Characters / Akame ga Kill! - Esdeath

"The weak are destined to lie beneath the boots of the strong. If that angers you, overcome your deficits."

Voiced by: Satomi Akesaka (Japanese), Christine Auten (English), Nati Valdebenito-Ponce (Latin American Spanish)

Leader of the Jaegars. A high-ranking general and the most powerful fighter in the Empire. A true sadist, she is an expert in torture and loves to inflict it upon others (indeed, the prospect of her "personal" attention is seen as a terrible fate). Ironically, when offered a title of nobility for hunting down and destroying Night Raid, she instead wanted them to find someone she believed could be her One True Love (to the utter shock of everyone in the room).

Her Teigu, Demon God Manifestation: Demon's Extract, is the blood of an ultra class Danger Beast that she drank, allowing her to create and manipulate massive amounts of ice.

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A-E

• Abduction Is Love: Played for Laughs. She couldn't understand why knocking out Tatsumi, dragging him to the palace and slapping a collar on him isn't a good idea. She just wants him to stand out as her lover.
• Abhorrent Admirer: Towards Tatsumi, but in this case it's not because she's unattractive (which she definitely isn't); Tatsumi is utterly terrified by her bloodthirst and love for corruption. Every chance he got, he always tried to run away from her out of fear. When he realized he could not redeem her rotten soul and after she nonchalantly told him of Lubbock's demise, said fear quickly turned to disgust finalizing his resentment of her and the empire she serves.
• The Ace: A darker than usual example, but she is one of the strongest people in the world and is known in the Empire as "the Empire's strongest". The very thought of facing her on battle struck fear in the hearts of people to the point where most people would rather haul ass than to face her.
• Adaptational Curves: The anime exaggerated Esdeath's breasts from the manga. She went from around Sheele's size to rivaling Leone's bust.
• Adaptation Distillation: After showing us what she did with the hero of the Northern Tribes, the anime adaptation removes several later instances of Esdeath's actual Sadist tendencies, relegating it to little more than her being a strong, though clearly Ax-Crazy, Blood Knight. It is still hammered home that she's a Psycho for Hire, but most of what she's done is toned down, and it isn't the first instance of censorship in the anime.
• Adaptational Sympathy: In the anime, Esdeath is still a Sadistic Blood Knight, but due to the Adaptation Distillation, some of her Kick the Dog moments are never shown or softened. Her overall behavior in the manga is much more Ax-Crazy and bloodthirsty, while she acts far more human in the anime.
• Adaptational Wimp: Downplayed. Her anime counterpart is still one of the strongest characters in the anime. However, in the comparison to her manga counterpart, her anime counterpart is clearly weaker. Since the manga had many arcs that were Adapted Out in the anime and events occured in much larger periods, Esdeath in the manga had more time to develop new abilities, such as Ice Cavalry and her Ice Commander In Chief. Here is a good comparison: in the anime Akame was capable of killing Esdeath all by herself; while in the manga Akame, alongside other 10 Teigu users and 100,000 men had a hard time landing a single hit on her. Eventually Akame manages to impale her, but only because Esdeath grew tired of fighting an entire army and was too focused on the fact that she had already shattered Murasame.
• Affably Evil: An extreme case where both sides are roughly balanced. She is a murderous, warmongering sadist who enjoys torture, pillages towns, and firmly believes in a survival of the fittest mindset. She is also A Mother to Her Men, expresses Villain Respect fairly frequently, doesn't care about achieving power (and turned down an offer of nobility when asked directly), (mostly) sees her line of work as just a job (and a way to find her One True Love), and generally isn't villainous - some would even say kind - outside of combat.
  • Zigzagged between Affably Evil and Faux Affably Evil in the manga. While she does show some remorse at the demise of the Jaegers, remembering them fondly when they died not knowing that Kurome and Wave had faked their deaths to leave the Empire. and her love for Tatsumi is geniune to an extent; she is more prone to post-disregard and insulting to deceased allies such as dismissing Seryu as a "waste of potential", after the latter's demise- in direct contrast to comforting her after the loss of Dr. Stylish. In addition, her Ax-Crazy nature is gradually highlighted over the series, downplaying her Pet the Dog moments as Pragmatic Villainy, culminating in using her Trump Ice Storm, Commander-In-Chief to cover the Empire in ice. Potentially, endangering her colleagues, which Najenda pointed out. Esdeath showed little regard to this, showing her truly self-centered personality.
• All Amazons Want Hercules: Subverted; Esdeath's first criteria for a potential partner is for them to be strong, and in fact, capable of becoming a general, but she doesn't hide the fact that she intends to be the dominant-half of the relationship.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • Towards Najenda, her former colleague and now enemy. Both are the leaders of an elite group of Teigu wielders and opposing members of the war effort. She is also responsible for the loss of Najenda's right eye and arm.
  • Tatsumi as well, being his most frequently faced enemy, and her desire to force him to be her lover being one of her driving motivations.
• Artificial Limbs: In manga, after being forced to make Life-or-Limb Decision after Akame cut her right arm, she quickly replaced her arm with one made out of ice. Later, she would also replace the fingers on her left hand with ones made out of ice after they were severed during her fight with Akame.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: She's outright stated to be the World's Best Warrior. Because of this, she has one of the highest authorities in the Empire. Also, she received a license to basically do whatever she wants, and anything that she wants will ultimately be given to her. Except Tatsumi, who refuses to become her plaything. She bemoans about this right before she dies.
• Avenging the Villain: After Wave and Kurome fake their deaths and desert, leaving her as the last Jaeger, she decides to dedicate the coming final battle to the memory of her fallen subordinates. It's likely the closest she's come to being genuinely sorrowful.
• Ax-Crazy: Violence and bloodshed are everything she lives for.
• Badass Adorable: In Chapter 33 of Zero, it was revealed even as a young girl who has yet to attain her ice power, Esdeath can still kick plenty of ass. Also, she can still look cute while doing it.
• Bait the Dog: Esdeath zig-zags this, especially in the manga adaptation. She's introduced as a sadistic, cruel and merciless Blood Knight with psychotic tendencies with nothing to show otherwise. Then with the introduction of the Jaegers and connecting with Tatsumi, she gradually shows more humane qualities such as affection and love while still retaining her ruthless streak- which is as far as the anime goes. In the manga, it's played more straight with her shows of affection being manipulations to get them to obey more effectively and isn't afraid to throw those ties under the bus to unleash her Trump Card to potentially freeze her allies and their families from the cold, just so she can fight all out.
• Barbarian Tribe: She's from the far-north Partas tribe which specialize in hunting Dangerbeasts. Despite her years of living in the Capital, she's still a barbarian at heart with an inability to understand art and music. In the manga, she actively encourages her troops to rape and pillage.
