Akame ga Kill – More Than Just Extreme Violence ?

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If plenty of violence and bloody killings is just what you need in an anime series, then Akame ga Kill will be just what your looking for. Although I really like the way they try to weave some storyline around the killing, it was sad to see Chelsea killed off in the latest episode. I thought she was going to be around for a long time. The following is an extract from the original excellent article: Akame ga Kill: A Reflection on the Futility of Violence? from Mage in a Barrel

So, I’ve been watching Akame ga Kill for a while now and I’m starting to wonder if there’s actually more to this show than just extreme violence, no censorship, and an infatuation with grisly deaths. Is it, perhaps, a reflection on the futility of violence as a solution or as a method for change disguising itself as a cheap shounen thrill fest?

I’m well aware that on the surface, this seems an absurd suggestion—I myself, after the first episode, felt that Akame ga Kill did nothing less than glorify bloodshed by “justifying” it through the immorality of those who were being killed. 17 episodes and a few heartbreaks later, I’ve realized that, for all the characters who have died and who have been introduced and died, Akame ga Kill, Night Raid, and the Jaegers are no closer to any sort of resolution to their conflict than they were at the beginning of the story.

Perhaps this is just me trying to project some sort of hope onto the empty feeling after best girl Chelsea was horribly mutilated in Akame ga Kill‘s most recent episode. Perhaps this is just me wanting to believe that there was some purpose at work in her death beyond just making me feel sad. Perhaps this is just me trying to understand Bols’ lethal separation from his wife and child at the hands of that same best girl. The way I see it, there are two ways to watch Akame ga Kill. 1) You shut down all emotional channels and simply watch for the adrenaline rush of the kill shots and the sensationalization of cold-blooded killers hunting each other down. 2) You allow yourself to get emotionally invested and acquire some sort of twisted catharsis by the constant stream of connecting with characters on both sides of the war and watching them kill each other mercilessly. I don’t really like either of those options, but trying to protect myself with the first strategy honestly left me feeling less human afterwards. So, I’m generally trying for a moderate version of the second method—connecting as my heart’s pulled (usually to the cute girls), but always remembering that these characters are on the verge of being slaughtered and are killers themselves.

But I am emotionally connected, which leads me to search for meaning or some comfort despite the gruesome nature of the deaths that my favourite characters deal out or suffer themselves. Akame ga Kill, for all its faults, has turned out to be shockingly adept at not reducing all its antagonists to totally detestable human beings—the point being that the show wants us to sympathize with individuals on the Capital’s side as well as on the Revolutionary Army’s side, which pretty effectively blurs the lines between pure good and unadulterated evil … to continue reading this article please follow this link to the original article Mage in a Barrel

Source: Mage in a Barrel