Akame ga Kiru

Remind me again why Tatsumi chose the Mein route? T^T

I don't think Akame ever actually saw him that way. At least I don't remember any indication of it.

I'm okay with that. She's such a strong character that there's no need to reduce her to protagonists love interests. Her character arc stand fine on it's own.

Oh and this way she isn't in danger of being stuffed into a fridge. Which given who is Mein's rival might not be a metaphor.

edited 13th Jul '14 2:43:28 PM by Shlugo_the_great

Eh, it's less about Akame and more about how the author just slapped together an Official Couple with no chemistry whatsoever. I mean, up until recently, Mein actually had less screen-time than Akame.

Well yeah, I would have to agree that this paring was cobbled together way too fast and with little care for plausibility. That's partly why I suspect Mein is going to die sooner or later - she was made Tatsumi's girlfriend so that he could suffer the loss of one.

Because lets be honest, this isn't the type of manga where the hero gets a girl and they live happily ever after with no problems whatsoever. Not in the middle of the story at least, and not while Edese is coming back to town.

& *shrug* Tatsumi-Mine is one of my favorite relationships in Japanese entertainment for a lot of the reasons you two seem to dislike it.

It seems "way too fast" and "implausible" because we didn't have the typical dancing-around-each-other story bullshit you usually get. She realizes she's attracted to him, she gets up the courage to say something, they're dating. And it's not even a really strong mutual attraction—Tatsumi's not mooning over her beforehand or anything, but he's open to it. And this isn't treated as some sort of horrible death knell for the relationship, a tragic pitstop before Tatsumi finds his twue wuv, but as a perfectly normal thing!

Tatsumi and Mine are dating like actual people. It's kind of sad that this is new and different, but it is, and I'm glad the author is doing it.

I want to address the above in particular, though, because the reasoning is frankly kind of bullshit. I mean, look back over the Night Raid deaths. They've each served a clear and important narrative purpose.

(Now is a really good time for anime-onlines who don't want further spoilers to get out and/or skip past this post)

Schere: The Sacrificial Lion. Her death is the official notice that characters will die and serves to develop the rest of Night Raid, especially Akame and Tatsumi. Braht: Tatsumi grows up and becomes a full-fledged member of Night Raid. Chelsea: Weakens Kurome considerably, making her eventual defeat actually plausible (and leading to her strengthened relationship with Wave) Susanoo: Ends a fight intended to show us that, yes, Esdese really is that strong—they fought her with half the group and it's still a Pyrrhic Victory.

What would we get from Mine's death? We know the stakes, and we know that characters can die. Killing her for the sake of killing her would be tacky. The only real purpose I can see is to show "look, character X is evil!" We've gotten more than enough of that from Wild Hunt, and dropping all attempts to keep Esdese in her strange pseudo-sympathetic position would make the story worse, not better. She could get Worfed, I guess, but I don't buy that either.

You can quote this post back at me smugly later if it happens, but I actually don't see her dying for a while. So long as there's no narrative purpose in it, I'm pretty sure she's safe.

Because it's totally realistic to start dating someone you barely ever talk to, amirite?

edited 13th Jul '14 4:23:43 PM by KSPAM

How can they barely talk to each other? They live in the same hideout!

I agree with you here, the reason that it seems cobbled together is that there isn't some huge amount of foreshadowing behind it, where the reader is beaten over the head that these people are going to get together way in advance.

However, without that aid, people think that it's implausible or far too fast. Look at how some people reacted with Harry and Ginny.

edited 13th Jul '14 5:10:16 PM by Chaosjunction

If we don't see it, we can't assume it happened. And it's still bad because the reader feels nothing about this relationship because it was never established that these two had any chemistry! Mein barely gets screentime!

The entire relationship is pointless it has no emotional impact, because it was barely established before it happened.

edited 13th Jul '14 4:48:28 PM by KSPAM

She gets more screentime then Akame

The romance fails because no kind of special attraction on Tatsumi's part was established. It's like:

Mein: Wanna date?

Tatsumi: shrugs Yeah okay.

So it comes less as any kind of feeling or bond and more Tatsumi agreeing because he couldn't think of a reason not to.

And Mein death would serve a purpose. For one we kinda do need a reminder that Edese is indeed evil and need to be put down. Heck Tatsumi needs it, since he's still clearly uncomfortable with the idea of killing her. The confrontation with Edese needs a proper emotional build-up.

Secondly, well the Night Raid can't just stop dying, especially now that their enemies are at each other throats, weakening themselves. The dramatic tension requires that the danger of death be very real all the time. Sure Rabac or Leone could die first, but at this point Mein's death would have much bigger emotional impact.

256: The idea that you have to pass some arbitrary threshold of closeness before you're allowed to ask someone out is toxic. It's a weird narrative theory of life-as-story that leads to a harmful combination of inaction (It's not time to ask her out, I'm not at Intimacy Level 5 yet!) and entitlement (I'm at Intimacy Level 5, where's my reward?). Frankly, I am all for destroying the Hollywood romance bullshit that's making it more difficult for modern people to get into and maintain actual human relationships.