• Bare-Handed Blade Block: In her final battle with Akame, Esdeath stops and breaks Murasame's blade with her bare hands. However, Esdeath failed to consider Akame could still use one of the fragments of the broken sword to kill her.
• The Baroness: The Sexpot type with the Rosa Klebb fear factor. She's a complete sadist, wears dominatrix-style clothing, tortures people for fun, is considered the most powerful and terrifying warrior in the Evil Empire, and she still gets all lovey-dovey around the young hero.
• Bathos: Casually slaughtering Danger Beasts in between bouts of acting like a schoolgirl with a crush on Tatsumi.
• Beauty Is Bad: She's beautiful, regal, ruthless and vicious.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: After losing the Final Battle with Akame, Esdeath chooses to freeze her body in an ice crystal and shatter herself into pieces rather than allow Murasame's poison to finish her off.
• Beyond Redemption: Tatsumi tries to find some good in her when he asks about her origins. However, instead of a tragic backstory, it revealed a monster who was an unfeeling killer even as a child. Furthermore, she wasn't driven insane by her teigu one bit since she was already a sadistic killer before joining the empire. After that, Tatsumi has given up any idea of convincing Esdeath to change her ways.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: She forms one with Prime Minister Honest, his rule would not be possible without Esdeath’s support and cooperation. She helps maintain Honest's rule because its sheer brutality places the Empire in a state of almost constant internal rebellion and war with its neighbors, creating her ideal world where the weak are killed and the strong rule.
• Blood Knight: The reason she brutally kills all but a few people when putting down a rebellion. She wants that hatred to be preserved and spread once more, so another revolt happens in time, and that she may fight again. Hopefully against stronger/more worthy opponents.
• Breakout Villain: During 2014, a museum held a character popularity poll and when the results were in, she was deemed to be the most popular character on the entire roster, for being one of the most deadly foes Night Raid ever faced. In the anime conception, she serves as the final antagonist. Regarding the cancelation of the sequel series, Hinowa ga Crush!, in 2022, the illustrator Strelka outright stated one of the reasons was their failure to introduce a character as popular as Esdeath.
• Break the Badass:
  • She's capable of doing this to every opponent but notable mention goes to Leone who flees from her just from the pressure of her Killing Intent.
  • Esdeath later attempts to do this to Tatsumi, attempting to break his spirit by revealing how Lubbock died. This only reinforces his desire not to switch sides, and cementing his hatred of her.
• Breast Attack: One of her more infamous moments came in her fight with Leone. Esdeath cut off Leone's breast, just to see how quickly Leone could regenerate (and don't worry, she did regenerate pretty quickly). This is another instance where Esdeath's brutality is toned down in the anime - she never even meets Leone, let alone fights her, although the sequence where she scares Leone off from her Killing Intent remains.
• Calling Your Attacks: Doesn't seem like she usually does this, but in episode 14 she comments that she did it specifically to show off for Tatsumi.
• Card-Carrying Villain: She clearly revels in all the pain and misery she causes and enjoys the reputation she gains from it.
• The Chief's Daughter: Back in her youth, she was the daughter of the Partas Clan Chief.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: She literally smashed Suzuka into a wall for molesting Tatsumi and gives Mine a terrifying Death Glare when she reveals herself as Tatsumi's girlfriend.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: One of her specialties. Her Establishing Character Moment was breaking Numa Seika's will after wiping out his nation. In her fight with Leone, Esdeath decides she wants to test the limits of Leone's Healing Factor by dismembering various parts of her body.
• Combat Sadomasochist: On top of being a Sadist, Esdeath actually seems to enjoy (during the few times she is actually hit) getting injured, especially if the injury is caused by Tatsumi.
• Combat Stilettos: Esdeath is both a sexualized and terrifyingly powerful person and this trope is used to emphasize it. At one point, while in a bad mood because of losing Tatsumi, she decides to hunt Danger Beasts and savagely rams her heel into one and letting it bleed out. Later during the final battle, she would use one of her stilettos to kill a rebellion soldier that was wielding Champ's Ace Solution: Die Leaguer.
• Comically Missing the Point: A Running Gag of hers, particularly when it involves Tatsumi. See Abduction Is Love above for just one example.
• Commissar Cap: Fitting with her Nazi-esque motif.
• Curtains Match the Window: Blue hair and eyes.
• Cute and Psycho: She's Ax-Crazy as all-hell, and yet she can smile and blush like an innocent girl or a kindly mother. Tatsumi finds himself unnerved by it - he abhors her psycho side, but he's attracted to her cute/nice side.
• Dark Action Girl: She's sadistic, vicious and is known as The Empire's Strongest for damn good reason.
• Determinator: Esdeath is one dedicated woman who just won't give up on something she wants, as shown in her pursuit of Tatsumi. When he refused to join her and rejected her love one last time because of having a girlfriend now, and being generally resentful of her, she had to execute him under the Empire's orders. She then pretended to pull an If I Can't Have You… and she planned to wound him bad enough so that he will seem dead, then take him away to presumably nurse him back to health and resume her attempts to get him to fall for her. She eventually decided since her feelings won't ever reach him that she would just kill him instead or have him kill her and die happy all the same.
• Diabolus ex Machina: Her new trump cards that she thinks up on the go is this.
• Dissonant Serenity: While she usually has sharp looking eyes throughout her appearance when not gushing over Tatsumi or in her Pet the Dog moments; during the last half of her final fight, she takes an eerie calm look with Tareme Eyes, almost mask-like at times with a near constant grin when not cornered.
• Doomed Hometown: Her entire village was slaughtered by an enemy tribe when she was younger, including her father. Though given her world view, she wasn't terribly broken up about the fact.
• Dragon-in-Chief: She's only one in a long line of generals working for Prime Minister Honest (himself the root of all the corruption in the capitol), but she's far more prominent, far more powerful, and holds much greater sway over the story than anyone else, including Honest and Syura. In many ways, the only reason Honest is still the Prime Minister is because he's providing Esdeath with more and more enemies to fight, but if you mistreat her subordinates, you can kiss your ass goodbye, and she's already proven that even the resident Overlord Jr. isn't safe from her wrath. Often times, it's very easy to mistake her as the Big Bad instead.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap: The series very goes above and beyond to handicapping her so that she doesn't just wipe out Night Raid right off the bat, usually by having Night Raid avoid her as much as possible, or putting her in a situation where she couldn't help her fellow Jaegers. During her first fight against Night Raid, she was forced to protect Bolic at the time, which prevented her from fighting all out. During their second fight, she was unconsciously holding back because she want to capture Tatsumi alive. Also, she was conveniently unavailable when the Jaegers were dealing with Wild Hunt, or when Wave needed her help to save Kurome in the Battle of the Sisters Arc. By the end of the series when she's finally allowed to cut loose, the remaining members of Night Raid have grown strong enough to challenge her. Granted, even then she still very much had a chance to win and lost more to luck than anything, but any earlier and Night Raid would have had no chance.
