“One Battle After Another” stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Teyana Taylor, Benicio Del Toro and Chase Infiniti sit down with NBC’s Ka

Hello everyone, this is Anime Savvy, and it has been, uh, a bit since I last uploaded. Long story short, I recorded a review that I really wasn't happy with and scrapped it, but from now on I should be uploading much more often. Anyway, in this video, I'll be reviewing Akame ga Kill, the anime, not the manga, just to be clear. I finished this I think in the late summer of 2020 and haven't watched it since then, so forgive me if I get any details wrong about the show. I'll be judging the show on three metrics, story, characters, and entertainment. I'll give each of these a score out of ten, ten of course being the perfect score, and one being, I don't know, Boku no Pico levels of bad? Actually, Boku no Pico is probably like a negative ten, so... There will be a brief part of the video where I discuss spoilers, however I will give a warning and timecode to skip to if you haven't seen the whole show yet. And as a disclaimer, all critique and or praise that are given are mostly just my opinions and should be taken with a pinch of salt. So with all of that said, let's get straight into the review. First, let's start with the basic plot synopsis. The story focuses on Tatsumi, a young villager that travels to the capital to raise money for his hometown, only to discover a strong corruption in the area. He eventually meets a group of assassins called Night Raid who recruit him to help them in their fight against the Empire's corruption. Through this, Night Raid goes on to assassinate several individuals, as Tatsumi learns more about the group as well as learning about the corruption of the Empire. It's a pretty basic premise, all things considered. Although, when I first watched it back in semi-late 2019, 12 or 13 year old me thought it was a hell of a lot edgier than it actually was. It does, of course, deviate from this idea a bit later on, but to be honest, it does stick surprisingly close to the original premise. I've seen this series, particularly the anime, get a lot of crap from critics and fans alike. One reason is likely that around episode 19 or so, the anime diverges from the manga in a big way, and even has a completely different ending. Having not read the manga, I don't know how much it deviated, or how it compared to the anime in terms of quality, but I can tell you one thing, people did not like it when it did. But to be perfectly honest, I enjoyed the story of Akame ga Kill. It's not great, but it's not what I would call bad either. Granted, I can't currently compare it to the source material, but as it stands, I thought the story was pretty competent. It adopts a pretty episodic formula aside from a few episodes here and there. They surprisingly kept this fresh throughout giving variety on the battles, not to mention they kept it moving at a pretty good pace. The biggest criticism I've probably heard is... Well, how do I say this without spoiling too much? Let's just say, in the series, they definitely put the kill in Akame ga Kill. I will, of course, discuss this more in the spoiler section. The choices made for the story were not always great, but at least to me, they were rarely awful. So the storytelling wasn't this impeccable gem, but I don't think it's garbage either. The ideas, I feel, did have a lot of substance to them, and the execution was unfortunately not quite that good. The execution wasn't necessarily bad, just passable. Not much more. Now, to the characters. First, it's probably a good idea to talk about the main character. Kinda. I, of course, mean Tatsumi. And might I say, it's kind of weird that he's the main character in this series, even though it's called Akame ga Kill. And there is actually a character named Akame in the story. I guess Tatsumi ga Kill doesn't have the same ring to it. Ah, please kill me. Anyway, you see, Tatsumi is trash. I mean, Tatsumi... Okay, yeah, he is a little bit trash. When I say that, I don't mean he's super unlikable, I mean he's just kinda flat. He's Kirito from SAO, but with different clothes, brown hair, and only slightly more interesting than Kirito. Like Kirito, though, he is fairly blunt in personality, and his design is nothing really special. I can't say that Tatsumi has much drive or unique way he does anything. He just kinda exists. At the very least, he's not quite as overpowered as Kirito, but that's all I can really say about him. And I can confirm that will be the last mention of SAO in this video. Thankfully, the other members of Night Raid are infinitely more interesting. So many of them present cool personalities, as well as complex designs and abilities. Blot was probably one of my favorites, just because he has a really charming personality, and honestly, he's just plain cool. Okay, okay, I'm gonna stop myself right there. I was reading through the script, and I noticed that I forgot about Chelsea and Susano'o just because they did join Night Raid pretty late in the game. So, to put some closure on that, I really like Susano'o, I thought he was pretty cool, although kind of a flat character, and