Akame ga Kill!

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I see that there is no review of the complete work, warning there will be spoilers.
I started this manga a while ago, the anime didn't do it justice sadly.
However the heart-wrenching story that has become one of my favorite is truly underrated.
The plot begins with a young man named Tatsumi who travels to the capital to earn riches in order to assure his village doesn't starve. He then learns how corrupted the world is when he ventures out into the capital. After a series of unfortunate events he joins a group called Night Raid. They are assassins working with the revolutionary army looking to ... take down the corrupt government running the capital. Every member in Night Raid is equipped with weapons known as Teigu, powerful relics that only the strongest warriors could wield. There are many trials and tribulations awaiting Tatsumi and Night Raid-many of them have a good amount of back story. Each coming from their own hardships-which truly made me empathize with them. Eventually there is a war and from that war rises a new kingdom bringing about peace-which made me feel happy yet sad. The things the characters had to go through to achieve this peace for all the people-inspiring yet empty.



My two favorite characters in this series were similar yet vastly different. The ones that made this story a masterpiece from my perspective were Akame and Esdese. Akame and Esdese have both gone through immense struggles but both came to two different ways of life. Esdese is yin and Akame is yang, one kills for justice but hopes to grow beyond that, one kills for self satisfaction and blood lust with no desire to change. This manga left me feeling sad, empty and having a deep admiration for Akame's resolve to keep on living and aspire to grow as an individual. On the other hand, Esdese's resolve to stay true to who she was until her last breath was remarkable. While I don't agree with her way of life, I do admire her strength and fortitude. She doesn't waiver at the face of death and embraces it-a truly wicked and beautiful character. I wish to see how the rest of Akame's life played out but perhaps the ending the author chose is the most fitting-it lets you imagine her ending.



The art was great throughout most of the manga and I thoroughly enjoyed it, a reboot of the anime likely won't happen but if it does, it will get a proper conclusion this time around.
There are a lot of heart-wrenching moments throughout this manga that made me appreciate the peaceful part of the world I am granted to live in. 10/10 for me, hope you enjoy it as much as I did-but everyone's a critic and entitled to their own opinion.

TL;DR: It's better than the anime, but not by too much. Whatever score you gave the anime, you'll likely find yourself scoring the manga 1 point higher.

This review is written from the perspective of someone who came into this manga after finishing the anime. If you're curious about weather or not to read this, then it depends on what you thought of the anime. If you thought the anime was decent but felt that it tried to be too edgy at times (especially starting from the 2/3rd mark) then you'll find the manga executes the story beats to a much better level than the anime. ... However, if you didn't enjoy the anime for reasons other than the story trying to be too edgy, then it might be best to give this a skip.

For those of you who are curious about if the anime differed from the manga, then yes it definitely did. however the story beats as a whole is basically the same with minor details being different. Some characters die, others don't, some make different decisions and some don't. That said, a lot of the major story beats are basically the same, the ending is similar (but not the same).

Now for the more in depth review:

The main thing I want to praise the manga is in it's execution. The character were better written, had more impact when things happens to them. This is the most true for the characters on the antagonist's side and is what I would say is the most important strength of the manga. That said, it's not prefect. At it's core, the story of Akame ga Kill is a Shounen series and operates almost entirely within the bounds and established tropes of the genre. That's not to say it doesn't try to differentiate itself from the other series in the genre, it does that plenty. However, for anyone who is familiar with the core tropes and stakes of the genre then there would be very little to be able to catch you by surprise. But even despite this, it manages to execute the tropes of it's genre to a decent level that even if you are fulling expecting everything that will happen, it still manages to leave an impact.

All of this is made possible because of the characters and the setting of the story. The heart of any story is it's characters and Akame ga Kill's manga does much better job of getting you invested in it's characters than the anime and this is why the manga is better executed than the anime as it gets you invested in not only the protagonists but also the antagonists. And this is why the story is able to make it's impact even though the sequence of events follow expectations.

Of course, because this review is written from the perspective of an anime watcher, it would be a crime not to comment on the art of the manga. In simple terms. it's amazing. Nothing short of breathtaking. But because of the inherit stillness of static images, many of the action sequences do feel like something's missing to me. But even despite the limitations of the medium, the art does everything in it's power to convey the motion, speed, ferocity, and power of each explosive fight though the use of it's powerful composition and detailed line work.