• The Dreaded: She's notorious for her power as well as her cruelty, to the point where most people would rather haul ass than to face her.
• Dressed Like a Dominatrix: She goes around wearing a provocative Minidress of Power that shows off her cleavage, along with thigh-high boots.
• Elemental Hair Colors: She's An Ice Person with light blue hair.
• Enfante Terrible: As a little girl, she's an adorable tribal, but even her own father says that there's something missing inside of her as she smiles while scooping the eye out of a giant lizard.
• Entitled to Have You: Tatsumi fits perfectly her criteria for a lover, which is why Esdeath has decided Tatsumi has to be hers without even considering Tatsumi's opinion in the matter. However, she also tells him that she wishes for them to be lovers, rather than for him to be a mere possession of hers, as he's one of the few men she truly respects.
• Ephebophile: Esdeath is in her early twenties and she tries to make Tatsumi who is in his teens fall for her. She even states that she prefers younger men because that makes them easier to dominate and mold to her liking.
• Establishing Character Moment: Having previously established that the Prince of the North was an unstoppably powerful warrior who'd never lost a battle, the very first time Esdeath appears in person said prince is naked, chained and collared, kneeling at her feet, literally licking her boots. She promptly kills him with one kick, almost as an afterthought.
• Even Evil Has Standards: One of the clearer examples amongst the Jaegers.
  • She finds Wild Hunt to be obnoxious and disgusting, most notably, and she found Seryu to be far too stupidly Ax-Crazy, so she told Kurome and Wave to loosen her up and reel in her Sanity Slippage.
  • She did not take kindly to the entire Assassination Squad being sent to death on a hopeless assignment, which included Kurome despite her objections. When the idiot who ordered the mission heckles Esdeath to torture the handful of survivors inlcuding Kurome, she kills the guy without hesitation and puts his men under her command.
  • In a meeting with Honest, she advises him to be careful with his corruption of the Emperor, as he can risk giving him sexually transmitted diseases if he goes too far with indulging him with women.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: One of the obviously example. She has a deep affection for Tatsumi and she loves Tatsumi so much that she steals his first kiss and wants more from him. In Anime, she embraces Tatsumi's body and commits suicide, and although she understands that Tatsumi will never love her, there will always be a place for him in her heart.
• Even the Girls Want Her: Suzuka, and possible Seryu, can attest to that.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Downplayed example as Esdeath can grasp the concept about caring for others and when first trying to woo Tatsumi, she offers to allow any family he has to live in comfort. Nonetheless, Tatsumi attempts to convince her to use her influence to better the Empire from within by appealing to the good side of her he's seen: he tries to explain how the drastic class gap could keep people who loved each other apart, but her obsession with Social Darwinist philosophy causes her immediate response to be that she can't comprehend something like that. To her, the strong fight for what they want and if they're strong enough to survive, they do. If they don't, they're too weak and she doesn't care.
• Evil Counterpart: To Najenda. While Najenda leads Night Raid, Esdeath leads the Jaegars. Najenda is also a soldier who defected from the Evil Empire in order to end its corruption, in contrast to Esdeath who enjoys working for an evil empire.

F-N

• Final Boss:
  • Serves as one in episode 24 of the anime. Despite the Empire falling, Esdeath vows to continue her "hunt". And if she can't find any rebellions to put down, she'll simply start one. Fortunately she's stopped by Akame before she's able to put that into action.
  • She's this for the finale of the manga, being put down by Akame before she could commit her atrocities on another land. With Honest, The Emperor and one of Honest's cabal serving as targets to be executed before the new government could be formed.
• Fetishized Abuser: The story makes no bones about Esdeath being irredeemably evil, but her sexual predation of Tatsumi is still played as very enticing. Her proclivity for dominating, humiliating and torturing her enemies are also often framed as evil, yet are just as often enhancing her sexy dominatrix aesthetic.
• Fingore: In the manga, she loses a couple of her left fingers during her final fight with Akame.
• Forceful Kiss: She steals a kiss from Tatsumi twice. Although the second time was because she wanted to know if they were living in an illusion when they were sent to an island by Syura (and says no, it's real, because the sensations are too strong for it to be fake). Nevertheless, Mine wasn't happy when Tatsumi told her about it.
• Four-Star Badass: When you kick as much ass as her there's no other position except as a general.
• Freudian Excuse Denial: Tatsumi kept trying to find a motive for Esdeath's ruthlessness and sadism, but Esdeath rendered any possible excuse moot.
  • Northern tribes decimated her hometown. However, she holds no ill will towards them because as her father once said if they lost, it was because they were too weak, and it is the natural order of things in the world. She did brutally decimate the Northern tribes, but not for revenge; it was only because the Empire ordered her to do so.
  • The Demon's Extract filled Esdeath's head with malevolent and bloodthirsty thoughts... Except that Esdeath, after initially being stunned from hearing the suffering voices from the Teigu, felt immensely satisfied with the power welling inside her now; not to mention she loved the suffering of others anyway. Esdeath affirms the Danger Beast's blood inside her has been tamed and it has never influenced her sadistic behavior; she has always been that way.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: She used to be a normal little girl from the Northern Frontier Lands who lived happily with her father and loved nothing more than hunting. As she grew up, her father emphasized Social Darwinist philosophy in her upbringing for her own sake; the Danger Beasts running rampant around their homeland meant that she'd die if she couldn't become a force to be reckoned with by the time she became old enough to hunt. However, her village was later wiped out during a raid by an enemy tribe. Fifteen years, the death of her father, the destruction of her village, and the drinking of demon blood later, and she's the most feared warrior in the entire series.
• General Ripper: She's a ruthless and sadistic general who willingly commits all sorts of atrocities in her service for the Evil Empire.
• Go Out with a Smile: In episode 24 of the anime, after being mortally wounded by Akame, she smiles as she cradles Tatsumi's corpse and slowly freezes herself and him, before disappearing into the air after the ice vaporizes them both.
• Graceful Loser:
  • In the anime after getting slashed in the chest by the Murasame, Esdeath is beginning to die. Even though she has power to spare, rather than continue the fight - she acknowledges Akame's victory and asks her how is that Akame has grown so strong. When Akame tells her it's the willingness to fight on behalf of others, Esdeath still can't understand but accepts that she lost fairly.
  • In the manga after Akame manages to stab Esdeath with the remainder of Murasame she chastises herself that she allowed her focus to slip from the cursed sword after shattering it. Afterwards Esdeath calmly encases herself in ice and shatters herself while noting that she lived her entire life taking what she wanted and her only regret is that she was never able to make Tatsumi turn her way.
• Gratuitous German: Most of her named attacks fall under this. Averted with her trump card.
