Akame #24 — Gun-Haver Ãœber Alles

December 14th, 2014

  

“You have dealt me a critical blow. Go ahead and cough up blood while I turn myself into sparklies.”

For the record, the broadcast was delayed by an hour, not that that stopped Chinese Crunchyroll.

Impressions:

Far too little, far too late. I wish they had spent this kind of effort on every fight, but it still had no point above and beyond “We must kung fu fight,” and the outcome made absolutely no difference whatsoever. Esdeath’s downfall was also “moving really fast,” but then again, she was gasped in shock when Akame simply jumped up into the air from right in front of her, so… There was still plenty of weird posturing, speedlines to grin evilly, simply giving up after Akame collapsed and started coughing up blood while still having full control of her powers and petering out anticlimactically, etc, so it was far from great. Regardless, it was about twice the effort they’ve spent on practically anything else and I might have been into it if it mattered in the slightest… or had been between two characters with personalities… but at that point, I guess we’d probably be in an entirely different show.

The obligatory point of terribleness was probably Cat Person’s death. Taken down with a magic ring pointed at her and then gut shot with a pistol. Christ. I don’t even know why they bothered. With killing either of them really, since apparently the people rose up and publicly executed their boy emperor. I guess when he was a giant, he must have nuked only the parts of the city that were corrupt, also that the corruption was actually limited to just about the dozen people we saw them kill over the course of the show. What a convenient wrapup for everything. I’m surprised they didn’t tie a bow on it.

Final Thoughts:

While certainly not the worst animated action show around, the direction was fairly awful and the writing (or lack thereof) wasn’t doing it any favors. Besides simply stretching everything out with unneeded exposition and self-narration, the elephant on its chest was the retrospective flashbacks that practically every single character seemed to get moments before dying. Didn’t matter if it was some random clown who had just appeared last week, or a protagonist who had been hanging around in the background for the last few months. Everybody got one. Not even any contrast between them. Protagonist or antagonist got pretty much the exact same one, always obtrustively at the last second as if they suddenly realized nobody might care that another bit player was offed and this was their patch job to finish it. Oddly, they trailed off at the very end when the theoretically most important characters were taking nose dives into the grave, but that just raised the question of consistency. If the supposed main characters are dying with so little of a fart in the wind, then why did we get the full fanfare for Guy Who Was On a Boat?

Which leads into the mammoth sitting on the throat the writing. After the introductory bit, they pretty much forgot almost all the “evildoing” thing, and settled for empty posturing; an evil smile overstylized here and there. That was apparently supposed to be enough to drive the entire conflict for the entire show. There was almost never any greater plot than “We have to kill them because they’re not us,” and that is no way to give any kind of importance to what was going on or provide any kind of either satisfaction or deflation from victories or defeats. The question of “What have we accomplished?” loomed heavily over the entire thing, and you can’t even say killing characters had much effect since they dragged new ones out of their ass constantly, and not a single one of them was integral to events. It was a show stuck in a holding pattern from start to finish. It certainly didn’t help matters either by whipping new powers out of its ass constantly, and the less said about the damn gun that got better the more ‘danger’ one was in, the better.

A little bit of plot would have taken things a long way, but alas. It’s a vapid popcorn show that skimped on the popcorn. There are moments here and there, but they’re quickly gone and all its potentially interesting parts of people with super powers running around fighting other people with super powers never comes together in any way whatsoever, let alone a satisfactory one.

Posted in Akame | 6 Comments »

6 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Sanjuro says:

    I didn’t like it but they had to kill Yellow Boobs because Blue Boobs was killed, and you can’t have jealous fans of one pair of Boobs be too angry at another pair of Boobs. Akame survived because no one likes her.

    But boy that last fight was serious. You could tell ’cause her hat came off. It was an okay series overall I think. I didn’t dread watching each new episode. Nowadays if an anime does that, I think it’s good.

  • The Phantom says:

    Rocks Fall Everyone Dies…

  • Anonymous says:

    I like how the first act of the new government is executing a child, a promising future lies ahead

  • Yue says:

    I felt hollow with Akame falling into darkness and taking the blame for the assassinations. They didn’t even bother gave her a bodyguard companion or a competent boyfriend. T_T

  • arknoir says:

    I enjoyed this anime with all its faults though I still don’t get Akame trump card.She accepted her swords sins and got more powerful…..right?

  • Blas says:

    and tatsumi is dead…

    GREAT!