Does Akali Jungle Actually Work?

Her pre-6 ganks are pretty much non-existent, but she's pretty good assassin post-6. I'm pretty sure Runeglaive could work on her, although the mana portion is wasted.

He is Night Blue, at that level, he can play whatever he wants and make it work. (Though to be fair, if one is low enough, and consequently your enemies, the same might be true).

Why you never see Akali jungle is that there is absolutely no reason to do so other than caprice or boredom with jungle picks.
So no, you shouldn't play Akali jungle instead of top or mid, because it doesn't offer anything either for the jungle or for Akali.

so akali has always been a game wrecker. the problem is nowadays everyone gets a pink ward so its harder so you have to capitalize on early power spikes. the thing is as an assassin she can dominate games getting resets and dashing all fucking over the place. when she gets ahead massively you can basically bait any objective and have akali penta inc.

I used to be a die-hard Akali main and if I didn't get mid, I'd play her as a jungler (yeah desperation at it's best). She needs a pretty hard leash, and her sustain is very low in the jungle. At best, she can only do maybe clear about two or three camps before having to back. Some times, she'll have to back after her first camp. She falls behind until level 6, when she can use flash-ult for surprise ganks. But until she gets a hextech gunblade, she's pretty weak and doesn't have much sustain or survivability. I think maybe a Devourer won't be too bad on her, since she doesn't really need the mana portion of Runeglaive.