Right off the bat, Tatsumi says, “They don’t seem like an enemy we can easily defeat.” Thanks for the insight, buddy. We finally have Night Raid and the Jaegers clashing for the first time. How many people will die? Hm…

— I’d say one from each side sounds about right, but you never know.

— Kurome can control a giant, undead Danger Beast that can fire a blast strong enough to level a town, and yet, she’s not invincible. Maybe her weakness is that she can’t aim the damn thing, ’cause it’s just firing off into the air. Psst, dino-buddy… they’re on the ground. Kurome even commends them for dodging the attack. Uh…

— Elsewhere, Lubbock thinks to himself, “After this is over, maybe I’ll confess my feelings to [Najenda].” No, don’t say that! Do you want to get a death flag? ‘Cause that’s how you get a death flag. Joking aside… or perhaps not, the guy is afraid that Susanoo will take Najenda away from him. Hm, I don’t think you would want to date an Imperial Arms, would you?

— What’s sort of lame about Kurome’s power, however, is that our heroes just end up fighting random shit instead of the Jaegers themselves. Here, Mine is intercepted by some cowgirl. Who’s the cowgirl? Well, who even cares? She’s just someone in Kurome’s collection. Tatsumi has it even worse, because he starts off by fighting a gorilla.

— Oh, I had no idea fire was dangerous.

— Everyone’s so caught up with Kurome’s puppets that, well, the girl’s just standing there. You think she’d join in too, but nah. She instead gives us a lecture on her various puppets. But they’re puppets, they won’t matter beyond this episode, so I just don’t care. I’d rather just see the girl fight.

— Leone: “I-It’s been a while since I’ve seen the boss fight.” Yeah, why is that? You’d think the head of some secret group of assassins would, well, do more. After fifteen episodes, this is the first time we’ve seen her lift a finger.

— Kurome finally gets off her ass and lops off Leone’s left arm. If Leone was really that defenseless, I really wish she had just gone for the catgirl’s head, but I guess Leone’s too important to kill off for now. Sadly, after this attack, Kurome just returns to her perch to overlook the fight. C’mon.

— Leone’s pain tolerance must be insanely high or something, ’cause she doesn’t pass out from the pain or even scream. She just goes, “You’ve done it now!” Dammit, Bobbeh! You’ve done it now!

— The catgirl even starts grunting as her stump pulsates. I almost thought she’d regrow her arm a la Piccolo, but it turns out she’s just stopping the pain. Okay then.

— Elsewhere, Esdeath runs into a gang of thieves. Yeah, just a gang of thieves. I doubt she’ll even break a sweat.

— I like how Leone finally joins Akame in battle without missing a beat. Lopping her left arm off was nothing more than a minor distraction. Nothing really matters all that much in this story. Losing a limb doesn’t mean dick.

— Najenda kicks her opponent’s head cleanly off, but he keeps coming back for more punishment. Granted, it’s an undead puppet, but you have to wonder where all that power is coming from.

— In fact, even Susanoo loses a limb. Watching the same thing happen over and over kind of loses its impact. Hell, it started losing its impact when Leone doesn’t even seem the least bit fazed. But in any case, Susanoo regenerates his missing arm somehow. I guess it’s because he’s not really a person, so this is possible or something.

— Chelsea finally decides to take action, so she disguises herself as former allies of Kurome’s puppets, and disables them with a needle to the head… I love how she feeds us exposition as she does so. Give it up for anime, you guys. Anime as a medium has mastered the efficient use of spewing bullshit even as they fight.

— Chelsea: “Later, I’ll have the one who made me feel this way take responsibility.” Like I’ve said with Lubbock, this is how you get yourself a death flag.

— More than halfway through the episode, we finally see what happened to Wave. Apparently, Susanoo did quite a number on Tatsumi’s foil. Not too impressive there, buddy. As he gets up, though, his thoughts are consumed with Kurome. Gee, don’t tell me he’s in love with the girl. Welp, you know what to do, Tatsumi. He’s your foil, after all. You gotta match him.

— Take down one puppet and another one simply reappears to take its place. It’s the Kaiser Frog, and it has its tongue all coiled around Mine. Hm.

— The frog straight up swallows Mine. Tatsumi shows up, but he’s just yapping away about God knows what. I won’t go easy on you even if you’re Akame’s sister!!! Yo, your ally is currently being digested. You might want to get a move on.

— Buuuuut we have anime ADD, so we cut once again to another group. This time, we return to Najenda and Susanoo. The latter has tapped into his secret ability, which allows him to turn into a JRPG boss. In reality, he simply sucked the life force out of Najenda to use it as his own. And of course, this entire time, Najenda is standing on the sidelines, giving us a goddamn play-by-play of the action. Sweet. I love how the majority of these shitty shows is just the characters pulling a secret move out of their ass, and someone else explaining to us exactly what’s unfolding in front of us. Terra Formars is the biggest culprit, but Akame ga Kill! isn’t exactly far behind.

— JRPG boss Susanoo then takes out the mega-class Danger Beast in one move. Maybe Najenda should’ve used this secret ability of his a lot sooner.

— Finally, we return to Tatsumi, who can’t seem to get past the corpse of Kurome’s childhood friend. Man, our hero kind of sucks. We never see him get measurably stronger either. He’s had one power spike throughout this series, and that was when he received the Incursio. Other than that, I can’t see what Tatsumi has really taught himself.

— Luckily for the underwhelming Tatsumi, Mine somehow breaks free of the giant frog. So much for all that stomach acid. All it really does is eat away at Mine’s clothes so she can bare more skin. Oh well, I should’ve expected that.

— The episode concludes with the fight between Akame-Leone duo and Bols. Nothing much to talk about there. Bols presses his self-destruct button, but you’ll have to wait till next week to find out what happens.

— All in all, an episode full of fighting was just a cop-out, because other than Akame going against Bols, the rest of the group just fought a bunch of one-off puppets. The big showdown that we’ve been waiting for ends up being a fight against lackeys. Kurome did nothing but chop off Leone’s arm. Meh. Next week, Kurome claims she’ll just kill everyone. But I bet we’ll just get some asspull reason for her to escape. I’m thinking Bols dies, but who knows? At this slow-ass rate, we’ll just lose some limbs and nothing more.