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Akame Ga Kill! is a japanese Dark Fantasy manga series written by Takahiro and illustrated by Tetsuya Tashiro. The series began serialization in 2010 and concluded in 2016 with 15 volumes and 78 chapters. The series follows a young warrior named Tatsumi who becomes a mercenary with a revolutionary guild known as Night Raid when he learns of the true corruption and evil of the empire.

Plot
Tatsumi sets out with his childhood friends, Sayo and Iyeyasu, on a journey to the capital to become soldiers and support their destitute village. While Tatsumi becomes a victim of the machinations of the city, he quickly learns that corruption runs deep in the capital and those who run the government, committing acts of evil for profitable or territorial gain. Angered at this news, he joins a group of Assassins and Teigu Users known as Night Raid in order to topple the oppressive government and bring an era of peace throughout the land.

Why it Rocks

 * 1) The story is very well paced, it doesn't move too fast or too slow, taking time to build up the world and characters but not too much time with prolonged flashbacks or anything like that and having a very good contrast between the action scenes and the drama scenes used to build up characters.
 * 2) A very interesting world design that has plenty of medieval scenery and technology along with plenty of more modern clothing, objects, and even weapons with guns used aplenty.
 * 3) Speaking of the characters, the cast is large but very well developed with a likeable group of heroes in Night Raid and lost of genuinely compelling and interesting villains as well.
 * 4) Tatsumi goes from a completely naive and perverted moron into a much more serious and competent warrior as well as person within the world. Despite his capability, he learns that many others (after his first encounter with Night Raid) are far more capable and tries to both grow in skill and use those skills against the empire. He has a hidden rage, especially against particularly evil members of the government, that often cloud his judgement.
 * 5) Akame is the main title character, a dedicated and highly skilled swordswoman who uses the Teigu "One Slice Kill: Murasame", a katana that inflicts an instantly deadly and incurable curse on whoever it wounds. She was forcefully trained for years to become an assassin, but was convinced by Najenda to join Night Raid. She will kill her enemies with no hesitation, and seems unfeeling a lot of the time, but shows genuine concern for her comrades and does her share of chores without any complaints. She seems especially concerned for Tatsumi due to his initially reckless behavior and his weaker status compared to the others.
 * 6) Bulat is a spear user who wields the Teigu "Incursio", a set of armor that boosts his speed and strength, but also can make him temporarily invisible. Though Tatsumi is initially uncomfortable at his homosexuality, he quickly comes to see him as a brother figure who trains and helps him in difficult situations while also teaching him to be more self-sufficient.
 * 7) Scheele wields the Teigu "Slice All: Extase", a massive and highly durable pair of scissors that she uses to literally cut her enemies down. She has no qualms about killing her enemies, due to killing her friend's abusive ex-boyfriend and his gang of followers single-handedly. She rather clumsy outside of combat, but well-meaning and very friendly.
 * 8) Leone is the wielder of the Teigu "King of Beasts Transformation: Lionel", which allows her enhanced strength, senses, and regeneration. She is distinctly un-ladylike, being quite crass and aggressive, but also showing genuine care for her team mates. She initially steals Tatsumi's money after tricking him, but quickly realizing he's not part of the empire and is simply misled, shows him the truth and trains him harshly in order to become a better combatant. She joins Night Raid out of a distaste for those who exploit their power and abuse their lessers and tries to promote equality.
 * 9) Mine is a sniper who uses the Teugu "Pumpkin", a machine gun that fires spirit energy and gets stronger with her emotions. She initially is incredibly harsh to Tatsumi, but soon begins to warm up to him and even develop a mutual attraction with him. She experienced racism due to her half-foreign blood and sets out to make a world without needless hate and prove the others wrong.
 * 10) Lubbock is a more outright perverted member, seen as almost completely carefree, though he has a more crafty and logical side to himself that he typically only shows in battle. He uses the Teigu "Kaleidoscope: Crawstail", a mass of metal strings that can be almost invisible at times and can easily dice up enemies. He's also physically the weakest member of the group and tries to fix that.
 * 11) Chelsea is a hilarious new addition to Night Raid who offers a lot of comic relief, often being overly blunt with her speech, which annoys Mine. Her Teigu is "Phantasmagoria: Gaia Foundation", which allows her to take on the appearance of anyone and any creature perfectly and assassinate her enemies before they know any better.
 * 12) Najenda is the leader of Night Raid, though she's unable to fight in battle anymore, but still gives helpful advice plenty of times. She was once a loyal general in Esdeath's army until she defected with her platoon in order to topple them, leading Esdeath to corner her, massacre her troops, and destroy one of her arms and an eye.
