Despite what you see in the screenshot above, I’ll have you know that Mine is a very hardcore assassin!
— You know the anime won’t be any good when its good guys are running through the woods like a bunch of Naruto characters. The only things missing are the two arms sticking out behind their them. No wait, there it is:
Like a flame decal on a Mustang, this lets you run faster! Too bad it’s one of the bad guys doing the pose. Maybe even Akame ga Kill! realizes how dumb this running animation looks. Well, that makes one of us.
— But what are we even doing out here in the woods anyway? Well, it turns out some assassins may have sniffed out Night Raid’s location. As a result, they’ll all have to die. Oh, but don’t you worry! These assassins are evil too! I mean, despite the little, black happy face you might see on the sides of their hoodies, these are all evil rapists:
Oaf: “She’s (Akame) pretty cute.”
Shortie: “Seems we can have fun, even after we kill her. Make sure you don’t wound her too badly…”
So y’see, they’re just a bunch of murderous, rapey necrophiliacs! In fact, our heroes would be doing the world a service by mercilessly killing these fools. But again, don’t make the mistake of thinking we’re the good guys! Naw man, we’re killers! Stone cold killers!
— Oh look, before the bad guys can even blink, Akame has disappeared, slit their throats, then reappeared behind them. And she still has time to make a smart-ass quip!
This may as well be Naruto!
— This is how Mine attacks her opponents. She calls her gun Pumpkin, and like the Atma Weapon of FF6 or something, it gets stronger when its wielder is in bigger trouble. I don’t think any further commentary is necessary. Hell, it’s not even the dumbest-looking thing here. After all, Sheele fights with a pair of giant scissors. Yeah, I know, I know… so did Ryuuko in Kill la Kill, but it’s different. Everything about Kill la Kill is tiny bit eccentric and a tiny bit oddball. Ryuuko eventually uses her giant scissors to cut through killer pieces of fabric and various red strings of fate. On the other hand, Sheele is just a meganneko in a Chinese dress, cutting actual murderers and rapists in half with her scissors. It’s just different. I’d just be wasting everyone’s time if I have to spell it out any further than that.
— When it’s Leone’s turn to show off, she says, “In my case, I simply turn into a beast and hit people.” That’s pretty much what this opening scene is all about. We’re not watching anything important here. The anime just feels like showing off the various different abilities of the various different assassins all at once in a very lazy, perfunctory way. Oh hey, generic assassins are attacking us. Let’s just kill them one-by-one with reckless abandon. Cool, we did it guys! High-five!
— Even the fairer sex isn’t spared!
Why does it look like she got the most painful, agonizing death of the bunch, though?
— But where’s the gratuitous rain of blood? Oh, there it is. Honestly, because of all the blood and guts, the whole thing just seems childish. It’s like, “No, we’re different from those other shounens. We’re edgy. We have a body count that goes up exponentially every week!”
— They just got done murdering a bunch of people. Evil or not, you just killed a bunch of people. Nevertheless, Bulat pays our hero a compliment, so he blushes like a little schoolboy. A-aniki noticed me! Kya~!
— Whoa, but don’t blush too hard! Later that night, Tatsumi can’t help but dream about his aniki’s proud face. Our young schoolboy’s growing up! Pretty soon, he’ll have to change those sheets every morning.
— For just a second, Tatsumi thinks of his former friends, which reminds me that he never really gave himself a chance to mourn their deaths.
— The very next day, Tatsumi has to train with Mine, but the girl is late. As such, Najenda tells our hero to go wake the tsunderekko up, but y’see, this is yet another trial for the young boy:
Clearly, Tatsumi must learn how to knock for his own good. I mean, who just barges into a young woman’s room without any notice!
— Afterwards, Tatsumi and Mine walk around the capital city, talking about how poor and downtrodden the masses are. Yeah, you’re really working my sympathies, anime. The two of them even spot a poor, innocent little girl being bullied by hoodlums in a dark alley. Hardass Mine, however, is all, “Fuck your thanks, little girl! Learn to kill!”
— Tatsumi wonders if it’s okay for the two of them to be walking about like this in broad daylight. Mine assures him it’s okay. After all, the bad guys have only spotted the four faces of Akame, Najenda, Bulat and Sheele. As a result, Tatsumi and Mine are perfectly safe. Hell, if the two of them want to talk about this subject at the top of their lungs, it’s okay too! No one eavesdrops in the capital city. Yo, we have class ’round these parts.
