All You Need Is Kill

ALL YOU NEED IS KILL

MANGA

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
2
RELEASE
May 29, 2014
CHAPTERS
17

DESCRIPTION

When the alien Mimics invade, Keiji Kiriya is just one of many recruits shoved into a suit of battle armor called a Jacket and sent out to kill. Keiji dies on the battlefield, only to be reborn each morning to fight and die again and again. On his 158th iteration, he gets a message from a mysterious ally--the female soldier known as the Full Metal Bitch. Is she the key to Keiji's escape or his final death?

(Source: Viz Media)

CAST

Rita Vrataski
Keiji Kiriya
Shasta Raylle
Bartolome Ferrell
Jin Yonabaru
Rachel Kisaragi
Arthur Hendricks

CHAPTERS

RELATED TO ALL YOU NEED IS KILL

NOVEL Sci-FiAll You Need is Kill

REVIEWS

ThyMrMan
60/100
Felt rushed and incomplete
This was a disappointment for me really, I expected much more from the ratings this manga gets. Everything in the manga just felt too short and incomplete and really lacking in content.

The characters didn't really grow all that much during the manga. And we didn't even learn basically anything about the side characters, and barely even their names. I don't feel like the side characters had any real presence in the manga at all, due to the time loop nature. And the main two characters I never felt any real connection between them. They don't meet many times that is shown so their relationship doesn't feel real. And it gets worse, because the relationship doesn't feel very good simply because they have only had a single time loop of connection. For the characters overall, I feel it all just was very superficial and not very deep and solid feeling.

The story was really good the other hand, but also too short. I don't need the enemy explained and I found them perfectly fine. And the built up and time looping ability was really satisfying. Following as he learned how he can use it to progress through the fight and keep on surviving. And the twist with Rita feels really solid, and unexpected but really helps explain how she became so powerful.

My issue with the story comes from how it all ends and the amount of time spent in the world. I felt the time loops progressed really quickly, I wanted to see more time loops that nothing happened at all but death. Help build up his progression more, and it would help build more relationship with both the side characters and Rita. The ending of the story felt way to rushed and sudden. I was expecting more and it just wasn't there. The trick to escape the time loop was explained and completely very quickly, with no real build up or additional time loops trying to perfect it. And diminished the enemy threat heavily, since they really aren't seen putting up a good fight in the end. Overall the ending was just way to sudden, and feels like he had more planned but had to finish in a certain number of pages.

The character designs and artwork was really good. Liked it all and didn't have any issues with any of it. Looked modern and realistic, along with being pretty gory at times when necessary. It didn't built characters in unrealistic ways, and everyone looked like they could exist. While many of the characters did end up looking rather generic military guys, it worked fine enough and didn't do any harm.

Overall while I enjoyed the manga, it left me wanting much more. Like I've only read the first 2 volumes of a 6 volume series. And the volumes I read were missing a quarter of their pages of time loops and getting to know characters.
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BasilMuse
50/100
Hot take: Following the book more was a bad idea
To start, this is based on a decently short sci-fi book, so that comes with a lot of baggage. For one, short sci-fi works typically don't spend a lot of time characterizing, instead focusing more on concepts and sometimes themes. A lot of mileage out of it comes from the concept, in this case the "live, die, repeat", and man if that message is good, it's an added bonus. A friend of mine pointed out the problem with a lot of these books, though. "They fall far too often into creating the broadest themes imaginable". This book? War is hell. To win at war, you have to mold yourself into a machine, losing personality. You may have seen this before. A lot.

The film adaptation of the book took the opportunity to change a lot, which may have caused some derision, but I felt a lot of it was good changes. Giving the MC an interesting personality that's characterized around his selfish cowardice into selflessness and competence by the end was great, and I found the loop to be used a in more interesting ways, both seriously and humorously. The manga, unfortunately, sticks even further to the book... and it's worse for it.