But that's all irrelevant, because your complaint is specifically addressed by the story. The arc before the confession even primes the audience with a "bound by the red string" reference, has the actual romance flag event, and then has them spend progressively more and more time together, to the point where she starts making up excuses to hang out with him more. Not to mention that when she does fall for him, it's specifically tied to the progression of the overall story. His words during the rescue, and her echo of it during the actual confession scene, tie the romance to Tatsumi's character arc. They're not especially close before, because Tatsumi wasn't who he is now before, and she's attracted to the post-development Tatsumi. This is pretty explicitly stated! And once Tatsumi is developed, the romance proceeds quickly.

You're welcome not to like this part of the story, certainly, but your argument at present is invalid.

The part about Tatsumi's attraction to her is something I'll just have to disagree on, because it's realistic as hell. Anecdotes not data blah blah blah but yeah, that's how real-world romance works a lot of the time! "Wanna go out?" "Sure, I'll give it a try." And then he starts to fall for her as the relationship goes on. This is normal!

And your words on Esdese are, again, a difference in views. Esdese isn't really presented as "evil" in the story because she's someone who was born as she is. Tatsumi doesn't view her as a monster, but he doesn't view her as a victim either—she's just someone who was, unfortunately, born without the empathy to be properly good. If you reduce that down to "evil," then you throw out all complexity in the character and make her boring. Why would the author just throw away all his work like that?

If there's no narrative purpose in killing Mine, then killing Mine results in a lot of narrative baggage that takes a long, long time to resolve. I don't see it happening without some damn strong justification.

edited 13th Jul '14 5:02:43 PM by Einander

Uhhhh, news flash. People read stories like this because they're unrealistic. The reason for that is simple. Realism (especially with romance) IS FUCKING BORING.

We almost never see characters use the toilet either, do you assume that doesn't happen? You can infer the existence of something from the situation, you know.

That's a top heavy way of looking at it. Is there any reason the relationship can't have emotional impact after the fact?

Out of living girls Mein and Leone spent most time with Tatsumi. To be honest I would prefere later, but unlike that black haired girl, whose name I can't remember, Mein was obviously attracted to Tatsumi for while and it's not like Tatsumi was as indifferent as some people here try imply.

And for her potentional death, I don't see that comming anytime soon. Schere, Bullat was killed to establish Anyone Can Die policy, but after that Noone of original crew got more than teased with flags, feeling of danger was maintained by deaths of new or side characters instead.

edited 13th Jul '14 5:52:22 PM by Tenzen12

Going to the toilet isn't important to the plot or the characters. This is. And that excuse doesn't work when it's clearly treated as a big deal, yet we're given no reason to care. Relationships don't spring up from nowhere, they have to start on some kind of foundation, and there was absolutely no existing relationship between Mein and Tatsumi that could have supported this development because Mein rarely got to share a scene with Tatsumi if she even got screentime at all, and when she did 90% of her interactions with him were antagonistic.

And don't you even pull that bullshit about people with crushes being abrasive to people they like, because that's a bigger load of crap than this relationship being "foreshadowed" or "realistic".

inb4 KSPAM says the incredibly predictable line "he spent more time with Esdese"

edited 13th Jul '14 6:04:42 PM by KSPAM

I'll just post something that amuses me here about Esdeath's name:

it's REALLY similar to Exdeath (from FFV) so everytime her name comes up, I can't stop thinking about an evil magician Tree. it's really amusing

Who's Esdeath? Do you mean Esdese?

edited 13th Jul '14 11:24:18 PM by KSPAM

I'm anime only for the moment. In what ways is the manga darker? The anime at least goes out of it's way to make all the authorities CompleteMonsters so there is no real grey area. I think dwelling to much on it would just be angsty and bad. Same with his friends. We never really saw them, so there wasn't a whole lot of impact there.

It doesn't feel like trying to make it darker would help. You could make the anime bloodier, but I don't think that would really change anything.

edited 13th Jul '14 11:36:21 PM by kiukiuclk

the name now sounds like Eisidisi, an ancient mayan male stripper vampire , I don't know how that's better

The manga can be comically grimdark at times, with a bad habit of introducing interesting characters, only to then kill them off in the most brutal way possible either immediately, or when they no longer have direct bearing on the current plot.

I would pay actual IRL money to have official art of Esdese in AC/DC's outfit

@kiukiuclk Huh, I don't think the anime is significantly lighter than the manga, based on the first two episodes at least.

Tatsumi did bond with Akame. The scene after Scissors' death and so on.

By the way, Chapter 2 of the manga is moved to Episode 3.

Wait really, guess they wanted to focus on Tatsumi and Akame then.

Rip Little Rabac 1 and 2