• Has a Type: Invoked and enforced in a list she made regarding the parameters for her One True Love. They must have hidden potential so that she can personally train them to be a general, they must be brave enough to fight Danger Beasts alongside her, must have grown outside of the capital, be younger than her so that she can dominate him, and have a beautiful smile. Tatsumi fits all of these parameters on his first meeting with Esdeath and gets her love as a result...and a subsequent kidnapping.
• Heartbroken Badass: After Tatsumi manages to escape from her... love. Only more so when he rejects her for the final time and finally wises up.
• The Heavy: She works for Prime Minister Honest but she is the most frequent opponent to Night Raid, as the leader of their Evil Counterparts, The Jaegers. Esdeath is usually the one who is given authority over the missions The Empire sets against Night Raid and she proves herself a powerful and very intelligent opponent, making it clear she is the real threat for the heroes to defeat.
• Hero Killer: She's responsible for the destruction of many prominent forces opposing the Empire, so she always had a fierce reputation (even Leone refused to fight her), but she definitely becomes one when she kills Susanoo.
• Hidden Depths: She may be a Social Darwinist with a sadistic streak and a penchant for torture, but she's looking for people who are strong, so she may recruit them under her umbrella. If she sees you as strong, you're earned her respect, and she will treat you as if you were family. Plus, she's looking for her One True Love (no, really - and everyone who hears this is equally surprised). She's even overjoyed at the idea of said One True Love being a masochist (which is oddly considerate of her). Perhaps because of that, she hates over-hyped strength (meaning, great fighters who turn out to be mere chumps when they face her, as she finds it incredibly boring). Even though she clearly enjoys annihilating her opponents, she has expressed a fairly strong sense of disappointment whenever they prove to be not as powerful as she thought; she regrets nothing, but appears sullen and bitter that they were not strong enough to challenge her. In addition, while she is merciless to her enemies, she's the type that would not accept mercy done to herself either; do not hold back, because she wouldn't hold back either.
• Hidden Heart of Gold:
  • She's a sadistic Social Darwinist who doesn't care how corrupt the empire becomes as long as she can fight, yet she respects strength above everything else, so if she thinks you're strong, she'll treat you almost like a mother or a very quirky older sister. She may be complicit in allowing the corruption of the Prime Minister, but she has enough of a code of honor not to actively torment the people of the Empire, and prefers to fight only active enemies of the Prime Minister. Furthermore, for all of her Social Darwinist bravado, she has a massive problem with people who harm her subordinates, so even though she believes it is natural for the weak to die, she will take time out of her hands to avenge their deaths anyway, even though it goes against the very creed she's honoring her father over. In many ways, she's earned the loyalty of her fellow Jaegers, and she's actually very sweet to anyone whom she thinks is worth her time.
  • Subverted in the manga as she shows to be a clear sociopath inside that supposed hidden heart of gold. Even though she may somewhat mourn for her subordinates' deaths, in the end she blames them for being weak and easily moves on. Deep down she mostly sees those who work for her as her property, so her Benevolent Boss attitude is more due to Pragmatic Villainy than actual kindness
• Hoist by Her Own Petard: Akame nabs Esdeath's Royal Rapier during their final battle and uses it to push Murasame into Esdeath's chest, which leads to Esdeath's ultimate defeat.
• Hopeless Suitor: No matter how hard she tries, Tatsumi absolutely refuses to join her and become her lover. After Tatsumi makes it evident they're never gonna be a thing, she finally decides that her feelings will never reach him and that she will kill him with everything she has or be content if he kills her in response.
• Horrible Judge of Character: She thinks that Tatsumi is a Blank Slate when she meets him, and thus assumes that she can easily bend him to her will. Much to her shock, he's already got his own set of ideals that make it impossible for them to ever be a couple, and nothing she offers him will make him compromise those beliefs.
• Humans Are Bastards: Unintentionally competes with Honest in this regard. She's a manipulative, homicidal degenerate with no hope of redemption and is just as prone to corrupting people as her partner/employer is to the emperor. One of few ways that make her worse than him is the condescending tone of sympathy for her dead subordinates. While the latter flat out feels nothing for deaths in his family, she's prone to both pity their passing yet mock them for being weak.
• I Control My Minions Through...: Kindness, ironically. Despite her brutal philosophy, she's very kind (in her own way) and caring to her subordinates. She'll certainly torture them if they screw up badly, but she doesn't kill them, never cripples them, always heals them, and keeps it fairly light compared to her enemies. In fact, it's actually pretty rare for her to mistreat any of her subordinates at all, and she tends to transfer money intended for her to her Faceless Goons instead. When Prime Minister Honest brings it up, Esdeath replies that she knows her soldiers will fight harder for her if they adore her rather than fear her. And to be fair, her relationship with the Jaegers in particular shows that the devotion is mutual on her part.
• I Fight for the Strongest Side!: Esdeath's motivations for supporting the Prime Minister is that he continues to offer her battle fields to fight on.
• An Ice Person: Her Teigu, Demon's Extract, can create ice from nothing, lots of ice. In fact, it's said to be the most powerful teigu in existence.
• Icy Blue Eyes: To fit her general disposition, she has appropriately colored light blue eyes.
• If I Can't Have You…: She repeatedly tries her best to get Tatsumi to join her, and grows more desperate towards the end. Even when he let it slip that he's already dating another girl, she keeps trying, and clearly feels awful that he keeps rejecting her. Since he won't ever leave Night Raid, she ultimately decides to put Tatsumi up for a Public Execution but doesn't intend to actually kill him; instead, she plans to wound him bad enough so that he will seem dead, then take him away to presumably nurse him back to health and resume her attempts to get him to fall for her. When said plan falls through and he rejects her a final time after trying to freeze and capture him again she decides to go with it for real.
• I Kiss Your Foot: She makes Numa Seika lick her boots, naked, on a chain, on his knees.
• I'm Taking Him Home with Me!: During the colosseum battles, Tatsumi is the first person she encounters who fits her criteria for her perfect match,^note Earlier, she was asked to make a list. She made five points: must have General capabilities, should be peerless, must have not been raised in the Capital, should be younger, and have a smiling face. The battles were arranged to fit point 1. so she kidnaps him with the entire stadium full of spectators watching. No joke! She slaps a collar around his neck, starts to drag him off, and knocks him out when he asks her to wait a moment.
  Tatsumi: WAIT! Hold on a—
  Esdeath: (Hits Tatsumi on the back of the neck.) No, I will not wait. Lets go to the palace where we can talk alone.
  Esdeath slings an unconscious Tatsumi over her shoulder and walks off.)
  (A panel showing the spectators' reactions that includes a dumbfounded man, a stunned woman, and an utterly distraught Esdeath fanboy.)
  Lubbock: WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED??!!
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: On both the giving and receiving end.
