Just finished Akame Ga Kill! And let me tell you, I need something to help fill that void. Can you please help a girl out?

Ah I liked S2 as much as S1 but if one is more in it for the action then it won't be as good. What genres/stuff do you gravitate to?

Nice! You have great taste. A few others that I'd recommend that fit your requirements are;

* Orb: On the Movements of the Earth - Absolutely incredible historical drama that will inspire you, and break your heart multiple times. This is a series that follows the 3 episode rule to a tee.
* Cyberpunk Edgerunners - Another great sci-fi based on the hit video game (and the TTRPG) with a great cast.
* 86 - Incredible sci-fi anime set in a brutal, dystopian world. Great cast of characters and a very satisfying ending at season 2 (though the light novels are still ongoing and an anime sequel might come someday - *huffs copium*).
* Black Lagoon - Very good action, and crime drama anime set in a modern timeline. Main characters are great, but there are a quite a few somewhat sympathetic villains and characters (especially in season 2).
* Alderamin on the Sky - Fantasy, action, adventure, and war anime. This anime is very heavy and bleak. Each victory doesn't feel victorious, but rather bleak. I recommended this not for the characters, but for the atmosphere that still matches your requirement.
* Attack on Titan - Extremely popular anime, so you might have already watched it, but yeah, great cast, very bleak story and atmosphere.

Hope this helps!

Okay so I'd heard people say this for years and I finally read the manga for myself recently and honestly it barely changes anything in terms of the main plot, and there aren't more than like a couple total panels chronicling these different outcomes. I was very underwhelmed on the actual differences compared to how I'd heard people represent it. In fact in my opinion it honestly just seems like a way to give anime watchers an alternate happy ending route, as Mine "going into a coma" still effectively removes her from the rest of the story in the exact same way as her dying (while failing to deliver on the entire narrative point of Pumpkin's gimmick foreshadowing that her dying blast with it would be the most powerful), and Tatsumi surviving as a dragon is explained by the mother of all lazy asspulls (Akame's killing blow being able to "sense the non-dragon part of his soul" or some BS that's explained in a single throwaway line).

The biggest difference is by far is Wave and Kurome's ending where he's able to actually save her and convince her to run away with him, which also in turn is a great character moment for Akame and a huge improvement on their duel scene in the anime. Other than that it's mostly just Lubbock and Leone dying in slightly different ways that let them finish with a little more aura (minus the crushed kintama).

I do think now that they released the anime to provide a version of the story that's the true bloodbath the premise originally promised and rip the audience's guts out, then used the manga to give the audience an alternate happier ending timeline for the people who were pissed off by how the anime ended. Although I must reiterate it's seriously BARELY gone into, people really understate that the overall plot is still very closely followed by the anime. It's clearly not like they were just guessing what the author was going to do as the manga still goes almost beat for beat in most fights and plot points aside from minor tweaks. Tatsumi and Mine's "new ending" is just like a single panel of them standing together with a textbox basically going "and then Mine woke up from her coma and she had secretly already been pregnant with Tatsumi's child and they had lots more babies and lived happily ever after," I swear to god bro that's basically it. Don't even bother to follow up on the implication that apparently Mine became a dragonfucker. Like bruh, is that really a more impactful ending than dying in Tatsumi's arms in the sunset with a 10/10 Yukari Tamura speech and him burning out his soul to save the world and join her in the afterlife? Hell if anything the manga confirming she was pregnant just makes the anime scene hit 100 times harder.

Anyway the tl;dr summary is that in my opinion it cheapens Tatsumi and Mine's story but improves Wave and Kurome's, so it's kind of a net zero outcome for the story overall. The anime's ending definitely felt a little rushed, but I really think they'd only have needed about 27-28 episodes total to get perfect pacing on it. Too bad they couldn't extend the run just a little bit more considering it was always gonna be a single season banger anyway. There's no way they could have stretched a whole additional cour out of it.