— So what do you guys suppose one would do with a twintailed girl in the capital city? Obviously, you eat crepes and go shopping.
— Mine blushes when the hero expresses his desire to constantly move forward… for his dead friends’ sakes! I’m sorry, but what is there to blush about here?
— Welp, enough fun and games; it’s time for the anime to swing itself back to the super serious side of the spectrum. Wouldja just look at all those public executions? Whatchu gonna do about it, hero?
— By the way, have a look at the young, naive emperor and his evil, manipulative Prime Minister:
I like how the Prime Minister’s name is Honest. Gosh, how ironic!! Before Honest sends some poor guy off to his death, however, he promises to steal and rape the guy’s wife. The anime even has to zoom in close to Honest’s face to let us see that he’s positively drooling at the thought of raping the woman. You can’t get any edgier than that!
— Anyway, after wasting 75% of the episode on stupid shit, it’s finally time for the mission-of-the-week. Najenda sends her assassins after some evil minister who likes to kidnap and beat women to death. Knowing this anime, however, they’re probably not just beating the women to death.
— As Mine takes her aim at the evil minister, Tatsumi remarks that he can feel her drive even from here. It’s emanating!
— And just like that, Mine snipes the bad guy and the mission is over… hmmm, not quite. The good guys will now have to fight off the minister’s guards.
— Oh good, more Narutards:
But we’ll leave that to the rest of the team. Meanwhile, Mine will share her past with Tatsumi. Here comes another generic backstory… Actually, the anime doesn’t even put much effort into it. She’s a halfie, and she was discriminated against. Ho-hum.
— The master guard ambush Tatsumi and Mine, forcing our hero to get his hands dirty protecting the twin-tailed tsunderekko.
— Actually, he just holds the guy in place so that Mine can take the killing shot. Oh, what trust lies between them! These two are like a match made in heaven already!
— And this is pretty much what you get:
Another fine piece of production from White Fox.
— Afterwards, the anime teases the show’s next villain, but why torture ourselves any further? Let’s just put that off till next week. All in all, another boring, uneventful episode. Just killing random people doesn’t make your story eventful. Rather, the slayings become oldhat because every single fight feels sameish.
Moe Sucks 
The AgK manga is one of my guilty pleasures, filling a hole left by the demise of Needless if anyone remembers that. It aspires to be at the ‘darker’ end of things through the ‘anyone can die’ trope and torture/gorn rather than via plot but it’s relatively inoffensive. At least the numerous main characters who are killed off stay dead, unlike many shounens.
Not sure where they are going with the anime – the ‘comedic’ elements do seem played up – for example, the whole (dear God) ‘walking in on tsundere changing blah blah’ bit was completely anime original. We’ll see what happens when we get to [spoiler] animal loli rape [/spoiler] further down the road…
Um don’t compare this to needless. Needless was pretty much like Kill La Kill but in my opinion funnier. It knew it was over the top humor.The show knew when it was poking fun at anime tropes.Hell its ending was even a punchline of a joke. Also it had a developed world where answers lead to more questions,developed characters with out generic back grounds. Finally it didn’t just throw rape and blood around. When a character in needless died it was wow I actually liked that person and wanted to get to know them more. In akame ga kill its like hey guys generic character number 5 with a generic tragic past died lets replace em with some one else. Also no a anyone can die series is Gantz there were several times where I felt like the main character would die, hell they did die once with no indication they would ever come back. The real main characters Akame and Tatsumi are fucking kill proof.
I’m not sure you needed to spoiler tag that. “Aw man, the story’s ruined forever now that I know there will be animal loli rape!”
loli raped by dog…
Thanks for clarifying…
… okay, I think making me break up into helpless laughter was probably *not* the reaction the creators had in mind for the new villain teaser there.
You will continue blogging this, won’t you?
Because there will be much more to complain in the future. =))
Unlike some borefest anime where you talked about basketball instead.
Akame ga Kill is one of the manga which is so bad so that it’s good.
Why is it bad? Well, I don’t feel anything when the good guys die…
Considering I am a somewhat sentimental person, that is really something.
B-but Naruto actually has a certain charm…Akame ga kill is just gratituous and pretty stupid too.
Does it now?
Well, I like it. But that doesn’t really matter…
I suppose it’s like when you’ve grown attached to the characters even if you know the story’s not all that good.
