Akame ga Kill! Zero

Akame Ga Kill Zero is an action manga and prequel to Akame Ga Kill, written by Takehiro and illustrated by Toru, Kei. Zero is set months before the main series, following Akame’s journey as an assassin working for the Empire. The story is a collection of mini assassination arcs and lots of fighting, it does not have an interesting story, and the execution is hit or miss. You honestly do not even need to read Zero at all to understand Akame Ga Kill's story. The biggest benefit of Zero is that it strengthens Akame's character, giving her more characterization and depth as you start the mainmanga. Much of Zero feels somewhat like a time waster, Takehiro seems to have gotten horny while writing it so he decided to add lots of fanservice and tetherball sized breasts on the abundance of female characters, as they get brutally slaughtered. While the art is solid and the fight choreography flows well, the fights have no lasting impact mainly because the characters are worthless. A lot of them have a glaring flaw of seemingly only having a single personality trait. It may seem like an exaggeration, but it's honestly the case. Takehiro wishes to keep up the theme of having characters with no plot armor, lots of characters continue to die, but they do not receive much characterization or screen time before they die. Akame and her sister Kurome are the only character that have any important relevance to the story. The characters are very cartoon like, they do not fit in the type of story that the Akame Ga Kill is going for. Guy is borderline molester wearing power range like suit to dig underground, Green is that glasses wearing virgin with an armpit fetish while the Oarburgh clan are the worst offenders. They are the main antagonists and, are quite literally a group of powerful, men hating, horny, lesbians, and a majority use maid outfits as their battle attire. This kinda of absurd idea would work in a series like Black Lagoon, but within Akame Ga Kill's world and tone it feels somewhat out of place. The art style changes as time goes on, with characters at the begging having reasonable sized breasts and by the end Leone has breasts bigger than her entire head. I do not mind fan service, authors should be allowed to draw whatever females however they wish. But it's important for an author to know when to hold back, when you have giant swinging breasts while a character gets sliced in half and it's supposed to be an emotional scene? When the author doesn't show any self respect to such absurdity, why should the reader? So is Akame Ga Kill Zero worth reading? If you're an immense fan of the series and wish to see some solid fights it is worth it. However this manga is ultimately a time waster and in the end feels pretty forgettable. I am giving it the final score of 5/10.

Akame ga kill! Zero is a prequel to Akame ga kill manga. The series focuses mostly on Akame and her sister, their past together when they were working for the assassin unit for the empire, and how with the reason why Akame left the empire and her sister to make the people 'happy' and join Night Raid. This series could've been read without the knowledge of the original sequel series, however i do recommend to read the sequel because it did come out first. Although it's just a personal opinion. The story is pretty similar to the original Akame ga Kill series. Except ratherthan working against the empire as an assassin unit, she works for the empire. We get to see her early missions with her old squad members, and the cruelty of them. As the story goes on we can see how she is slowly changing from being brainwashed into thinking the empire is great into realizing how corrupt it is as she is being persuaded to learn the truth through the teachings of her enemies. Just like the parent story, it has themes of corruption, cruelty, and the sad truth of reality. Although there are many great points about the show there are some downsides like forced and unnecessary comedy and the pointless fanservice in half the chapters. If you can look past that then it can be an enjoyable read (Unless you enjoy ecchi, which then it's another reason to read the manga). If you didn't enjoy the parent story then i don't recommend reading this series as it is pretty similar. There were many new characters in this series including Akame's team: The Elite Seven, and the second assassin unit consisting of Kurome and a few others who are less skilled but just below the Elite Seven. There were many new characters in this series but they did add some of the old members from the sequel, such as Chelsea, Esdeath, and most of the members from Night Raid near the end of this series. Both of the assassin groups working for the empire were manipulated and brainwashed into thinking the empire is great and needed to be "protected" by the evil rebels wanting to start a war and disturb peace and happiness of the people. You will understand as you read the story why Akame could escape their brainwashing while Kurome couldn't. They did well in character development, although it was mostly on Akame and her sister. The new characters were 'Okay', they weren't great but some were quite likable while others were 'meh'. If you read the parent series then you would know not to get too attached to the new characters though. The art was quite good. It was done with a lot of blood and gore, with dark themes which did pretty good with the environment of the series. Sometimes in was lazy but others it was a notch above average. You knew exactly what the author was trying to tell and didn't have to look back. The character designs were pretty average. Nothing special nor worth mentioning. But they were still well-drawn. Not bad but wasn't the best part of the series. Overall, I give it a 7. I really enjoyed it. There are plenty of flaws but the good did outweigh the bad. It had just as much action as the original and if you wanted great fight scenes then this is a manga for you. I personally loved it quite a bit because i am a shounen fan. There are a lot of ecchi and unnecessary fanservice which sometimes ruin the mood of the sometime seriousness of the manga, but overall it was really an enjoyable read and i do recommend you give it a try.