©Courtesy of GKIDS
Honestly, Edge of Tomorrow might be the worst science fiction title ever. It sounds like a 1960s soap opera. Doug Liman’s Westernized adaptation of Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s light novel should have retained the original Japanese title (despite its awkward syntax). Ironically, key-art released after the original theatrical release punched-up the marketing tagline, “Live. Die. Repeat,” at the expense of the title. Obviously, a Japanese anime production from animation house Studio 4ºC wouldn’t make the same mistake. Indeed, it is time to live, die, and repeat again (and again), in Ken’ichiro Akimoto’s All You Need is Kill, which releases in theaters this Friday, from GKIDS.
Like Liman’s film, Yuichiro Kido’s screenplay also takes some liberties with Sakurazaka’s source narrative, starting with a shift of focus from nebbish Keiji (Kiirya) to standoffish Rita (Vrataski). Instead of soldiers battling the invading “Mimics,” both teens work for the reclamation corps, tasked with cutting back “Doral,” an invasive alien plant that landed on Earth, wreaking environmental-havoc on the area of impact.
Then one extremely fateful day, the strange Doral opens up and spews out waves of marauding flower-creatures. Rita valiantly fights to survive, killing a particularly unusual-looking flora-monster, but succumbs to their overwhelming numbers. Then, she wakes up back at 7:03 AM, restarting the very same doomsday, facing the same earthshaking events. Each time she dies, the cycle restarts once again.
©Courtesy of GKIDS
Eventually, Rita joins forces with Keiji, a loser gamer apparently stuck in the same time-warping phenomenon. Logically, they start focusing their efforts on the weird plant monster, hoping they can break the cycle by killing it again. However, they eventually learn they are bound together and with Doral, in a very alarming way.
Hip theaters ought to try booking double features of the anime All You Need is Kill and Liman’s Edge of Tomorrow, because they are both enormously entertaining action-driven science fiction films that riff on the basic elements of Sakurazaka’s light novel in distinctively inventive ways. They are sufficiently different that they compliment each other, while still echoing their shared DNA, inherited from Sakurazaka.
Regardless, Akimoto, animation director Yukinori Nakamura, and Studio 4ºC create truly spectacular visuals. Indeed, the bright, trippy colors truly dazzle, in truest sense of the word. There is a lot of cosmic-level stuff going on, but the film never loses sight of its human dimensions.
In fact, Kido’s story will still intrigue fans familiar with previous reincarnations of Sakurazaka’s story, also including Japanese Manga and American graphic novel adaptations. However, it does so within a more concise package, clocking-in almost half an hour shorter than Liman’s film. Yet, each loop significantly advances the narrative, so the audience never feels like the film is stuck on repeat (even though that is exactly what is happening for Rita and Keiji).
©Courtesy of GKIDS
Primary voice cast-members Ai Mikami and Natsuki Hanae sound convincingly neurotic and age-appropriate as teenaged Rita and Keiji (this review is based on the film’s Japanese vocal track, with English subtitles provided). They are seriously moody kids, but believably and understandably so.
Arguably, Sakurazaka’s 2004 light novel might represent the most influential time-loop since Harold Ramis’s Groundhog Day released in 1993. It is worth looping again, because Studio 4ºC’s animation does his concepts justice. It might be their best work since Tekkonkinkreet, even eclipsing the recent ChaO. Very highly recommended for fans of both alien invasion and time-loop science fiction, All You Need is Kill opens Friday (1/16) in theaters.
Grade: A
©Courtesy of GKIDS
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Here’s the trailer of the film.