If you feel like you’ve seen the animated sci-fi adventure film All You Need is Kill somewhere before, it’s because you likely have. In addition to being an adaptation of Japanese author Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s well loved novel of the same catchy name, the source material itself inspired the live action Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt thriller Edge of Tomorrow (which was originally titled similarly to the book during production and would later try to get rebranded as Live Die Repeat after release). It’s a yarn about getting caught in a time loop, a la Groundhog Day or the Happy Death Day films, so there could also be some familiarity if you’ve seen either of those. Like all of those projects, All You Need is Kill is reliant on repetition, which could get tiresome in the wrong hands. Thankfully, director Kenichiro Akimoto (and co-director Yukinori Nakamura) find a way to keep things brisk, exciting, and only as repetitive as it has to be.
Set in futuristic Japan, this is the story of Rita (voiced in the original Japanese dub by Ai Aikami), a young woman living in a world where a mysterious, invasive plant has come down from space to take root on earth. The plant, known as “Darol,” destroyed everything within a twenty kilometre radius when touching down on Earth, and Rita is part of the voluntary crew tasked with the clean up. One year after the arrival of “Darol,” the plant blooms, and its flowers become monsters that quickly and ruthlessly kill any humans that get in their way, including poor, unfortunate Rita. But just before dying, something happens during Rita’s encounter with the deadly flower, and she awakens in her bed at the start of the same day she (and many others) are due to die. No one believes Rita’s story at first, so she uses this unique scenario as a chance to try and figure out what these creatures’ weaknesses are on her own, unafraid of dying in the process because she’ll just keep waking up and repeating the same day. Things become easier when she learns that another member of the team, the shyer and weaker Keiji (Natsuki Hanae), is experiencing the same time loop and has been secretly helping Rita from a distance.
All You Need is Kill departs from Sakurazaka’s novel and Doug Liman’s big budget adaptation in some key ways. While Akimoto’s film is a lot more faithful to the visual and thematic aspect of the source than its American made counterpart, this take focuses on a strong female protagonist rather than a male one. There’s also an attempt being made to refocus the story closer to the novel’s young adult roots by making the characters youthful and inexperienced at the outset. That’s in spite of some graphic, bloody, and well executed carnage during the film’s elaborate set pieces. It’s hard to tell exactly what the target demographic is for something like All You Need is Kill, but its appeal to animation and action movie buffs should be obvious.
Visually, the only drawback to All You Need is Kill is some uninspired character design, which takes a backseat to all the other colours and details on display. The major set pieces (of which there are many, since every day comes with its own battle) are stylish and chaotic without relying too much on lightning fast edits. Akimoto and the animation team also make great, fluid use of first person perspectives throughout, which is a neat trick that works best in the film’s early segments, where the viewer is still getting acclimated to the core premise. All You Need is Kill is the kind of animated action adventure that delivers a visual adrenaline rush without giving viewers a candy coloured headache in the process.
The story naturally lends itself to those kinds of nagging questions inherent with a time loop concept. Asking how these characters are able to cram constantly new threads into a finite amount of time under the same conditions and time crunches isn’t all that fruitful. Nor is wondering much about the inner lives of these characters, which are thinly drawn and not well explained. All You Need is Kill is the kind of pop art story that doesn’t want to drag things out or bog things down. It offers up the barest necessities for one’s enjoyment and doesn’t let up on the gas unless absolutely necessary. And when viewed through that lens, All You Need is Kill succeeds at delivering a good bit of entertainment.
All You Need is Kill opens in select Canadian theatres on Friday, January 16, 2026.
