All You Need is Kill

4 outta 5

All You Need is Kill is an anime adaption of the Japanese comic book which was previously adapted as the 2014 Tom Cruise starring film Edge of Tomorrow. Since it is about alien invasion time loops, it makes sense there would be multiple adaptations of this story. This anime has a very distinctive visual style that may look a little jarring at first, but it makes the action more kinetic. The story of constant death, time loops and powerful aliens is intentionally supposed to feel like a grind as the characters endure living, dying and repeating so, like Tomorrow, the end is a genuine accomplishment. They just must die in increasingly messy ways to get there.

When a gigantic alien being lands on Earth humans are trying to clean it up, and one of the workers is Rita (Stephanie Sheh). Then smaller alien creatures emerge and engage in mass carnage and then… Rita wakes up again at the start of the same day. She realizes she is in a time loop and whenever she dies, which happens often, she starts back at the beginning. After a few depressing loops, she needs to up her combat skills with her mechanical exoskeleton. She realizes she is being followed by another man, Kenji (Jason Muniz) is also going through a time loop, and Rita is elated to meet someone who can help. They get to know each other and level up their combat skills until they realize that to stop this invasion, they may have to sacrifice it all.

The English voice dub for the film is really good; Sheh’s Rita runs the gamut of emotions through the constant death and rebirth loops. When she says that “Death is on my side,” it’s like a rallying cry. There is a bit of delving into her history before the time loops, and it turns out to be very tragic as it is shown how her relationship with her mother went from love to hate. There is a moment when Rita first realizes that Kenji is going through a time loop like her and she immediately starts sobbing in relief as Kenji has no idea how to react. Muniz as Kenji has an interesting arc as Kenji starts off as completely meek and constantly laughing even when not appropriate. There is a brief flashback to how he developed this vocal tic that is heartbreaking. As the story goes on, he becomes stronger and Muniz’s performance gets more bombastic, especially at the end where the fate of the world hangs on his actions.

A lot of the side one-off character vocal performances are a bit over the top, but that is often common in anime English dubs. There is a fun and loud performance by Lisa Kay Jennings as Shasta, a scientist who becomes very excited when she realizes these two are stuck in a time loop. If one has seen Edge of Tomorrow these character types are in both stories, the scientist in Kill is the tech guy in Tomorrow. Even the female protagonist is called Rita, although here both characters are experiencing the loop when in Tomorrow it is just Cruise’s character. In both films, the montage of them looping to defeat the alien is actually very zippy and entertaining. Tomorrow‘s finale is pretty different from Kill though so it isn’t just the same movie again. This movie is so focused on Rita and Kenji that it doesn’t have the gaggle of military crew side characters that were so entertaining in Tomorrow their relationship evolves throughout the time loop.

There is an element of fatalism that is in this story, and each version the main character has their own way to overcome it. Tomorrow managed to milk a lot of dark comedy out of how Cruise’s character continually was getting pasted and although Repeat has less humour but is fascinating to watch the loop evolve. What is great about both stories is the main character overcomes the fatalism and changes their fate, and when Rita and Kenji take on the aliens, it’s stirring. There’s a moment when the scientist says that it’s up to the two of them to see if the Earth has a tomorrow which puts the burden upon them. Seeing them grow so close makes what they do in the finale hit hard. The animation style is very exaggerated, a lot of the human character designs kind of look like bugs, but it makes the aliens look even weirder and the action has lots of energy. The arrival of the alien with some red tendril energy shooting out of it which seems like a direct reference to the red tendril energy that happens in End of Evangelion during its apocalyptic climax. If you’re going to steal, steal from the best.

There are so many time loop movies ever since Groundhog Day kicked off the genre that it’s almost become its own sub-genre with variations like the very funny and wild Palm Springs. All You Need is Kill is interesting as there is already an adaptation out there, but this is enough of a cool story that it can sustain two separate takes.