The characterization here is completely bare. The MC is almost a blank slate fighting for the sake of others that has more to do with logical and sane responses (avoiding death) with the motivation of staying alive, but his personality turning from a blank slate into something that is just cold and calculating as he deals with death (which gives him a funeral look) means the core is almost null. I want to feel bad for him but I have nothing to grasp onto here. His killing himself and his gory ways of dying are supposed to be horrifying but felt less sincere and more edgy, shock value.
The female main character is better with a good backstory but it comes so quickly that I don't have time to grasp at a straw here. All of its threads end way too quickly.

It's given amazing art though. The art for the fights is absolutely amazing. My jaw dropped with the axe fights, and even the last fight, as much as I hate how it turns into a sick twist for a more nihilistic ending, is cool as fuck. The mimics look neat too, with its detail coming from its javelin and attacking weapons rather than the basic mouth shapes, which I think gives a lot of depth to the "mob"-like enemies. And again, fights are cool.

What this would've benefitted more from is actual time. A lot of time is spent furthering him turning into the machine and figuring out how to get out of the loop, and I feel more time should've been spent on other activities. Banter, characterization, conversing, personality, etc. And maybe just more themes than just "war is hell", because I feel that's the only lesson here? There's the "move on for the survival of the human race despite the obstacles", but that to me is bland as fuck, and it's not extrapolated at all. And war is hell isn't even done well here either.

At least it's short. Watch Edge of Tomorrow instead. It's a lot better from what it changes.
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Zigeuninja
90/100
"All You Need Is Kill" is everything an action manga should be
__"All You Need Is Kill" has been one of my favorite manga for a few years now and I've only recently decided to re-visit it. I can confidently say that it's still an absolutely fantastic manga and that I love everything about; the story, setting, characters, art, it all just works so well together and honestly I'd just recommend going in completely blind and coming back to this review afterwards. __ --- Now, I think most people are already aware of this but for those who aren't; this manga and the Hollywood movie "Edge of Tomorrow" are based on the same light novel. Both the manga and movie were released at around the same time so they really only had the original source material as a basis which means there are quite a few differences. As someone who has seen / read and really likes both adaptations, it's clear that there have been taken a lot more artistic liberties with the movie than with the manga, which does stick a lot closer to the novel, however both manage to tell essentially the same story really well and most of the changes do make sense due to the difference in mediums. I do slightly prefer the manga though, which I think is mostly due to the characters in the manga being a bit more appealing to me (even though Tom Cruise is a great actor). When it comes to the story there really isn't a lot to say as it's pretty self explanatory, the protagonist is in the military, about to fight against aliens called "Mimics" who have invaded the earth, but in his first battle he gets killed. By some unexplained miracle however, he wakes up in his bed the day prior to the battle and from there the story really gets going. Saying anything more than that would just ruin the experience, as the manga itself only has 17 chapters and takes maybe an hour to read through, it's quite short. However the length of the story is one of the reasons why I love this manga so much. It really doesn't mess around, at all. And by that I mean that not one panel is wasted, every single piece of dialogue or drawing drives the story forward in some way. I've heard people complain about this very thing and claim that it is simply poor pacing, but I completely disagree. This fast pacing is precisely what keeps you on your toes and constantly invested in the story and characters from start to finish and it really makes you as the reader feel the same sense of urgency as the protagonist. When it comes to the characters, there is once again not much one can say without spoiling the entire manga, but I think that as far as action manga go, they're quite good and have notable development throughout the story, especially considering how short it is. Lastly, the art. The art is just amazing, in particular during the fight scenes. You can really feel the weight of the characters' movements, there is just the right amount of detail in every panel and it's perfectly readable at all times which is exactly what a lot of manga can't get quite right. Even Berserk, which is my favorite manga of all time and is known for its absolutely breath taking art, has issues with readability at times. The usage of contrasts with some really heavy blacks is also something that I find is oftentimes missing in a lot of action manga, but it really makes the drawings pop, despite being black & white. --- #__TL;DR __ All You Need Is Kill is incredibly fast paced, has a great but simple story, good characters, fantastic fight scenes and overall action. For a manga that only takes roughly an hour to finish, it left quite an impression on me and stayed in my mind for a long time, definitely worth a read. #9/10
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