• In Love with Your Carnage: She gets quite turned on when fighting against Tatsumi's powered up mode.
  Esdeath: "Yes, that's it, Tatsumi! For the first time, we're finally communicating! Exchanging our true emotions with one another!"
• Insane Troll Logic: Somehow believes those serving under her flag, while she herself serves The Empire, is not the same thing. Especially still when she sends her emissaries off on errands for Honest's debauched goals.
• Insanity Immunity: No one before Esdeath was able to control the power of Demon's Extract because it littered the mind of those who drank even a cup of it with destructive, murderous thoughts. Esdeath was unaffected by it because Esdeath herself is already destructive and murderous and chugged the whole urn.
• Interplay of Sex and Violence:
  • During her fight with Tatsumi, she becomes more and more impressed with his ability to hold his own, to the point where she's really enjoying the fight.
  • During their second fight, she's utterly ecstatic to see that he's transformed into a dragon, and calls it a "token of [their] love" when he breathes fire at her.
• Interspecies Romance: In the manga, after seeing that Tatsumi has completely transformed into a dragon during the final battle, she found his new form "absolutely breathtaking", and stated her love for him will never change, even in his current form.
• Invincible Villain: Is easily the most powerful individual in story with no one even remotely able to tag her, in groups let alone individually. It was a miracle in itself Akame ever beat her.
• Irony: One of the traits that makes Tatsumi attractive to her is his fearlessness. It's that very same trait that makes him unafraid to reject her advances, even on pain of death.
• It's All About Me: Subverted. Despite her stance on Social Darwinism, she cares a great deal for her Jaegers. Even when she berates Wave and Kurome for their perceived weakness, she promises to avenge their supposed deaths.
• Jerkass: She's actually very aware of how the Prime Minister is manipulating the emperor and allowing the Capital to become corrupt and rampant with crime, but doesn't really care as long as she can fight and recruit strong people. Truth be told she uses the rot in it and the civil unrest that results there in as an excuse for her warmongering, her adherence to Social Darwinism is the main reason Tatsumi doesn't think Love Redeems in her case.
• The Juggernaut:
  • In the course of the entire story Esdeath has never been harmed when she enters a fight until chapter 56. If her opponents aren't done in by her One-Hit Kill blows, they are immediately incapacitated or worse. This comes to a head in the Bolic arc, when she takes down Incursio Tatsumi, Leone, Magatama Susanoo, and Najenda singlehandedly.
    Najenda: If you make a mistake, we'll crash head on into Esdeath. We don't have enough soldiers to face her yet.
    Tatsumi: How many do you think we'll need to defeat her?
    Najenda: Fifty thousand elite soldiers, and at least ten Teigu users along with Akame.
  • They manage to muster this kind of force by Chapter 75, and while it seems like it's not going to be enough, Najenda notes that Esdeath is slowly tiring, and is attempting to compensate for this by slaughtering those around her with such ease and brutality that she is trying to force the rest to fall back and regroup - which would allow her to slaughter them piecemeal - instead of Zerg Rushing her.
• Kick the Dog: Naturally, being a sadist, she enjoys doing this. Her two most notable crimes include encouraging her men to rape the female members of the Ban tribe while forcing the men to watch, then burying almost half-a-million civilians alive out of spite. She also has no problem in calling her subordinates that die weak, such as the Three Beasts, Seryu, Wave and Kurome.
• Leitmotif: Esdeath. Essentially the theme for the Jaegars without the lyrics.
• Life-or-Limb Decision: In the anime, Akame wounds her left arm in their final battle. Esdeath then cuts it off to prevent the poison from spreading through her body. It plays out the same way in manga, but only with her right arm instead of left.
• Light Is Not Good: Esdeath is a beautiful young woman who wears a white uniform, has bright baby-blue hair, Icy Blue Eyes, and porcelain skin. She is also a sadistic, war-mongering monster who has actively encouraged her men to Rape, Pillage, and Burn at times and sees no problem with what she does. No matter how many endearing moments she's given, we're always eventually reminded of how ruthless she is.
• Lightning Bruiser: Most of her blows are One-Hit Kill and she's fast enough to dodge attacks from Incursio Tatsumi and Magatama Susanoo simultaneously. That's not even taking into account of her Teigu.
• Love at First Sight: She falls for Tatsumi after watching him win a tournament and she goes to greet him personally. While he's expecting a cash payment, she instead puts a leash on him, then knocks him out and takes him into the palace.
• Love Freak: She's pretty damn obsessed with Tatsumi, which makes her simultaneously Cute and Psycho.
• Love Redeems: Subverted. Tatsumi thought he could find a way to redeem Esdeath by appealing to her romantic affection for him. Eventually, he realized that she can't be changed from her current standpoint, because she isn't just a product of society or her time; she really is insane and nothing will change that, so he figures that she needs to lose if there is to be any progress at all.
• Mad Love: Even though Tatsumi makes it clear again and again that he doesn't like her one bit and would rather die than joining her, Esdeath isn't discouraged in the slightest and keeps pursuing him. Not even discovering he's a member of Night Raid and he already has a girlfriend made her catch on that Tatsumi would never be hers. Once she finally gets the message that they're never gonna be a thing, Esdeath decides she will have to kill Tatsumi or be killed by him.
• Major Injury Underreaction: She cuts off her own arm to avoid Murasame's killing effect and isn't slowed down at all afterward.
• Mama Bear:
  • This is a recurring theme with Esdeath. Despite everything, she's rather protective of her subordinates. When River, Nyau, and Daidara were all killed, Esdeath - naturally - cursed them for being too weak and claimed it was "only natural" for them to die. Yet, she still gave each a proper burial, planted flowers on each of their tombstones, bowed her head, and declared her desire to avenge their deaths anyway. Also, despite wholeheartedly believing that the weak should be left to rot, she's known to comfort her comrades when they are in emotional pain (like Seryu), advises and mentors them like a mother, puts their families under her protection, and often swears revenge if any of her soldiers were killed. In addition, after one of her subordinates was killed by Wild Hunt, Esdeath swears to exact revenge, despite Wild Hunt's leader being the Prime Minister's son.
  • Subverted in the manga, as she doesn't feel any real attachment to them, while the anime softens it up a bit.
• Marshmallow Hell: Hugs Tatsumi's face into her chest in Episode 14.
  Esdeath: Let's get to know one another better!
• Minidress of Power: Her Iconic Outfit is a white minidress that she wears as her military uniform.
• Moral Myopia: Zigzagged, if not subverted. Esdeath's contempt for Wild Hunt may seem out of place on paper, due to her sharing sadistic and Torture Technician traits with their leader, Syura. However, her contempt for Wild Hunt stems from their indiscriminate targeting of Imperial civilians (whom Esdeath protects as a Jaeger), genuine distaste for their wanton (and often pointless) cruelty, their Stupid Evil tendencies, and their killing of one of her subordinates. She isn't an angel by any means, but Wild Hunt remains Eviler than Thou to the Jaegers as a whole.
