The story follows Tatsumi, a countryside boy that travels to the capital to join the military and earn money to send to his village suffering from poverty.To him the capital is a place filled with opportunities and a happy life. But after reaching the capital he soon realizes exactly how corrupt the capital is. After certain events he is recruited by Night Raid, A group of assassins that wish to overthrow the government and end this corruption.
On the surface Akame ga Kill does seem to be different from other shounens because of it’s dark theme and excessive gore. But when you look a little bit deeper Akame ga Kill is actually pretty similar to other stereotypical shounens. You have characters always blurting out the obvious. You have the naive yet strong protagonist that powers up over time. You have almost all of the female characters fall for the protagonist. Akame ga Kill tries to be different show with it’s dark theme, but looking at it closer there isn’t much difference.
Probably one of the more prominent problems in Akame ga Kill is the comedy. The problem isn’t in the comedy itself. Apparently someone thought it was a good idea to slide in a petty joke in many emotional or dramatic scenes. The characters in the show are filled with problems too. Tatsumi isn’t really much different from other stereotypical male leads. He’s strong, kind, and has a great sense of justice. Something we see in pretty much any other male lead for a stereotypical shounen. The other characters in Night Raid don’t fare much better either. You have Mine the tsundere, Bulat the “Aniki” type. Shelle the klutz, Leone the “Onee-san” type, Lubbock the perverted guy, and Akame, the cold assassin.
Now considering the show has Akame’s name in the title. You would expect Akame to be one of the most important characters of the show. Sadly, the only background we do get to know about Akame is her backstory. She didn’t seem to have much development and emotions except for a few scenes.Almost all of the characters feel pretty one-sided and unoriginal.
The main problem with this Anime is that they go about killing off their characters, which doesn’t happen at the rate it does in the Manga. (Yes, I have read the manga). The characters don’t get nearly enough development before there death. The Anime gives them a flashback on there backstories, before sending them off to die. Which in itself can be extremely frustrating as you’re not able to build a “connection” or a liking to any of the characters.
Visually speaking, Akame ga Kill! is good enough, to say the least. However, It does rely on conventional animation when going through its action sequences so there’s nothing that makes it stand out in that aspect. Otherwise, the quality remains consistent throughout the entire series which is more than I can say for other series airing at the same time. In fact, one area that Studio White Fox have done a tremendous job on improving is rendering the background. While the manga does a decent job at framing its own surroundings, the additional detail and polish put in really elevates an aspect where the source material was lackluster.Â
The first OP of Akame ga Kill “Skyreach” is pretty average to be honest. The second OP is a big step up from the first one, however, for the most part it’s alright. Which I found to be pretty fitting to the show. Both the ending songs are pretty good,both bringing contrasts to the opening with softer, smoother tunes.The soundtrack ranged from average to pretty good. The songs in the battle scenes weren’t anything special but did there jobs of increasing the tension, but the the best parts are the piano tracks for the moments of death.The piano tracks were pretty simple and weren’t complex at all, but the tune the tracks carried brought out the tone perfectly.
The animation is mostly pretty good.I guess the best word would probably be “efficient”. Akame ga Kill looks good where it counts and it cuts back in parts that weren’t that important. And I respect that. Not every anime has a gigantic budget to work on. (Unless its from KyoAni). The fight scenes looked great and although there were a few scenes that were cut back. Those scenes were mostly negligible and not very noticable.
3 responses to “Akame ga Kill! | Disappointing”
I ended up feeling a little disappointed by Akame ga Kill as well. Partly that was my fault for going in with expectations given how many people rave about the series, but partly it was just the lack of connection with any of the characters and then not buying into the emotion as they were killed because I didn’t really care at that point. That and the sheer lengths they keep going to in order to save Tatsumi but let every other character die. Anyway, it does look good and there are some fun moments but overall I just never got into it.
[…] Otaku Central – Akame ga Kill! | Disappointing – Another favourite anime reviewer of mine dives into this hot mess of an anime, highlighting where it went wrong, particularly when compared to the manga. They’ve also highlighted another anime that they are looking forward to in here: Tenki no Ko | Expectations. […]
Probably enjoyed it a little more than you did but killing off everyone except Akame (even the MC!) was a bit much.