ALL YOU NEED IS KILL -- Animated Adaptation Offers Visual Splendor, Little Else

Review by Daniel Lima

There’s no way around it: I’m a big fan of Doug Liman’s 2014 film Edge of Tomorrow, a sci-fi action blockbuster whose status as a modern genre classic belies its financial disappointment. I was aware that it was an adaptation of a Japanese light novel with a much cooler name. One might assume that the new animated film from Japan that actually shares that name, All You Need Is Kill, is the more faithful adaptation. Surprisingly, it reinterprets key elements of the original novel that the American studio film held true to. Even more surprising, it’s rather underwhelming as a result.

Where the original story followed a pair of soldiers repeating a single day in a losing war humanity is fighting with an alien invader, this adaptation recontextualizes the pair as part of a research team, investigating an alien structure that had appeared on Earth a year prior. On the day that strange creatures emerge from the structure and begin their assault, the pair find themselves awakening every time they perish. They then attempt to work together to break the loop, and give humanity a fighting chance.

This is a Studio 4°C production, a studio known for an idiosyncratic blend of animation styles. This film relies heavily on computer-generated animation mixed with traditional animation, yet the former evokes the latter so well that looking for the seams outside of the action set pieces is a challenge. The art style contrasts with both the original light novel and the Hollywood adaptation, eschewing the grim militaristic look in favor of a bright, colorful palette that accentuates the strange extraterrestrial nature of the threat. Moments of surreal imagery that breaks from reality abound, and the CG animation allows for a fluidity of motion that can lead to some exciting action.

That said, the visual aesthetic is not groundbreaking in the same way something like Mind Game was received. As impressive as it all is, it comes across as another example of this kind of action anime; even for someone not particularly well-versed in the medium, I couldn’t help but think of the work of Mamoru Hosada, or shows like Chainsaw Man. That’s not to say that it’s bad, just that it’s not revolutionary.

Of course, most films are not revolutionary. The issue is that the visuals of All You Need Is Kill are not enough to paper over the narrative weaknesses. At barely over eighty minutes, there is precious little time to do all the legwork necessary to an audience to emotionally invested in the story.

The protagonist Rita is a decidedly generic, emotionally withdrawn loner; sidekick Kenji is more fleshed out on paper, but so much of the film is devoted to the time loop machinations that not much is spent exploring who he is. The others working at their organization, their supposed compatriots who they are forced to see live and die again and again, get even less than that. That’s in keeping with who the pair being self-imposed social outcasts, but it also fails to flesh out the world that is under threat. That leaves Rita and Kenji’s goal of breaking the loop to feel more about themselves than about humanity, and they are too thinly written for that to be compelling.

That said, even the scant time spent on characterization is a large chunk of a movie that is already so short. Inherent to all time loop narratives is the struggle to find meaning in an unceasing deluge of monotony, in this case tinged with fatalism. What’s the point of getting out of bed when the day is going to be just a repeat of the last, filled with pain and misery and death? To nail this particular emotional beat, a story needs to in some way capture that sense of tedium. This film does not achieve that, partly because the lack of narrative runway, but also because the poppy visuals and dynamic animation fail to conjure the oppressively monotonous atmosphere that is required.

It might be a bit rich for the American to claim the superiority of an American adaptation targeting an American audience, but Edge of Tomorrow avoided all these missteps. The film is just long enough to give the character work time to breath, the two leads have real depth, it takes care to establish the supporting ensemble if only to give more emotional stake to the protagonist, the gritty mil-tech aesthetic sells the draining repetition of the loop. For all the strength of its visual flourishes, All You Need Is Kill is frustratingly unmoored from any sense of gravity. 

All You Need Is Kill is now in theaters.

Rating: 3/5