• A Mother to Her Men: Zigzagged, surprisingly, considering her infamous sadism and cruelty. She will torture them as punishment for major screw ups, but it's light compared to what she does to enemies. In fact, when Run asked her point blank what they should do if confronted by her One True Love, Esdeath unhesitatingly told him that if their lives were in danger, they had permission to kill him (although she privately admitted that she'd prefer to add Tatsumi as a subordinate rather than be faced with the scenario of killing him). She explains to Honest that soldiers will do anything for a commander they respect, and this is why her unit is the best. That being said, she has no hesitation when it comes to killing her men and trapping them in a blizzard in the final battle, but those same men show up to mourn her death in the epilogue.
• Ms. Fanservice: Even more so than Leone. Many a Male Gaze is dedicated to Esdeath.
• My Greatest Failure: As she dies, her only regret is that she failed to bring out Tatsumi's innocent smile that made her fall in love with him in the first place. The bitter irony, of course, is that Esdeath fails to realize that she had an active role in burning away the positive traits she fell in love with in the first place. She dies totally unrepentant of this, remaining obstinate in how pure her love for Tatsumi was.
• My Instincts Are Showing: It's implied Esdeath's entire psyche and personal motivations aren't just based on emotion, but her strange, Social Darwinist id. From a young age, her father noted that she was a perfect hunter, lacking empathy or restraint in dealing with those weaker than her. She was mentally strong enough to overcome Demon's Extract, which drove anyone else mad - if not an indomitable will, she may have just been different enough mentally to accumulate. Her attraction to Tatsumi seems to be a result of this; she has a list of what her ideal man should be, likely based on a gut feeling, and when Tatsumi demonstrates all of those qualities, she falls for him at first sight, despite having yet to personally know him.
• Nature Versus Nurture: It is true that her Social Darwinist mindset is the result of being raised in a very rural, unforgiving area of the continent where Danger Beasts ran rampant and her tribe being wiped out by a rival tribe. However, her penchant for sadism and enjoyment of torture is implied to be nature, not nurture. She began to show her sadistic, sociopathic nature when she began carving up her kills with a dissonant grin on her face. However, the lack of her mother due to dying during a Danger Beast hunt and her father, while being aware of how eerie these traits were, chose to ignore it, letting Esdeath's indulgence in violence expand without proper scolding on why such an attitude was wrong and taught her strong survive while the weak die beliefs that would become the foundations of her mindset. Nevertheless, she still mourns the loss of her father and hometown, does protect the normal people of the Empire, prefers to cut loose only on her enemies, and is extremely protective towards her subordinates, so the question is rather how much of a sadist would she have been if things played out differently for her life.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: Very guilty of this. Esdeath has a habit of coming up with a new ability every arc to counteract anything Night Raid throws at her. Her final one features encasing herself in a giant, Gundam-style replica of Tatsumi's Incursio armor.
• No Body Left Behind: After being fatally wounded, she encases herself - along with Tatsumi's corpse in the anime - in a block of ice, which then disintegrates, along with her.
• Noble Demon: She's horrific to her enemies, but she doesn't actively abuse the people of The Empire, only fights direct opponents of the Prime Minister, has no issues with her soldiers protecting citizens of the Empire, largely sees her line of work as a job (although one she definitely enjoys WAY too much), possesses a sense of honor and respect to people worth her time, and genuinely cares for her subordinates - even when they disappoint or annoy her. While none of her actions are excusable, she's definitely one of the comparatively nicer villains in the series.
• Not Good with Rejection: Yes and no. She's very driven to getting Tatsumi under her wing, but he keeps saying no. Eventually, she gives up when she realizes that he will never change his answer, and begrudgingly decides to have him put up for execution while planning to wound him bad enough to make others think he's dead, take him away, and presumably heal him up and continue her attempts to win him over. Until it finally sinks in that she'll never have him and she decides to kill him for real.

O-Z

• Oh, Crap!:
  • In the anime; When she realizes that the Akame she froze in time is actually an afterimage.
  • Again in the manga when an initial strike power up Tatsumi landed was a feint for his real blow. Made all the more devastating being while Esdeath was prepped for it with her ice armor Tatsumi plows through it landing her on her butt for the rest of the battle.
  • Has her final one when Akame manages to run her through with Murasame.
• One-Woman Army: As Najenda herself estimated, she is worth no less than ten Teigu users and 50,000 soldiers. She can even create her own army of ice-made soldiers. Later, Najenda amasses 100,000 soldiers and 11 Teigu users, including Akame, and Esdeath manages to kill at least half of them. She only is defeated through attrition and no small amount of luck thanks to Akame managing to nail her with the broken Murasame.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: She becomes obsessed with killing Tatsumi during the siege of the Imperial Capital. She almost succeeds, but Tatsumi recovers and convinces Akame to give him a Mercy Kill, but he survives that too.
• The Ophelia: She's the Ms. Fanservice of the series, but at the same time she's utterly insane.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: When the Jaegers are gathered for the first time, she goes incognito in order to check firsthand what are their abilities and strong points/weaknesses. Thing is, the only thing she does to conceal her appearance is wearing a torturer mask while still wearing her signature military uniform and showing her long blue hair. Is not until Kurome cuts her mask that the Jaegers recognize her as general Esdeath, despite being painfully obvious to the audience it was her the whole time.
• Pet the Dog: Surprisingly often. Among other such occasions, she comforts Seryu when she is devastated over Stylish's death (even smiles sweetly when Seryu falls asleep in her arms), she shows a much softer side to her subordinates, she prefers to see Susano'o as a warrior and not simply as a Teigu, she personally nurtured Tatsumi when they were stranded on the island, she keeps the actual families of her soldiers under protection, she doesn't treat Bols any differently after taking off his mask (and even smiles after seeing it firsthand), she's incredibly protective of her subordinates (even when it goes against her Social Darwinist creed), and orders her soldiers to protect the fleeing civilians at a botched Public Execution. She also promises to avenge all of the Jaegers' deaths in the final battle with the Revolution and dedicate the coming slaughter to their memories.
• Power Tattoo: That marking on her chest, just above her cleavage, is her Teigu, and the reason she's An Ice Person.
• Precision F-Strike: She is normally quite eloquent even as she goes about her sadistic habits, but she dropped this line while facing off against an entire army:
  Esdeath: [after slicing through a bunch of arrows] How trite. But if you insist on using a Teigu... then make sure you really fucking use it!
• Property of Love: She sees Tatsumi as this. The way she views her future spouse, is almost like she plans to tame him as her pet that she gets to keep and show off to people as a sort of trophy.
• Psycho for Hire: She's a sadist through and through (although how much of one would she have been is up for debate) - perfect for the position of General in The Empire's military.
