Impression
As with last week, we were treated to a fairly laid-back start to the episode – although I think the main difference was that things didn’t escalate as dramatically this time. It was very much an episode set aside to induct Tatsumi into Night Raid and properly introduce the weirdos already in the group, coupled alongside a bit of Akame fanservice and Tatsumi’s first assassination mission to seal the deal. I was sort of expecting a bit more character development, but with so many supporting characters introduced there was only time for a bit of Akame – it’s left the rest of them slightly bland for now, much like the cooking and fishing work Tatsumi was assigned. Hopefully that’s a work in progress, as I’m guessing Tatsumi will be making the rounds with various Night Raid members in order to get some training done – he’s onto the pink-twintailed, hostile and Yukarin-voiced Mine next. I didn’t actually expect Night Raid to be a subset of the Revolutionary Army – I thought they were something more akin to a completely independent vigilante force weeding out corruption by themselves. I don’t like the sound of them answering to a potentially dubious anti-imperial force – if the capital is able to breed such corruption, who’s to say the Revolutionary Army aren’t suffering from the same thing? Which would mean that all their efforts to build a better country would have been for nothing.
Akame ga Kill also seems a bit inconsistent on its moral stance so far, which is something I felt was reflected in both Night Raid and Tatsumi himself. While I’m glad that all the members clearly realize that they’re committing murder, which has no moral righteousness behind it, I don’t know about them claiming that justice isn’t part of the deal. When fighting Ogre, Tatsumi made it sound like he was killing for the very purpose of upholding justice – and Najenda and Leone both said something along the same lines about divine punishment. Putting aside his slightly flimsy reasoning for going ahead with his assassination, I liked how Tatsumi actually managed to succeed in killing Ogre, and all by himself as well! That potential death flag actually scared me there for a moment. Maybe I’ve been underestimating him – when push came to shove, he’s twice done what he had to do without much hesitation. And received a cute smile from Akame for his troubles.
On the whole, I felt that this episode was definitely not as dark as I expected it to be – admittedly I was hoping for something on par with the brutal events of last week. I’ve been completely taken in by all these stories of how the manga is like a blossoming fountain of gore and violence, so in that sense it’s my own expectations letting me down here, but on the other hand it’s also down to White Fox to meet the high standards they themselves set with the pilot episode. And to that end, fanservice of Akame and Mine ends up being slightly out of place with the sort of tone I was after – it’s nice, but ultimately it’s not necessary. Leone’s already quite fulfilling in that department. It’s far too soon to lose hope though – it’d actually be unfair to do that a mere two episodes in to a two-cour series. White Fox have delivered before, and I’m still confident they’ll do it again.
I was a little disappointed in this episode too, to be honest. (And while I expected Leone fanservice, I wasn’t too happy about the Akame fanservice, since she definitely didn’t have oppai in the manga…) And I think the murder stills (ex. Tatsumi killing Ogre in ep 2, Tatsumi killing Aria in ep 1) are kind of cool, but on the other hand they seem like a lazy cop-out of animating those scenes.
On a side note, I wish the manga had covered chapter 2 of the manga, in which the Night Raid + Tatsumi take out a group of bandits that gets too close to HQ. That chapter serves two purposes, 1) to show how ruthless the Night Raid is, and 2) to show Tatsumi’s lack of experience in killing people. One of the bandits makes up a story about trying to save his village, and Tatsumi falls for it and almost gets himself killed. Someone saves him (Akame, I think?), which is why Akame doubts Tatsumi’s ability to kill without hesitation.
I think that overall a lot of the dark aura in the manga is being censored. I guess it’s kind of understandable, since there’s a lot of graphic genocide/torture/rape in the manga, but it’s still hard for me to get used to, especially since I got my hopes up after seeing Sayo in last week’s episode. At any rate, after reading the manga I’ve grown kind of used to feeling depressed after the end of every chapter.
But rest assured, there are some brutal deaths in this manga, and no amount of censorship can take away the tragedy of those deaths. >.< I haven't lost faith in this anime just yet. 🙂
I’d recommend stopping with the advertising of gore&darkness. The first few chapters were very episodic (villain of the week/night raider of the week) and not so serious. If they keep following the manga faithfully, gore&darkness have a few weeks before really kicking in, so you’re creating false expectations.
I agree about the skipped part though.
I don’t mind the fanservice, it was there in the manga as well, and it’s just a bonus anyway. Akame does have boobs in the manga, just not as big. White Fox “improved” them a little. Same with Mine, who’s flat chested in the manga, but has some “plot” here.
The censorship is kept to a minumum, which is good but…they censored 2 of Leone’s more uncomfortable lines of dialogue in this episode, and that pissed me off. They would have added to the dark side of things.
Mine was flat chested?! I can understand “improving” characters who already have boobs, but pettanko characters should stay as they are! This is what animating Super Sonico has done to White Fox ;_;
If fanservice is used for the purposes of padding an episode (e.g. because they ran out of stuff and wanted to keep steady pacing) then yeah, why not. Though as a non-manga reader, the most I can do is make an educated guess anyway 😀
Sigh….I was wrong, sorry about that. That’s how I remebered it. I just reread chapter 4 to be sure, but Mine does have a little there. She isn’t exactly flat.
As to the fanservice, I’ll wait for next week before I judge it more. That scene from the preview was not in chapter 4, so that would be stuff WF added. Let’s see how they handle that.
You mean when Tatsumi walks in on Mine changing? I suppose they’re catering more to her fanbase for some reason (she’s voiced by Yukarin, which is perhaps reason enough for me) though it is a bit odd that they’d go as far as to add entire scenes in. But yeah, we’ll see.
The murder stills are a nice stylistic touch; I don’t think I’ll mind them as long as they aren’t overused. Reminds me of Glasslip actually, which also uses stills quite liberally. Of course, it couldn’t be more different from Akame ga Kill.
Hmm, I didn’t know about this missing chapter. Maybe White Fox plan to fulfil those two purposes in different ways – the second is already resolving itself, and the first could be implied once things really start to escalate.
the plot armor of this series is way the thin,
Great! Yay for unpredictability!