches you to feel for these generic shounen characters in this fake seinen world but it just doesnt know how to build anything up properly nor does it even use its shounen elements properly. Its an absolute mess that was simply blessed with a good animation studio and some good music. It tries and fails at almost every opportunity rarely earning anything even if there are subtleties and sweet moments worth defending. Well with all that said this has easily been the hardest review Ive ever had to do by a gigantic margin so thank you for reading and I bid you adieu.