• Psychopathic Womanchild: Type C. While normally reserved, sophisticated and composed, Tatsumi manages to bring a school girl crush out of her and during the final battle in the manga, she blushes and drops her usual mature composure to act more childishly gleeful.
• Punched Across the Room: Of a sort, since it happens in a Colosseum. When Esdeath tries and fails miserably to trap Tatsumi in ice to take him home with her the former responds by dodging, feinting and landing a gutter blow that sent her ass flying cementing the fact that he will NEVER be hers.
• Punny Name: "Esdeath" in Japanese is a homophone for "S Desu", which means "I am an S (sadist)".
• Putting on the Reich: Between her her doubled-buttoned blazer, Commissar Cap and job subjugating enemies of the state, there's definitely some association to the Third Reich in her character.
• Red Baron: The Empire's Strongest.
• Redemption Rejection: In both the Anime and Manga, Esdeath makes it known to Tatsumi that she has no intention changing her ways. In the anime, she even states that should the Empire fall, she'll continue slaughtering people on the battleground to create new wars. In the manga, when faced with the reality that all of her Jaegers has either died or deserted, Esdeath can only think of the lost as wasted potential despite them arguably being her Morality Pet.
• Rejection Affection: On the receiving end of this with Tatsumi. She doesn't seem to get it until he tells her that he has a girlfriend, and even then she pines for him.
• Replacement Goldfish: Rejects this trope when Run proposes she select a Tatsumi lookalike from the Imperial Army's ranks after his initial escape.
• Revenge: She helps put Syura on a Humiliation Conga and forces Wild Hunt to disband as payback for killing one of her Jaegers, who both definitely had it coming.
• Ridiculously High Relationship Standards: Esdeath has several criteria for her one true love. They must be younger than her (so she can dominate them), they must have hidden potential (so she can mold them into a general), they must be brave enough to fight by her side, they must have been born outside the capital, and they must have a beautiful smile.
• Royal Rapier: Her weapon of choice. It gives her a Lady of War appearance, despite actually being a Blood Knight.
• Sadist: One of her most defining characteristics, as it's heavily implied that she's a sadist by nature. There's nothing that she enjoys more than the suffering and pain of others.
• Sexy Shirt Switch: She dons a plain white shirt, complete with Navel-Deep Neckline, when she gets Tatsumi to her room after a Shower Scene.
• Shameful Strip: Strips the Prince of the North of his clothing after she swiftly defeated him.
• Shameless Fanservice Girl: She has no qualms about showing off her body in front of Tatsumi whatsoever.
• Single-Target Sexuality: Tatsumi is the only man she's interested in because he's the only one to fit her list of qualifications for her lover.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: She's primarily searching for her One True Love and she gave a list to the emperor with the traits she wanted. One of them is that he cannot have been raised in the Wretched Hive of the capital and another that he must have an "innocent smile". This just happens to be Tatsumi.
• Slasher Smile: Quite prone to giving these.
• Slave Collar: Numa Seika was initially depicted as a young and promising warrior to his people and a true threat to the empire. The next time we see him Esdeath had quickly defeated his army and subjugated him into a docile boy with her as the dominant master tightly placing a slave collar around his neck just to emphasize her authority over him.
• Smitten Teenage Girl: Not a teenager, but she definitely acts like this around Tatsumi.
• Social Darwinist: An extreme example, she believes it only natural for the weak to die. Indeed, she even states she cannot understand "the feelings of the weak", and once all the Jaegers are either dead or defected, while she does promise to avenge them, she shows very little to no remorse over them, stating they were just too weak. It's to the point that when Tatsumi tries to reason with her and get her to use her influence to help eliminate some of the corruption within, appealing to the fact that she loves him with a scenario of a girl who's kept from her love by the large social gaps and corruption, she coldly states that she doesn't understand such things. This mindset is why Tatsumi keeps rejecting her advances.
• The Sociopath: She displays some traits of a sociopath such as complete Lack of Empathy especially for those she deems weak, an utter lack of remorse or shame for her actions and a great need for stimulation, as she will provoke wars just to satiate her bloodlust. Though, unlike other sociopaths such as Honest, Syura or Champ, Esdeath is in a much lower level as she has her own code of honor, even if it seems alien to everyone else and is not one to lose her cool when things don´t go her way. While she has a Lack of Empathy, her kind side is truly genuine, occasionaly at least; she truly cares for her subordinates, even somewhat mourning their deaths; she admits that she still mourns her father's death and respects those she deems worthy.
• The Stoic: While also being an extreme Blood Knight, Esdeath is still very composed in combat. When the rebel forces assault the Imperial Capital en masse, Suzuka, not stranger to combat herself, begins to question the empire's ability to come out on top while Esdeath calmly assesses the situation and makes preparations for the ensuing combat.
• Story-Breaker Power: Oh, where to start? Esdeath's Demon's Extract can create ice from nothing, lots of ice. Because she can create ice without limitation, her powers can be used for all sorts of tasks. She can use ice to create bridges, give her a vantage spot, restrain or kill individuals, and flight, etc. Esdeath even took her power to another level by developing Mahapadma, an ability to freeze time within a certain area once a day. She later shows the ability to created entire armies of ice soldiers. And later she even showed that is capable of create a tremendous ice storm that can freeze an entire continent to death. Quite literally, the only things that limit the usage of her Teigu are both her own stamina and imagination. On top of all this, since her Teigu isn't a physical object like every other Teigu, she can't be disarmed of it, which proved to be the end of several other Teigu users previously.
• Superpower Lottery: Being gifted with the Demon's Extract automatically wins her this, allowing her to create gigantic blocks of ice out of thin air with little effort and instantaneously freeze anything within seconds. If that's not enough she has One-Hit Kill blows, she's fast enough Flash Step around her opponents, and has an impeccable sixth sense. If all that fails she can briefly freeze space and time once a day.
• This Cannot Be!: Says something to this effect after Akame breaks through the Makahadoma.
• Together in Death: In the anime, after being mortally wounded by Akame, Esdeath freezes herself along Tatsumi's corpse before shattering both into pieces. She laments her failure to achieve this in the manga right before she dies.
• Torture Technician: Esdeath loves to torture people and her hobby seems to be finding new ways to make them suffer. The capital has a industrial scale torture chamber that she takes direct charge of whenever she's around; at one point upon seeing a vat full of people boiling alive, she demanded the water temperature be lowered simply to make them suffer longer.
• Touched by Vorlons: She gained her Teigu by drinking the blood of a particularly demonic Danger Beast, making her into An Ice Person.
• Villainesses Want Heroes: A fairly major part of her role in the plot is her love for Tatsumi, although she doesn't find out he's The Hero and her enemy until much later.
