All you need is another version of ‘All You Need is Kill’

Produced by Studio 4°C, and distributed by GKIDS in the United States, and Warner Bros. in Japan, the All You Need is Kill anime movie propels the material forward with an eye-popping visual approach, but also takes it conceptually back to basics. In all prior versions, the precognitive aliens (known as the “mimics”) have been running amok for either years or decades by the time Keiji (or in the live-action film, Cruise’s William Cage) gets involved. The story is usually told from his point of view, and it’s through him that we meet the tough-as-nails secondary character Rita Vrataski, an axe-wielding warrior nicknamed the “Full Metal B*tch,” who guides Keiji on his repetitive quest, and appears to possess (or have once possessed) the same time-traveling abilities.

The new movie, however, remixes this long-running saga while functioning as an alt-universe prequel of sorts, as though screenwriter Yûichirô Kido had fittingly built on the trial and error of previous versions. For one thing, the invasion hasn’t yet begun full-scale; the aliens have, for the last year, remained in a dormant form, encased within a mysterious tree-like structure, which scientists have nicknamed Darol. For another, the protagonist this time around is Rita herself—voiced by Ai Mikami and Stephanie Sheh in the Japanese and English versions, respectively. She isn’t yet the fully formed battle maiden of prior versions, but a lowly maintenance worker inspecting the enormous alien skyscraper protruding from the ground. And while the film is most certainly action-packed and filled with fluid movements, the action isn’t its raison d'etre.

Rita’s gradual discovery of the premise takes after what is perhaps the time-loop urtext: Groundhog Day, Harold Ramis’s 1993 comedy film starring Bill Murray, which was also one of Sakurazaka’s inspirations for the novel. Groundhog Day famously takes a wry approach to its nihilistic setting, in which everyman protagonist Phil Connors (Murray) can’t escape the same mundane 24 hours. All You Need is Kill is far more lively and eventful—it’s ostensibly the start of the end of the world—but its version of Rita is shaded with a melancholy similar to Phil, which only grows clearer as the day begins again, and again, and again.

The alien designs are a delightful mix of angular biomechanics and colorful collage, like disparate puzzle pieces that need to be fitted together. These jagged, flower-shaped monsters kill Rita numerous times before she can escape, and after each vicious death, she wakes back up in her bedroom, the same as before, her alarm clock blaring at 7:03 a.m. However, with each iteration, she also grows more experienced, and more equipped with the help of various exoskeletal armors, axes, and battle maces, which are fashioned from maintained tech, and further re-programmed by the tech-savvy Keiji (Natsuki Hanae/Jadon Muniz), who shows up a significant way through the movie’s compact 86-minute runtime.

The duo’s dynamic is also radically different. Rita is burdened by the pressures of preventing both a personal and global apocalypse, and is occasionally tempted to embrace her oblivion. The world may be at stake, but the key driving force behind All You Need is Kill is how frequently its hero comes close to throwing in the towel. After all, a hundred or so deaths later, who could blame her? Keiji, meanwhile, is a meek presence working from the shadows this time, but his admiration of Rita places her on the same pedestal as previous versions of the story. She isn’t a world famous fighter here—at least, not yet—but in Keiji’s eyes, she may as well be.

Each repetition comes with new strategies, decisions, and violent permutations, all buoyed by a pulse-pounding score from Yasuhiro Maeda. However, what this version lacks—despite its resplendent designs, and its focus on emotional exhaustion—is a structure that allows it to progress physically, and narratively, even when it progresses emotionally. Unlike the novel, manga, comic, and live-action film, the anime is geographically constrained, and unfolds in practically the same space each time things reset. The lack of physical variety makes things feel outstretched on occasion, though the movie does try to counterbalance this with some abstract and metaphysical flourishes. (Its flashbacks, and its deeper dive into the sci-fi physics of the whole affair, take unexpected visual forms that inject computer graphics into the otherwise hand-drawn film.)

The growing relationship between Rita and Keiji is absolutely key. Although it’s given very little screentime, Akimoto and his voice actors make judicious use of each interaction, ensuring that an Evangelion level of self-loathing equally drives and hinders the characters in key moments, practically filtering the temporal repetitiveness down to a depressive rut. The explanations and story mechanics are often opaque, but even if you come away with no understanding of why time resets, the “what” ends up far more potent than the “why” in this stripped down, meat-and-potatoes adaptation.

Ironically the much loathed and oft-forgotten title of the Hollywood version, Edge of Tomorrow, would make for an incredibly fitting moniker here, given the degree to which this fifth iteration of the story remains laser focused on the emotional complexities of yearning for a tomorrow that may never come. We all have the intrinsic desire to see the sun rise, but for Rita, things have come to pass in her life that make her terrified, and perhaps even incapable, of moving forward, transforming the movie’s alien mumbo jumbo into a fitting metaphor for her malaise. And, in a meta-textual sense, she practically cracks under the pressure of having to live up to prior versions of the Full Metal B*tch, an expectation thrust upon her by the narrative’s central, “chosen one” conceit. Whatever your preferred version of All You Need is Kill, this one is loudly and proudly in conversation with the others, making it especially worth your while.