Why Akame Ga Kill Is Better Than The Average Shounen Anime (Like Naruto)

Akame Ga Kill is a respected shounen and has one of the biggest communities on MyAnimeList.

It’s one of only a handful of anime with more than 2 million members on MAL (if that’s anything to go by).

It’s a successful series and manga in general.

Despite this and other things you can mention, the anime DOES get downplayed a lot by a portion of the anime community, usually those who prefer the typical types of Shounen shows.

But Akame Ga Kill is better than the average shounen.

“Average” in this case is the usual format which even Naruto was known for despite it having other qualities that made it good regardless.

Let’s talk about it.

1. True to life

You can’t say with a straight face that anime like Naruto is “true to life” because that would be a lie. The same is true for many shounen that are mostly about being flashy and supernatural than they are about realism.

That’s not a criticism, just a comparison to something like Akame Ga Kill which makes it better in my eyes.

The plot is about the capital, the government, and an assassination group that was set up in response to the hardships, prejudice, racism, classism, oppression, and abuse that come from the government who hides behind a KID to do his dirty work.

That same government decapitated anyone who challenged his views or spoke badly about him.

This is true to life at its finest and it never gets interrupted by supernatural nonsense (despite having supernatural elements).

It’s a distinction that other anime that aren’t Akame Ga Kill don’t possess often.

2. No such thing as being saved by some mysterious power bullshit

In anime like Naruto, it’s often for a character to be saved by some mysterious BS. Maybe not all characters I should admit, but definitely the most relevant like Naruto Uzumaki himself.

Naruto’s struggle was real until it was revealed he had the legendary nine tales inside of him and also the other “Legend” that shows up later in Shippuden, etc.

It makes his talent irrelevant since all that hard work was bullshit as a result.

Being a protagonist is a poor excuse given what we see in Akame Ga Kill with its protagonists.

Twin Star Exorcist has elements of this with its main character Rokuro, where he should be dead but somehow survives.

How many more anime are there like this, even anime I like, where this rule is commonplace?

Akame Ga Kill doesn’t fall victim to this trope and decides to play it savage rather than safe, bringing more realism to the picture.

This is why it’s consistently one of the anime’s considered:

sad
depressing

and things along those lines because that’s what it would be if it were real and true to life.

This also makes the battles in Akame Ga Kill more:

serious
intense
life-threatening

and anxious because you no if the character does NOT win, then it’s final and nothing will interfere to ruin the hype built up prior to the outcome.

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3. A genuine struggle for survival

The main stars of the show and society itself are struggling to survive in a genuine kind of way. It’s almost a mirror image of certain society in real life, past or present., on some level.

The struggle is genuine even for the main characters and those who have power or some sort of strength that others don’t.

There is no “ancient” bullshit that comes into the picture, given the main character some sort of needed boost that turns the tides of battle or whatever. Or some “historical” nonsense that kicks in when it’s convenient.

No, the characters like:

Tatsumi.
Akame.
Bulat.
Mine.
Chelsea.
Sheele.
Najenda.
Susano.

And many more are trying to survive to see a better day and are genuinely struggling to accomplish that goal in a way a regular human would in real life. Especially if put in the same shoes as Akame Ga Kill‘s characters.

4. The power of friendship is irrelevant

As much as I love an anime like Fairy Tail, there is the tendency to have the power of friendship involved in battles, fights, outcomes, and successes.

True, that is part of the anime and it’s even explained by Mavis Vermillion at one point, but still, many anime use this trope to excuse bad writing.

Even Dragon Ball Z had an element of this, and it’s also shown in the Broly movie where Goku gets power from everyone (in their weakened state) and manages to beat Broly with ease.

In an anime like Akame Ga Kill, there is no power of friendship, at least not in a supernatural sense. You have friends who empower each other, but that doesn’t result in them being “powered up” when they need it most.

Characters in Akame Ga Kill rely purely on:

skills
instinct
intuition
battle strategy
tactics
intellect
observation

and pure luck to come out on top.

5. A realistic depiction of the real world

A communist government that will throw people in jail for the smallest thing, and one that the people are afraid of because of the abuse in all areas they’re willing to dish out is as realistic as it gets.

The crossovers are clear regardless of what the degrees are if comparing the two, and that’s what makes Akame Ga Kill so different and unique to other shounen who decide to NOT disappoint fans or cause outrage.

From Akame and Kurume being separated as siblings, and being forced into lives of assassins, to characters like Sheele who are never able to do anything right and are seen as failures, to Mine’s struggle with discrimination, and more.

It’s a realistic depiction few Shounen can claim without running it by turning up the supernatural dial a little too high.

6. Tragedy without the “happy endings” many shounen are afraid of

This is typical in so many shounen anime. Yes, there can be tragedy, but somehow it either gets patched up like in DBZ, or they’re afraid of killing protagonists so they settle for “bringing them back to life” somehow, some way, with some explanation.

Or they kill off characters who people didn’t have the most attachment towards, making it less of a big deal than it may have been.

Akame Ga Kill refuses to violate this rule and does something most Shounen, even in 2024 aren’t willing to do (but have been willing to do) in recent years like MHA S6 or JJK S2.

So many losses pile up on both sides of the fence in Akame Ga Kill, and given the context of what’s happening, it only makes sense but it creates an energy that makes it different by design.

7. Characters you can relate to on a human level

Tatsumi is a poor village swordsman who ventures out to get rich in the capital so he can help his village prosper, and the people in it. He soon finds out that the capital is corrupt and his dream will be harder to attain than he naively thought.

So he joins Nightraid, an assassination group, to create a revolution.

You have Najenda who was part of the capital once but quit after seeing the kind of things that go on in that world.

You also have people like Wave who are trying to make a living and are forced to stomach the evils of those they work for in order to make that living.

The latter is very realistic.

Everyone has something you can relate to in some way, and the anime doesn’t let its supernatural elements stand in the way of this.

This is a key distinction. OPM does this, but that’s not strictly a shounen.

8. A story that follows its own path and sticks to it

So many anime can steer the car in a direction that has nothing to do with their main destination. Remember what happened during the war arc of Shippuden? It eventually became something like Dragon Ball Z.

No longer was Naruto an anime about ninjas, skills, skilful fights, or anything of the sort. Not that Naruto in its later stages or DBZ, in general, has no skill element, but it diminished in Shippuden.

It became something else and it started to feel silly.

Akame Ga Kill has always been about assassins who are trying to create a revolution, with the support of the people in silence, so they can make the world a better place with less corruption and oppression.

This goal never wavers.

The anime doesn’t try to be like some other series towards the last half or the ending because the writers start forgetting what they’re doing or whether their new direction makes any lick of sense.

Akame Ga Kill is consistent in its story, plot, themes, and direction. Many shounen can learn from it and have learnt from it since its release on 2014, July 7th.