After Akame ga Kill! rewatch, I've decided that the series is a solid 6/10 anime. The whole thing is plagued by obvious death flags, a failure to build an interesting world, some strange desire to be a harem anime, and few instances of game terminology like "leveling up" being thrown around that I am going to blame on the translators. With that being said, I think the series did a lot right and my fundamental issue with the whole thing is that it's a shonen and not leaning closer to a more mature story. The first four episodes are fairly awful, mostly because of the quick pace of the show forcing narrative to rush over things, but after that things improve. I helped myself get through those first few episodes by telling myself the story was through Akame's POV and those early memories might be a bit more happy than they really were. Keeping that in mind, I further justified the abrupt shifts between despair and elation that the series goes through by assuming it was meant to be representative of the lives the Night Raid must lead - each day swinging them to and from the edge of death.
tl;dr Watched Akame ga Kill two times in a row, gave it a solid 6/10 rating, enjoyed it like a 10/10 regardless.