Title: Akame ga Kill Vol. 4
Author: Takahiro (Story), Tetsuya Tashiro (Art)
Publisher: Yen Press
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 208
Genre: Sci-Fi, Action
Publication Date: October 27, 2015
The Story
The six have assembled and General Esdeath was quick to greet them with a test of their abilities! Before we get underway with their missions, Esdeath holds a fighting tournament to try and find someone who she can fall in love with. Back at Night Raid headquarters, Lubbock tells Tatsumi about the tournament and states that the prize is a lot of money that he can send back to his village.
We can already see where this is going…
Tatsumi takes place in the tournament and easily beats his opponent. Naturally, this gets the attention of Esdeath who pays Tatsumi a visit on the tournament’s battlefield. She tells Tatsumi that she’s impressed and wants to give him his reward personally! Tatsumi thinks it’s money, but then Esdeath snatches him up and takes him away, claiming Tatsumi as her new lover! Tatsumi decides to use this opportunity to try and persuade Esdeath to leave the imperial army and join Night Raid, but even though he was extremely vague about it (he has to protect his true identity afterall), Esdeath shoots him down and will have no part in it at all.
Tatsumi’s only hope is to stick it out and wait for a chance to escape. On their first mission, Tatsumi is stuck with Esdeath and he sits back and watches as The Six, now known as The Jaegers, lay siege to a resistance tribe’s base. Esdeath wishes to train Tatsumi and even considers him a backup member of The Jaegers. Esdeath devises a plan to bring Tatsumi out on a danger beast hunt in order to show him her skills thinking that it would make Tatsumi fall in love with her, but when they get to Fake Mountain, the place where Tatsumi was trained by Bulat, he is partnered with Wave instead of Esdeath. In the commotion of a danger beast attack, Tatsumi escapes using Incursio. He’s chased by Wave using his armor Teigu, Grand Chariot. The two fight without knowing who each other are, but Tatsumi escapes again and is recovered by Akame and Lubbock.
From here, Tatsumi spills all the information he gathered about The Jaegers, but Dr. Stylish of The Jaegers used genetically modified humans with enhanced sight, hearing and scent to track down the location of the Night Raid’s secret base. It looks like a battle will begin next volume!
I like how the story is slowing down its pacing from the first two volumes. It’s allowing the readers to digest everything that is happening and even with the plethora of new characters being introduced at breakneck speeds, they’re not around long enough to really commit them to memory. The Jaegers feel different in that regard though as this seems to be the main force that will be fighting Night Raid so they may just be worth taking note of.
The one thing that worries me is Dr. Stylish is about to take on Night Hold by himself and while his power as a Jaeger may be high enough to hold his own, I don’t see him getting out of this alive. So that means the Jaegers may be down a member already and with Tatsumi not as a backup member anymore, that already weakens Esdeath’s forces. We will see if that is the case in volume five, but so far, I’m liking the progression of the story. The Tatsumi x Esdeath ship is pretty strong in this volume and it brought some much-needed comedic relief while keeping the drama intact at the same time… although there is also the Tatsumi x Akame ship that could also happen as there have been many hints of it throughout the series (and in this volume for that matter.)
Characters
I guess the one thing about introducing so many characters with every volume is that this section of my reviews will never be dull as there will always be someone to talk about. Before we get to the new character’s though, I want to touch on Akame and Kurome a bit because we did a small piece to Akame’s backstory puzzle.
So through the introduction of Kurome, we now know that when Akame left the imperials, she asked Kurome to come, but Kurome refused and branded her sister as a traitor. While that’s all that we really got, it does raise questions as to what happened with the two of them, how they were brought into the imperial guard and why made Akame decide to leave. I wanted to point out this small tidbit because unlike the other characters (like Sheele, Bulat, Liver, etc), Akame’s development is getting the slow burn treatment. This also worries me because it’s a telling sign that anyone who is getting a slow burn treatment is less likely to have a death flag on them. This means if your backstory is revealed almost in full, chances are, you’re going to die in this series.. and soon.
That brings me to Dr. Stylish because he was given that quick backstory treatment. We know that he is the doctor that Seryu spoke of and the one who made her body modifications. Now that Seryu is in the Jagers, you’d think that they would be paired up to have more interactions with each other, but that’s not the case with Dr. Stylish going at it alone in locating Night Raid’s base. Because we know his backstory and with the impending battle, it’s pretty obvious that we can raise his death flag in volume five.
As for the other members of the Jaegers, we have Wave who is the Tatsumi of the group. He was selected from the naval guard and brought into the Jaegers. He is the only one with a normal personality and seems to have the same mindset as Tatsumi. They even went and gave him an armor Teigu like Tatsumi’s to make the similarities even more painfully obvious. The only thing missing at this point is the non-existent blood relation.
We also have Bols! He was my favorite character from the anime and I’m tremendously happy he’s in the manga as well! If his story is the same in the manga, then he will probably still be my favorite, but here in volume four, he’s a silent yet shy person, but a member of the incineration squad. He’s married and only carries out jobs because he has to. He wears a mask to cover his face and has a huge frame which makes him rather intimidating, but he’s actually quite caring and gentle!
The last person on the Jaegers is Run. Not much is known about him yet, but his Teigu gives him angelic wings. I’m sure when it’s his time to die, we’ll get a couple of pages of backstory on him!
Final Thoughts
Despite the character introduction overload, the fact that most of the past characters we’ve been introduced to have died, it doesn’t seem as overwhelming as say, Assassination Classroom where you have a large cast, some development and then they stick around for the rest of the series on the back burner. The method Akame ga Kill uses is effective because while it seems like George R.R. Martin is at the helm of this manga, it’s being written in a controlled chaos style. The cast could be 150+ characters, but if you subject the reader to them in short bursts and give them reasons not to really remember them, then it’s much more manageable.
The odd thing though is even with the characters being as expendable as they are, you still remember them because they each play a part in another character’s story. Some of those characters have left us like Sheele and Bulat, but you still remember them because you did get enough time to know them. The constant reminders of their existence by other characters helps as well because when you’re reminded of something, you recall their backstories and that, in turn, makes you remember other characters.
It’s very difficult to make this style work. Quick, short bursts of information tend to stick in the reader’s mind more than long, in-depth backstories. To be able to explain someone’s past and have it stick is a hard feat to pull off, but Akame ga Kill pulls it off nearly flawlessly. It’s keeping me entertained and I don’t really mind all of the deaths. It makes you wonder who is going to die next.. kind of like Final Destination!
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This item was provided for review by Yen Press