Chelsea was alright. Anyway, let's get back to the main part. Lubbock is neat, mine is just a tundra, and I'm a sucker for tundras, Najinda is pretty great, Sheila's alright, and Leona is, uh, interesting, with her powers, and, uh, I will not succumb to such vulgar jokes such as this. I lied. Yes, I will. Akame is most likely my favorite, mostly because she is super cool, has a fascinating personality and backstory, and, uh, also she's cute. I mean, is it so wrong to like someone just because they're cute? Oh, crap, I need to rephrase that. I probably need to cut that out. But I probably won't. Akame's sister, Kurume, was also really cool, and I did like the backstory with her and Akame. The downside to all this is, aside from Akame, we don't get to explore the characters too much. We spend part of an episode looking at their background stuff, then the story says, Okay, wrap it up, we're closing up shop, get ready for the next sad backstory. Also, some of the villains tended to be dull in their motivations. Then there was Azdeth, and she... Well, you know, see, she really likes Tatsumi, and because of that, she... If it weren't for the main characters, villains, and lack of exploration for the good characters, it could have had an amazing cast of characters. But, unfortunately, those factors bring this aspect down quite a bit. So in this section, I'll be discussing some spoiler events from the story. If you haven't seen the whole show, then skip to the timestamp that is on the screen right now. Are they gone? Good. Time to get to it. First, let's talk less about one singular event, and more about a whole bunch of them. I mean, the character deaths. And, excuse my French, but there is a ---- ton. I've heard a lot of people complain about this, and on this front, I kind of agree. Shiel's death was sad, Belat's was really sad, but after that, well, I'm not gonna say they weren't sad, but they were more expected. They had less punch, and they had less shock to them. And then Tatsumi died. And, well, it was underwhelming. It was a little bit sad, but I don't think it had the weight that the people working on it thought it would. By that point, I felt like they were doing it just for the shock value. I hope that the manga did this better, because this, honestly, was my biggest complaint with it all. One death that was executed very well was Kiramei's. I honestly just really liked that episode. The episode being episode 22, Kill the Sister. It had a good atmosphere, some nice storytelling choices, good animation, and also a lot of emotion behind it. I'm not going to lie, when Kiramei died, I genuinely got a little bit misty-eyed. Not because I loved the character, but because of the carefully crafted flashback prior, and the execution to it as well. It was also kind of nice to take a break from a member of Night Raid dying instead. I enjoyed the final episode as well. It had some nice animation, a cool fight, and a decent resolution to the characters still alive. Which, there weren't very many. There are more moments to talk about, but honestly, I think I covered the ones that needed to be covered. Now, the spoiler moments are out of the way, so let's get to entertainment. Despite a lot of my critique, I can say one thing about the series. It did manage to be entertaining. It does this through some decent animation, a really nice soundtrack, a very distinct atmosphere, and honestly, just being very fun. And when it comes to the soundtrack, those opening themes are amazing. I had to say it. Hell yeah, this is amazing. The background music is also cool, and it helps with that distinct atmosphere of the show that I previously referred to. And a lot of the fights, in my opinion, have some really awesome choreography. One example is the fight, you know what I'm talking about, in episode 22, as well as the final fight of the series. So honestly, I was entertained throughout the show. With all of that said, it's time for me to give my final opinions and score for the show. I gave the story a 6.6. I know that's oddly specific, but bear with me. The characters a 5.8. As I said, bear with me. And the enjoyment, an 8. All of these scores result with an overall score of 6.8. Now, I know you're asking, why were those numbers so specific? Honestly, it's just because, using only whole numbers and 0.5s, the score just didn't seem right. I think that goes to show that I really can't decide how I feel about this show. But I do think using some more specific numbers, I was able to give it a fair rating. To be clear, this is not some amazing series. It is good. Not a whole lot more than that. It does have a lot of issues, most of which I pointed out in their respective sections, and it's a shame. Fix even a few of them, and I think this could be at least an 8, if not higher. But I did enjoy watching it, and hopefully, if you watch it in the future, you will as well. But hey, that's just my opinion. If you enjoyed the video, press the like button, and also feel free to subscribe, so you'll be notified every time I post a new anime review. And make sure to comment with your thoughts on Ikame Ga Kill. This has been Anime Savvy, and I'll see you next time.