And now, we come to the elephant in the room: the edginess. Even if you know nothing about Akame ga Kill, it's likely that you can gather from the title alone that the story is more on the edgy side. And of course, if you've heard anything about the series, you've probably heard something about it's edginess. And if you have already seen the anime, then you know first hand of the series edginess. This is something I cannot deny. However the story uses it's edginess not just as shock value but also to further along it's themes and to tell the story it wants to tell. Are there times that the story is too edgy? yes. But there are also times where the edge is just what the story needed to drive it's emotional peg deep into you making you truly feel the feels. That's the main reason why I find the manga to be better executed than the anime. In the times where the anime gave the feeling of "edgy for edge's sake" the manga is able to make better use of it's characters and the situation to deliver the feels and the edge doesn't feel like it's there for just shock value but rather, it felt like it was there for a reason or as a natural consequence of the events leading up to it.

Finally, we get to the conclusion: should you read the manga and will you enjoy it? My answer to this question is "Probably". What do you look for in a manga? What do you look for in a story? In my opinion, Akame ga Kill executes most aspects of it's narrative to a passing degree. There's nothing about it that I would say is poorly done. That said, i cant say that it excelled in anything other than the art. There's nothing about Akame ga Kill that made made me feel "Wow" there were times where the story made me feel "Ouf". That said, it did have enough of an impact on me that the story is able to make me feel the same way the characters are feeling at times and to me, that's something that I have to give it credit on. At the end of the day, weather you'll enjoy this series or not will entirely depend on if you enjoy the battle shounen genre whole. If you enjoy shounen, you'll definitely find alot of enjoyment in Akame ga Kill. But if it's a genre that you typically avoid, then you probably wont find the series too appealing.

Spoiler-free:

Akame Ga Kill is a dark fantasy shounen battle manga that bites off more than it can chew with its ideas that leave the reader feeling unsatisfied at the end. Although the art for the fights can be gorgeous at times, the fights themselves fail to deliver on the hype. The core group has great character moments that give strong emotional payoffs throughout the course of the story, but the bloat of having such a wide cast really holds the story back. The manga’s titular character, Akame, gets a lot of the story’s spotlight, but strangely enough we mostly experience the story through the eyes ... of Tatsumi. This results in her being the “chosen one” but not narratively for the reader as we experience the story from Tatsumi’s point of view. Overall, the narrative really fails to do the heavy lifting necessary to explore its dark fantasy ideas while still having the story fill its niche of being intended for a shounen audience. It tries to do both at the same time and ends up falling flat because of it.

Spoilers:

Positives

A large and varied cast of characters with their own unique backstories and abilities
Strong art, especially when it comes to high impact moments
Interesting political drama between the various factions in the world
An interesting concept of a story

Negatives

Akame Ga Kill tries to do too much and that is where its shortcomings are exposed. The world is huge, but we see almost none of it. The cast is large, but a huge chunk of them die off without giving the reader time to build a connection to them. The fights are set up in a cool way, but they rarely last more than a few pages and leave little impact. One of the biggest flaws narratively is Akame’s murasame blade. The idea of a one hit blade on paper seems very cool, but the fights involving her feel so trivial that Akame just becomes a Mary Sue character to resolve any conflicts. The author fails to really give her any interesting fights where she is forced to really struggle, except the Wave and Esdeath ones. Speaking of Mary Sue’s, what even is Esdeath. Throughout the entire story, has she even faced any struggles really? Her ice powers can freeze time, change the weather conditions of an entire region, and create an entire ice army without showing any strain on her strength, besides comments made by her opponents. Her unlimited stamina just makes any fights she participates in feel all the more pointless as she essentially can’t lose. Funny that the only way to kill off the Mary Sue’s was to run them into each other. The moral question that was introduced much earlier on about how the nature of Night Raid meant that they existed in a moral gray zone where they had to do abhorrent things to combat those who commit even more abhorrent crimes is basically completely ignored immediately after. The villains are portrayed almost comically evil as to assuage any guilt their deaths may cause. The few members of the enemy faction, the Jaegers, that do get characterization really don’t present a compelling case to support the Empire’s side. It really doesn’t help that the characters that are supposed to represent the “good” of the Empire are either not really bad people like Wave or Kurome or just raging psychopaths like Seryu and Dr. Stylish.
At the end of the day, Akame Ga Kill really shot itself in the foot by trying to incorporate dark fantasy elements while staying within the boundaries of the shounen genre. We hear a lot about the atrocities that happen, but they are never shown, rendering them weightless. Night Raid does get some solid characterization that do make their deaths feel impactful, but contrast that with the slew of villains we meet one time and get foddered away to build up another character. Another quality that bogs it down is the predictability of the story where the outcomes of events and their consequences do not come as a surprise. In conclusion, the manga does have some interesting aspects that make it a solid read, but its clumsy storytelling and inability to really commit to telling a feel good shounen or a depressing dark fantasy leaves it feeling undercooked.