 * 13) Esdeath is a highly powerful ice-caster, using the Teigu "Demon God Manifestation: Demon's Extract", where she literally drank the blood of a demon in order to get it and becomes the Empire's top general due to her toppling entire nations almost single-handedly. She falls for Tatsumi almost immediately after finding he fits all her qualifications for a lover, though the love is not mutual. She's a highly sadistic mass-murderer who has no qualms about killing any perceived "villains" that come her way and desires a great deal of power, as well as the opportunity to kill all the "weak".
 * 14) All the members of the Jaegers are very interesting as well, being powerful Teigu users themselves organized in a task force against Night Raid. They're also not all outright evil as they're motivated by a warped sense of serving the public and innocents. One of them is Akame's sister, Kurome, who wields a similar weapon that brings those killed with it back to life as her undead slaves.
 * 15) The series has often been compared to Game of Thrones, in that it's not afraid to kill off major characters in unexpected ways. This is shown right from the get-go, where Tatsumi learns that the seemingly kind-hearted rich family that employed him are, in fact, sadistic murderers who kidnapped Sayo and Iyeyasu, the daughter torturing Sayo to death while the mother poisoned Iyeyasu in a sick experiment, leading Tatsumi to kill the daughter out of anger, only to quickly mourn his friends who he can only crudely bury despite their promise to succeed together. It also has plenty of members of Night Raid with no plot armor whatsoever, not even Tatsumi as he can be killed as well at pretty much any point.
 * 16) Lots of gory and disturbing violence that really shows how the world may look fine on the outside, but is dark and truly horrific on the inside.
 * 17) Plenty of funny moments interspersed throughout, like how Esdeath falls in love with Tatsumi at first sight, and Tatsumi thinks she's just going to pay him for winning a tournament, only for her to literally put a collar around his neck and drag him away. Pretty much any scene with Tatsumi encountering Esdeath is comedy gold due to her voraciousness for him and his converse fear and lack of love towards her.
 * 18) Despite the comedy, there's a whole lot of legitimately disturbing and highly emotional parts as well, which further sets it apart. The aforementioned willingness to kill off major characters makes the series emotionally intense as well as how innocent people are manipulated and even killed by those in charge. There's also plenty of scenes that became pretty iconic within the anime community like the infamous deaths of Scheele and Chelsea.
 * 19) Fight scenes are pretty awesome, with plenty taking place over a few chapters and having characters use their very different Teigu's against each other in different ways, showing how certain ones could be less effective than desired in certain situations. Many of them also have a ton of collateral damage to the surrounding environment and a great deal of awesome panels when an enemy is killed.
 * 20) A great sense of escalation throughout the plot, where it starts off small with Tatsumi and Night Raid targeting corrupt military leaders and merchants for money, but then struggle to survive with the arrival of the Jaegers and try to learn their weaknesses, then up the ante and try to put their revolution into motion while they still have people left to fight and defeat the empire before they're defeated.
 * 21) It touches on a lot of social ills that are still relevant to this day. It often does so in a very over-the-top manner, but in a way that's easy to understand, like the enslavement of women into prostitution for drugs and the consequences of a military career, among the other aforementioned parts.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The art style often looks simplistic at times, and some scenes, especially action scenes, can be a little confusing, though it does kind of fit the series.
 * 2) The anime adaptation, while pretty good, deviates greatly in it's last few episodes due to the manga not being finished yet, leading to even more character deaths, plenty of which were quite controversial.
 * 3) Seryu Ubiquitous is one of the most hated characters in all of anime and manga, having a seemingly overtly friendly exterior only to become a complete vicious psychopath when encountering Night Raid under the pretense of "serving justice", brutally murdering Scheele, propping Chelsea's head on a stake and feeding her body to her dog, Kuro, and doing even worse afterwards. On the flip side, she's 100% meant to be unlikeable and luckily gets her comeuppance when Mine blows her Kuro in half with Pumpkin, then escapes her attempted suicide bombing due to Tatsumi's intervention.
 * 4) Some of the humor can feel pretty cliche.
 * 5) The ultimate ending to the series is pretty rushed as, while the government is toppled and people now have a chance at a happy life, it ends with Tatsumi being turned into a dragon by Incursion and moving back to his hometown with Mine while Akame sets out to find a cure for his condition, all that as well as not showing enough of how their actions affected the world.