All You Need Is Kill Review: The Same Story Again, But Different

Time loop dramas are never really about temporal mechanics. Instead, they’re about the growth of the characters who realize they are the only ones who know their lives are on repeat.

What differentiates them is the MacGuffin that induces repetition: a cave in Palm Springs, Cthulhoid abominations in The Endless, a groundhog (maybe?) in Groundhog Day. In All You Need Is Kill, it’s a mysterious plantlike entity called Darol that impacted on Earth and has simply loomed over Japan, immobile, for a year. Humanity, as is its way, has acclimated to Darol’s presence and now is simply trying to trim it back like an unwanted shrub. One of the arborists is Rita (Ai Mikam), who every day dons a mech suit and wields an axe to try and make a dent in Darol. That task makes her one of Earth’s first defenders when Darol’s purpose becomes clearer. It’s not just a plant: It’s a landing craft for an invasion. The anniversary of Darol’s arrival becomes the day of attack, and this gardener is quickly butchered.

And this happens time and again and again. If you’re a fan of 2014’s Edge of Tomorrow, you’ll recognize the title of All You Need Is Kill as that of the original light novel by Hiroshi Sakurazaka that was adapted as the Tom Cruise time loop action flick. Obviously, the Westernized version took some liberties with the original text, but the script by Yûichirô Kido (Fruits Basket) for this animated version will be barely recognizable to fans of the book. Kido has taken Sakurazaka’s original idea – of learning how to overcome a seemingly unbeatable alien invasion by learning through repetition – but completely remixed it.

For example, in the original Rita was a soldier, not a gardener, and she wasn’t the central character. That was Keiji, who became William Cage for Edge of Tomorrow, while Rita was a fellow warrior and supporting character. All that this version of Rita retains is the name and her signature axe, as Kido redefines her completely. She carries a different kind of damage to the Rita of the book: Here, she is a survivor of childhood abuse, isolated and stuck in a cycle of cruelty even before she was rewinding this alien bloodbath. As for Keiji (Natsuki Hanae), he’s no longer a warrior, but just some random guy from work who is also in constant re-runs.

What really distinguishes All You Need Is Kill from the seemingly endless stream of anime about unlikely action heroes is the distinctive influence of Studio 4°C. Best known to Western audiences for The Animatrix and, more recently, for re-releases of Masaaki Yuasa’s Mind Game, their best work has always had an avant-garde aspect. Just as how they redefined Victoriana for the charming Poupelle of Chimney Town, All You Need Is Kill feels like a fresh version of the “unlikely warriors” cliche. It’s in the look, both the stylized designs of Rita, Keiji, and their mech suits, and in the psychedelic tinges to the killer spores and saplings that erupt from Darol.

But while there is undoubted visual spectacle to All You Need Is Kill, Kido’s rewriting of Rita and Kaiji as just ordinary people stuck in extraordinary circumstances is grounded in their mundanity. Cruise’s William and Emily Blunt as the live-action Rita were impossible figures, whereas the animated Rita and Keiji are defined by their loneliness, their fears of rejection, and their unexpected bond of being the only people to be moving forward. There’s a poignancy to their interactions, emerging from her spiky and his nerdy optimism, both of which are revealed as defense mechanisms. The process of learning Darol’s nature and weaknesses becomes an act of healing for both, and a poignant metaphor for how we cannot avoid the future, much as we may try.

This article appears in January 16 • 2026.