Enter the dangerous and exciting world of… salt trading?
Creative Staff
Story: Takahiro
Art: Kei Toru
Translation: Christine Dashiell
What They Say
Akame and her allies are on a mission to find the Revolutionary Army, but standing in their way is the leader of the Oarburgh Assassin’s group! How will Akame overcome such a dangerous adversary?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Following up on the surprisingly well executed action from last time, we leap right into the exciting world of… interfering with rebel salt trading. Like, they explain how it’s to strike at their financing, but man, crushing salt production just doesn’t sound exciting at all. And as for the method, well, everybody on the team gets involved in trading themselves, with them splitting into two groups of 3 in order to compete and gather info. Ultimately it’s just an excuse for having a low key “silly” chapter or two, but even if the book does recognize it (by saying they need to be able to function more widely), sending brainwashed assassins out to interact directly with all sorts of impoverished people across the nation just sounds like a terrible idea on the part of the evil empire. Anyway, all of this stuff is just some pretty mediocre character building and gags in the end, but it’s at least not offensively bad.
Anyway, after all that we get the proper setup for the action this time around, as it turns out the saltworks are in Gappi Marsh, a place with super deadly Danger Beasts. And waiting there are Mera of the Oarburgh group, along with her powerful maids (and Chelsea), as well as an old virgin butler. It’s actually just plain odd, though, as there’s plenty of setup here for what amounts to little more than an introduction to these new enemies, which I guess is to show you that they’re strong. But then the two groups don’t even meet at the marsh… only for the Oarburgh groups to attack not long after in town anyway. Oh, and they show off Mera’s character quirk of being really, aggressively lesbian to the point that we get to see her rape a girl… who then thanks her and says how much better being with a woman is. It’s… probably not the best look for the book, to be honest.
The actual fights, though, are solid enough, with Mera primarily using a swarm of insects to control the field of battle, while the maids and two of the girls end up in a kind of ridiculous cavalry battle where they’re fighting while riding piggyback style. And Mera does manage a really sick, messed up kill, so if you’re into the series for that kind of thing, then that probably won’t disappoint. Though I do have one issue, and that’s that Mera uses a straight up “spinning a spiral pattern to hypnotize” attack with her umbrella, and that’s… just kind of dumb, overly cartoony, and doesn’t fit well with everything else going on.
In Summary
While the over the top action at the very end does (mostly) work in the way that the last volume managed to be successful, this is sadly something of a return to crummy form for the series. A whole lot of the book is just wasted and used up on rather subpar “goofy” moments, and it just doesn’t work very well. On top of that, the premise for the conflict this time around is based on something unbearably dull, and parts of the way things progress just feel awkward. Oh, and we get even more creepy rapeyness, so I guess that’s becoming something of a nasty signature” feature” of the series. So all in all, while it’s better than the earliest stuff at least, this is still definitely a plenty disappointing product that doesn’t quite capitalize on the improvements managed last time around.
Content Grade: C+
Art Grade: B
Packaging Grade: B+
Text/Translation Grade: B+
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: March 21st, 2017
MSRP: $13.00