Like ingredients for food, it's not a matter of what you have to work with but what you choose to make out of it. In the hands of capable creators, I'm sure all the elements of Akame ga Kill could have been turned into something of high-end value, but to no one's fault but its own, what this title decides to do instead of measuring out its ingredients was to dump it all in at once with no rhyme or reason. A tasty stew in the hands of credible creators was effectively turned into a cauldron of foul witches brew. A slimy substance bubbling up, one that sees gruesome deaths followed by comedic fanservice, politics served on a platter layered in melodrama, reanimated corpses of shows prior refusing to die off, their festering lack of "character" like primordial ooze, desperately seeking out originality to munch down on. A Schlocky, sleazy freak of a thing, over-the-top, and violently lashing out, its drool dripping with hackneyed writing and a complete disregard for decency as it spazzes about on the floor.
What we have here was a Frankenstein of lowbrow content, and boy was it entertaining!
The story is very straightforward, if only by design. A corrupt kingdom takes advantage of their citizens through tyrannical rule, and to fight against this oppression, rebel forces send aid by hiring a band of assassins tasked with killing off high-ranking of the capital. It's like Assassin's Creed, but with a lot more boobs and nakama power involved. Our protagonist, PussyBetaMale-kun, or Tatsumi, if you prefer, s this hit squad.
The goal of these rebel forces are pretty basic; overthrow the governing body and establish a new order of equality. Seems like a simple enough story to execute right? Well, that's where you'll be sorely mistaken, with AGK, plunging your IQ down a few pegs is the only way to keep up with its scatterbrained thought process when it comes to figuring its own shit out. In substitution of a fairly paint-by-numbers plot, AGK decides to globetrot across its world, not out of a need to explore anything, no, that would be too "smart," but solely for the sake of encountering as many comedically vile people as possible. And in that regard, its meandering was a success. In place of a rebel uprising, what we got in its stead was a bunch of superpowered edgelords engaging in giant cockfights to see who was the strongest. Assassin Super Bowl was in full swing, and while they were duking it out like reject of a Mad Max film, the highborn nobles were strolling along in the background, torturing its citizens with so much glee that you can't help but root for their cartoonish villainy.
The setting was never explored, feeling equally perfunctory as the characters inhabiting it. Attributes of its world bullying the audience into accepting it for what it is. Wild monsters with no domestic quality to their world and flying Manta-rays; just accept it. Giant mecha in a medieval setting with no prior inclusion of advanced technology; just accept it. Macroeconomics that's impossible to exist when the aristocratic class torture and kill their citizens, effectively crippling its economy's breadwinners; just accept it. Supernatural occurrences that happen at one minute to simply be forgotten by the next; you get the drill, just accept that shit.
They didn't even bother to properly flesh out the city or corresponding areas that our characters navigated across. Deciding to only let it serve as a backdrop for the Assassin Super Bowl to play out seemed to be the unified thought process that the creative team all collectively arrived at. And when that isn't enough to keep the viewer's interest, the show places a character's neck on its Guillatine chopping block, where it turns these Mad Max rejects into blood-splattered firework displays to keep things entertaining. All you end up ing them for was their deaths and not who they were as people. But who got time to worry about proper characterization or decent writing? Fuck it! On with the show! More shocking deaths, more blood, more ultraviolence, more more more!
Crimson blood-spray animated with such vigor that it makes it readily apparent that the people behind this project are having as much fun slaughtering their cast as we as viewers get from watching them die. In a way, it's like this show's animators were a part of the noble class themselves, as they hyper-fixate on bringing these death sequences to life. Sadly, when no one is being turned into blood confetti, the actual quality of the animation drops off significantly. Stiff body motion. Lazily panning across flat landscapes. Shading devoid of effort or care. Scene compositions setup with zero creative foresight; all of it expressed with complete apathy. As if it was an impatient child twiddling its thumbs waiting for the director to give it the green-light for the next fight sequence or public execution to occur.
The same also applied to the soundtrack which was painfully uninspired. Tunes humming along without an inkling of interest shining through. A type of "pretending to care" in the way the orchestrations felt oddly familiar-sounding to many things heard in the past. But unlike the animation department, the disinterest expressed here was actually surprising once you discuss the person responsible for the bringing it together. Taku Iwasaki is not an amateur. This is a man with years under his belt. Why this wasn't audibly expressed was a bit perplexing, but then again, this is coming from a show named "Akame" ga Kill, where the titular character only gets 5 episodes worth of screentime. They must have been fans of The Legend of "Zelda" games to come up with such an absurd name choice.
The moment you start trying to "figure out" AGK's issues is the moment you're "doing it wrong," so let's proceed to dispell that idea right now by asking the impossible question: what the "purpose" behind this wonderful work of artistic vandalism was.
So what was it about? An active effort to discuss subserviency in society? The oppressive consequence that occurs when "absolute power corrupts absolutely?" A tale of personal ideals clashing, resulting in bloody politics? A sobering story of discrimination?... Well, honestly speaking, no. It was about none of that. Overthinking anything that AGK does would be no different than waxing philosophical for the reason behind Patrick Star's Hawaiian shorts. There's no pretense behind AGK's actions, and as long as the viewer doesn't graft any grandiose ideas onto it, it could be enjoyed for what it truly is: schlocky, over-the-top deaths with shounen characters that had the stylistic sensibilities of a seinen but the emotional authority of a 15-year-old's wet dream.
And you know what? That's just fine. I sure had fun watching it. A silly thing, flailing about with no sense of purpose or integrity. A good ole dumb time to be had, IQ-reducing, but worth every popped brain cell.