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • A subtle example in the anime, she gradually loses some of her composure when after Tatsumi dies and then freezes every soul he just saved around the empire, again further still when Akame manages to get the upper hand during the fight with her.
  • In the manga, she becomes openly angry when Akame prevents her from fighting Tatsumi. It's very brief, however, and she maintains her composure even when Akame starts to make headway against her in their final fight since she knows her final trump card runs on a time limit and she just needs to wait it out. She only drops it again when Akame manages to stab her with the broken remains of Murasame.
    • Her entire demeanor in the climax can be seen as one. Though she's outwardly composed, she constantly rambles about her Social Darwinist beliefs, declares she'll keep fighting even after the Empire has been overthrown, and casually unleashes a technique that puts her perfectly loyal army in danger without even caring about the consequences. While not confirmed, it's implied that this behavior stems from her bitterness over Tatsumi refusing to be her boy-toy: since she can't have the one thing she wants most (aside from a worthy opponent), the entire world can just die for all she cares.
• Villain Has a Point: When Tatsumi first tries to convince Esdeath to pull a Heel–Face Turn, she rightly points out how stupid it is to ask a general of the Empire to do such a thing.
• Villainous Crush: On Tatsumi, who managed to fit all her criteria for a lover plus the extra one (A pure and innocent smiling face would be nice). It seems to be genuine Love at First Sight for her, as she only becomes softer and kinder when she's around him and is pretty determined in her efforts to get him to fall in love with her (even asking Bols for advice) despite the fact he stated he was going to join the revolutionary army. Is it any wonder how and why she never understood Tatsumi's constant rejection of her?
• Villain Respect: After seeing Susanoo perform a Heroic Sacrifice, Esdeath is so impressed that she vows to remember him, not as a Teigu, but as a warrior. It's one of her more poignant Pet the Dog moments.
• Weakness Turns Her On: Zig zagged. She dislikes weakness as she is a social Darwinist. However, she wants someone smaller, weaker and younger than her, like Tatsumi, an adolescent youth with the potential for a great future, as her husband so she can train him into a courageous, strong, successful highly ranked general while disciplining and dominating him into a completely obedient and submissive husband eager to submit to her will and authority. She seems to want a man who can give her a good fight and prove a challenge but will ultimately be conquered by her.
• We Can Rule Together: She constantly tries to convince Tatsumi to join the Empire and become her subordinate, but he always refuses. She eventually gives up and decides that if Tatsumi won't join her, she will have to kill him herself - similar to how Tatsumi himself declared that if he can't convince her, then he will have to kill her as well. Neither happens: Esdeath is killed by Akame, and Tatsumi, at least in the manga, survives but is stuck as a giant dragon.
• Wife Husbandry: Esdeath is an adult who wants to oversee the growth and development of a youth she plans to groom as her husband. She wants to train them into a general and per her list the younger the better. Pubescent males such as Tatsumi appear to be her target age range, at least at this point in her life since she herself is only in her earlier twenties.
• Worf Had the Flu: Especially during earlier fights with Night Raid. During the Bolic arc, she was forced to hold back since she had keep her focus on protecting Bolic, which prevented her from fighting all out. During the Rescue Tatsumi arc, she unconsciously was holding back during her fight with Tatsumi, because she still hoped that she would be able to take him back alive. Later it's revealed during the final arc, that Esdeath had also holding back whenever the her fellow Jaegers were close by, so she wouldn't accidentally hurt them with her powers. However, now that she believes that they are all dead during the final arc, there is nothing preventing her from using her full strength and causing a country-wide blizzard.
• World's Best Warrior: Acknowledged as the most formidable and feared warrior in the Empire, Esdeath is a very powerful fighter and Najenda estimates it will take an entire army as well as ten Teigu-users on Akame's level to take her down. When that very army and Teigu-team with Akame confronts Esdeath at the end of the manga, Esdeath still kills about half of them before she goes down just as much to luck as attrition.
• Yandere: One of the rarer cases in that she never attempts to Murder the Hypotenuse. Instead, her psychotic nature generally comes from outside her interactions with Tatsumi, until he tells her he has a girlfriend now and refuses to join her one last time. She still loves Tatsumi, but would rather have him executed as opposed to letting anyone else take him. Though the execution was something she wasn't really planning on carrying out... until he made it clear they would never happen.
• You Bastard!: Gets this from Tatsumi while he's imprisoned and she attempts to force his allegiance, made evident by the Death Glare he gave her along with what equates to a massive "screw you" towards her and her final proposal.
• You Monster!: Gets this quite often both from friend and foe alike, especially from Tatsumi and Najenda, who realize that she's been evil from birth.
• Younger Than They Look: Despite looking to be in her late twenties (especially in the anime thanks to her bigger breasts), she's actually in her early twenties. This would make her younger than Seryu, who is in her mid twenties despite looking a teenager and looks up to her like a little sister towards a big one.

Teigu: Demon's Extract

• Fate Worse than Death: Those who consume it and are not compatible are Driven to Madness, a fate all those before Esdeath have suffered
• Hearing Voices: Drinking it will cause a person to hear voices commanding them to commit all kinds of heinous actions. Esdeath was too powerful and claims the voices have been tamed.
• Kill It with Ice: Allows Esdeath to do this whenever she likes thanks to the Demon's Extract being able to infinitely produce ice from nothing.
• Mook Maker: The other trump card she developed, creating a legion of ice-crafted soldiers. Suzuka claims she can make tens of thousands if given enough time.
• Not Quite Flight: She's able to levitate by forming ice around herself and controlling it, though she admits that it's not as graceful or as manuverable as Ran's Teigu.
• The Power of Blood: The Demon's Extract is the blood of a Danger Beast that could control ice. Drinking the blood gave Esdeath her ice powers.
• Psycho Serum: Takes the form of a ominous purple liquid that is consumed to gain its powers. Those who are not compatible are driven insane.
• Red Baron: Demon God Manifestation: Demon's Extract
• Swiss-Army Superpower: Because she can create ice without limitation, her powers can be used for all sorts of tasks. She can use ice to create bridges, give her a vantage spot, restrain or kill individuals, flight, stop time, create armies etc. Quite literally, the only things that limit the usage of her Teigu are both her own stamina and imagination.
• Time Stands Still: One of the trump cards she developed, taking Demon's Extract's ability to "freeze" to the logical extreme of freezing space and time. Thankfully, it can only by used once a day, and in both the anime and manga Akame is able to avoid being killed by moving so fast Esdeath froze and attacked an afterimage.
• Walking Wasteland: Combined with Weather Manipulation. Esdeath reveals the true form of her trump card, Ice Commander In Chief, and blankets the entire territory of what was The Empire in a Russian Winter which then allows her to freeze anyone and everyone she wants just by snapping her fingers. The soldiers of the Rebel army call her a force of nature with consciousness, and a wicked one at that.

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