All You Need Is Kill got a treatment most Japan creators dream of: A Hollywood blockbuster hit starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt. Hiroshi Sakurazak’s light novel became international and got more eyes, and interest in the original light novel. But while Edge of Tomorrow drove eyes and interest to Hiroshi Sakurazak’s light novel, like most Western adaptations, the Cruise movie completely failed to capture the true spirit of the original, only using its characters and premise as a backdrop for its own tale and new ending. A new anime adaptation corrects that just a little bit.
From first-time director Kenichiro Akimoto, this month’s All You Need Is Kill is based on an original story as well, but evokes a deeper, more intimate perspective than its Tom Cruise equivalent.
Set in a near-future Japan, All You Need Is Kill centers on Rita, a solitary volunteer helping rebuild the country after the sudden arrival of Darol, a colossal alien flower. When Darol triggers a catastrophic outbreak that unleashes monsters and wipes out much of the population, Rita is killed, only to wake up at the start of the same day. Trapped in a relentless time loop, she relives death and devastation until she meets Keiji, another survivor stuck repeating the same fate. Bound by shared trauma and determination, the two fight through the cycle in search of escape, purpose, and hope amid total collapse.
The true beauty of All You Need Is Kill lies within its unique premise of repeating a death loop until you find a way out and how different people would react to the situation, as its director goes on to explain. “The whole concept, in the end, is that you need to kill somebody you love in order to get out of the loop,” Akimoto told Polygon (via translator) over a video call. “And that’s something that I think, as readers, any one of us would have to think about, ‘what would you do in this situation?’ And I thought that there could be different takes on it. So that’s why I changed the point of view of the main character, to Rita.”
What truly sets the premise apart isn’t its alien-slaying action or sci-fi weaponry, though the film does echo the manga in that regard, but the introspective stories it enables, exploring how the death loop wears on the characters’ morale and reflects their pasts. The premise of dying ties directly into Rita’s history and the continued event allows audiences more insight into the character, of which everything, from the premise, relationship with Kenji, and her design, depends on.
“This is Izumi Murakami’s first time as a character designer. When she started designing Rita, she wasn’t always in this style,” Akimoto said. “We were talking about Rita’s personality, her background, and then as we discussed more, her character design started to form. It was very photorealistic at first, but as we talked, her red hair became a key component.”
Rita is also a person of color, a young girl with a biracial background and an abusive upbringing.
“She does have an African American mother, and then her father is a white man who has red hair. And so she is of mixed heritage, and although we don’t mention it in the film, her father had left the family and so she lives in a trailer home, [as seen in the movie]. She’s poor, and her red hair is actually from her father. And so it kind of reminds her mother of her father. That’s why she’s a little bit abusive towards Rita. So for Rita, the red hair is not something she’s proud of. It’s something that she’s always kind of hated. But then, Kaiji, when he meets her, thinks that her red hair is really beautiful. This is where she is finally able to accept her identity a little bit more, and she’s able to open up.”
All You Need Is Kill is essentially an anthology series now, each with its own unique story roughly following the same premise. But for all the action of Edge of Tomorrow, the premise works best as a character examination.
All You Need Is Kill is in theaters now