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.

I watched the anime, it was an easy watch, but was intrigued to know the anime had an original ending and even more to know the manga had already ended sometime after. So I dived into the manga... to find out it it barely manages to be above average.

Anyway, this is my review for the whole manga:

.::Story::.
The goal from the protagonist from the very start is pretty clear, and it stays sharp focused on it till the end: destroy the evil empire. At first its very entertaining, but as it goes on, it feels pretty stale as there aren't much surprises in this department. ... The world building is also pretty choppy. As for the battle systems, the gimmick for this manga series are Teigus, which have all kind of powers that grant the user whatever BS the chapter needs, and overall are pretty formulaic with little thought: new enemy appears with a new Teigu, they battle, then they show some random power up or hidden ability we never heard of, it things gets interesting the second player might show some random power up/hidden ability and someone is dead.
And thats something else, characters do die in the manga, all the time, and also new characters are added from time to time to keep things fresh, which can be good or bad or both.

.::Characters::.
Most characters are darn right flat, why? evil guys are evil just for the sake of being evil, good guys will be good guys because cliches reasons. Most of them end the same way they start or are given subtle developments: mostly Tatsumi... which isn't the titular hero, and also Wave, who is his rival late in the series, Akame which is actually the titular hero doesn't really stand out aside from her design.
The most flawed character might be the biggest boss: Esdeath, she is powerful for the sake of being powerful, it grows so flawed, than her powers just become a plot device on itself, but not only that, she is also insanely fast, strong and witted and all that because... reasons. She had some glimpses of character development, but were quickly discarded.

.::Artwork::.
This might be the strongest suit coming from this manga. Battles are really well drawn, and you can follow the action pretty easily. Almost every character is pretty unique in design and is easy to have a favorite or favorites in that regard. The gore is well presented with out going all the way to a seinen level.

.::Overall entertainment::.
Despite all this, the manga can be a good time, it's fast paced has good artwork, dialogues are simple enough to read fast but not simple enough to be dumb. There are some ships here and there and they actually go through with it. It might overstate its welcome with 15 volumes, but any more than that and it would have reeked of it's stale formula in storytelling.

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.