Surprisingly, most AGK fans I know like it for not being like Naruto or Bleach. Points being common occurance of death, females who don’t suck, & not having long dragged out fights. And funnily, assassins are supposed to behave like assassins here unlike Naruto (someone said that to me even though I don’t see anything beyond your typical shonen character who kills a lot). I prefer Feng Shen Ji over this.
WOo 2014 continue to be mind blowing in a bad way!
Spring 2014 just finished and I found with Akame ga kill a fanbase 10 times more obnoxious than ngnl and mahouka combined xD!
I don’t understand the appeal at all, I would take ngnl and even sao2 over this “thing” any day (and you know how much I dislike those 2 anime.) It’s not even pretty to look at.
At least, they don’t have a vapid pink-haired gun-wielding loli tsundere “assassin”.
I don’t think I can even watch it as a “so bad it’s good” show.
At this point, I just want to see how bad the famed animal loli rape will be and the reactions from viewers.
Manga/Anime realm, you will never cease to amaze me. I need to buy more popcorn.
It seems that a LOT of person enjoy it and hype it (both anime only watchers and manga readers, I personally never heard of it), that’s great, they got an adaptation for a manga they love.
All manga readers are saying that it will get better, I can hardly believe it seeing how they defend it, I am getting déja vu from Mahouka forums (reassuring comments for future episodes + passive aggressiveness) and we know how it turned out.
Your comments tend to have a consistent theme: other people like something bad and this really frustrates you. And while I’ll agree that this anime sucks, you gotta stop giving a shit what people think, buddy.
I think I have to apologize to those fans if that’s what the major theme of my comments seems to be^^
I am not frustrated because other people enjoy something I find to be subjectively bad. (it would be very sad lol, it’s like hating someone because he likes chocolate and not me)
I am actually glad for them. (I talked about it in the mahouka ep9 post and SAO2 ep1 post)
What frustrates me is when a show I find subjectively bad has such a huge following, they use their overwhelming majority to treat someone expressing their negative opinions like a brainless hater/troll and dismiss all genuine concerns someone could have with the mentality “the majority can’t be wrong or opposed, this anime is intelligent and perfect because we said so”.
Also when they take critism as direct attack to their person or/and with a lots of passive aggressiveness, but I already clearded that earlier(SAO2 ep1 post).
English is not my primary language, so I might not convey correctly what I want to say.
Sorry if I offended anyone, let me have some fun harmlessly bashing an anime I don’t like xD
I don’t think anyone’s offended. I’m just saying… you don’t have to care what people think or say about you. But hey, if you want to keep debating with them, that’s certainly your prerogative.
> I don’t think anyone’s offended. I’m just saying… you don’t have to care what people think or say about you. But hey, if you want to keep debating with them, that’s certainly your prerogative.
I don’t care about what they think, they can watch whatever.
Actually, I have never debated with anyone myself (debating shit anime is not worth my time), I only read said debates while lurking subforums of anime I find especially insulting, I always knew it will be a huge waste of time to debate with people so engrossed in their favorite manga/anime/LN.
The only time I typed something anime related is on this blog in order to laugh at those anime while venting about parts of their fanbase.
So, yeah, all is good. I look forward to your future posts.
additional details: of course, not all akame ga kill fans are obnoxious, I am talking about those jumping at your throat and labeling you as hipster/troll/hater if you dare point out a single thing.
An anime about a Hipster Troll hater would be far better than this, but then again, it would be entertaining, so they don´t want that, do they?
Tbh the female intruder did get more painful and agonizing death than the others, I mean she had wire like or metal threads wrapped around legs,arms,waist and neck and digging into skin slowly just hanging there in pain til Lubbock heartlessly kills her refusing her begging for mercy. Those other guys were shredded to nothing in like half a second what pain would they have felt really compared to the girl
Also for the girl when she died the wires wrapped around her legs, wrists and neck severed all her arteries then the one around her stomach disemboweled her really basically tortured some before mutilating her. For the show to be about assassins how can they be so easily targeted or the other tribal assassins attacking in broad daylight on home turf makes no sense the anime is pretty dumb and don’t get y ppl protect it so much a whole bunch of teenagers basically some bit older trying to kill each other and be saying “maybe we’ll be on same side in the next life” really if care enough to want to be on their side don’t heartlessly kill them it’s like they’re brainwashed