A review by sdloomer
All You Need Is Kill by Ryōsuke Takeuchi

5.0

🎇🎇🎇 --5/5 stars-- 🎇🎇🎇

I absolutely loved it. True, I only came to this manga after watching Tom Cruise in The Edge of Tomorrow, but All You Need Is Kill certainly brought that Japanese spin to the story--which, I admit, is something I really like (does anyone else know what I'm talking about?), and I enjoyed this short (yes, short!) story a whole lot more.

I won't pretend to try to explain any philosophy behind it (if there even is any), but I will agree that the story is a lot more "deep" than what appears on the surface. Keiji and Rita become mentally, physically, emotionally, whatever, just plain exhausted. And they begin to realize that the only way they're able to fix things and move forward in time is to die. I don't know about any of you, but I certainly haven't been privy to that kind of "life", and from what I just read, I don't particularly want to. But they're fucking champs and they have resolves of pure steel. I'd break after the first time dying. Not only do they both decide to confront the problem head on, but they do so without regard to their own wellbeing. And that is probably what makes me admire the both of them so much, even though this story was so short.

I'll end this review by saying that this manga (as well as the light novel it was adapted from) and the Hollywood movie are absolutely nothing alike. Probably because Hollywood decided to cut Keiji out completely and replace him with the intolerable Tom Cruise character, and the Full Metal Bitch wasn't actually a bitch. If you want something more than a spectacle with the actors making googly eyes at each other, look no further than this manga.