A giant alien plant crashes in Japan, decimating millions of lives, grows completely out of control and stays silent for one year, in All You Need is Kill. A young girl who’s tired of her own existence joins a team of researchers and demolitionists to study and dismantle the plant when it finally comes alive, dropping killer egg spores onto the unsuspecting team. Before she dies, the girl is affected by a freak accident with one of the spores and reawakens in her bed, reliving the same day all over again and being the only one to remember it happening. Desperate to break the cycle, she has to overcome her own antisocial behaviors if she wants to survive.
Every Rose Has Its Thorns
Rita wants out. Her mother tried to drown her, only to come back to her and get no apology or explanation. She runs from her mother and her old life, trying desperately to either escape the pain or to find a way to end it. Having been let down by the only person who cared for her, she develops antisocial behaviors that keep her distance from others. Now that Darol, the alien tree that rooted itself in the heart of Japan, arrives at the precise moment Rita calls for her end, she sees that an opportunity has presented itself to her. Much to her disappointment, the tree doesn’t react for a year, and Rita’s stuck mindlessly chipping away at the tree’s roots to maybe discover its origins.
When the first egg spore attacked her, Rita’s first instinct was to fight back, striking the spore with her mining tool. It’s a natural reaction to immediately defend oneself from imminent harm. Now the tables have turned for Rita. No more waiting for the inevitable, mostly because the inevitable is on repeat. Now Rita wants back in, because if she is going out, she wants to do so on her own terms.
Smiling Through the Tears
Rita’s resolve is hanging on by a thread when repeatedly dying, leading to no real progress in ending the cycle. It wasn’t until a chance sighting of one person out of place: Keiji. At first, you could not find a more sorry excuse of a human being if you tried. It wasn’t until he and Rita started sharing their lives that we realized why. Keiji was the butt of the joke growing up, as everyone’s punching bag. It was never in him to fight back, so it’s no wonder he chose to laugh off all the trauma he endured up until now. It was his way of coping, as was Rita’s disassociation with the world.
Her own mother tried to drown her, which made her develop a cascade of loneliness. That feeling was further cemented by being the only one repeating the same day over and over again. Now that she knows she’s not the only one, she becomes more vulnerable towards another person.
Using What You Got
The divide between the two was very apparent at first. Rita was all tactics; every repeat was another learning experience on how to fight back. While Keiji, being the coward that he is, stayed in hiding, developing logistics, surveying Rita from afar in order to help in his own way: building robot friends, modifying security camera drones, and even updating Rita’s suit mid-battle. And as they get closer, Rita starts teaching Keiji how to fight in close combat while Keiji teaches Rita how to maneuver in even bigger battle suits. Their compatibility becomes indistinguishable from each other as their fighting style becomes more in sync.
The Real Plot Twist
In 2004, Hiroshi Sakurazaka released All You Need is Kill as a light novel. In the novel, however, Keiji is the protagonist, and the story is told from his perspective. He meets Rita, and they become closer to one another as they cooperate to defeat the mystery tree. It wasn’t egg spores but rather alien mimics, and there was no researching and demolishing a tree, just a hit the ground running all out war between humans and aliens.
Live, Die, Repeat, But Make it Anime
All You Need is Kill was produced by Studio 4°C, which brought classics like Spriggan (1998), several segments of The Animatrix short films, but what really grabbed this writer’s attention was the particular animation and art style, very reminiscent of another anime film, which coincidentally was also produced by Studio 4°C, Tekkonkinkreet by Taiyō Matsumoto. Directed by Keni’chiro Akimoto (Tokyo Mirage Sessions, Berserk: The Golden Age Arc III – The Advent), the film featured large, grand-scale backgrounds with bright, flourishing colors and psychedelic dream states that gave it a beautiful yet twisted feel.
Even though the premise of All You Need is Kill is to relive the same day over and over again, and it only focuses on the two main characters, the beauty of it does not go stale.
Leave a Reply