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All You Need Is Kill
17
2
Finished
Jan 9, 2014 to May 29, 2014
8.0/10
Average Review Score
85%
Recommend It
20
Reviews Worldwide
If you've read some of my other reviews, you know one concept that interests me is that of immortality. Time looping is another concept I find enthralling. It's almost like being immortal, except you live the same time period over and over again. In some ways, I feel this could be even worse than immortality, since usually the situation that is repeated is an unpleasant one. Before we dive into the story, I'd like to mention the artwork. It's absolutely top notch. Every panel has a painstaking amount of detail, from the character designs, to the suits, to the environments. Obata Takeshi is responsible forthe designs, whom some of you may recognize as the illustrator of Death Note and Bakuman. While I haven't read either of those manga, I can only assume his work is in top form here. Aside from the time loop aspect, the story isn't that special. I won't spoil anything, but expect a typical sci-fi mecha setting. The time loop is what makes things interesting. The main character slowly learns the rules of the loop, and the reader along with him. If you have a scientific mind, the implications of each rule will leave you fantasizing for at least fifty loops. An important aspect for a time loop story (especially one where the main character remembers the loop) is how the character(s) adapt. Do they resolve to find a way out? Do they learn to accept it and endure for... well, eternity? Or do they lose their minds? There are so many ways for a character to react. Yet, the one that makes the reader's blood boil the most is when a character strengthens their resolve and soldiers onward (literally). The main character is many people's definition of "cool", and it works for this setting. Unfortunately, not all characters are created equal. The main character and main heroine get some pretty heavy development, but none of the side characters do. It's understandable considering the nature of the story. Not much can change after all. However, we never even learn much about these characters. They're just faces that pop up every once in awhile. This, for me, was probably the weakest aspect of the manga. People who don't enjoy gore should avoid this, as the artwork is very... detailed. I'd recommend this for people who like sci-fi or heart pounding action sequences. I enjoyed this manga, and it wasn't that long of a read. If you find yourself with nothing to do, this manga won't leave you asking for your time back (unless you're just selfish, then shame on you).
Strange creatures known as "Mimics" have invaded Earth, sparking a global war that has humanity fighting for survival. In response, mankind forms the United Defense Force, a joint organization whose purpose is to overcome this new threat. Dedicated to the extermination of the growing Mimic menace, soldiers are plunged into battle, wearing special exoskeleton combat suits in an attempt to gain the upper hand against their foes. New recruit Keiji Kiriya is immediately killed after his very first deployment, but to his shock, he wakes up exactly one day before his unit was dropped into a Mimic invasion. After experiencing the same event yet again, he realizes that he is stuck in a time loop triggered by his death. As he relives the day of the battle hundreds of times, Keiji begins to make use of what he has learned about the phenomenon, gradually building up his strength and improving his skills so that eventually, when he comes face-to-face with death once more, he will be ready to change his fate. [Written by MAL Rewrite]
The manga is now finished, so it's the time to make a review based on full read through and here is what I ended up with: Story - as far as story and concept goes, I think that's the weakest aspect of this manga.. Concept of the story is pretty much a continued session of 'loops' of the exact same time period happening. Some people who maybe have just started with reading manga may find it innovating, but it really isn't, as such concept was used in numerous manga series already. Story itself was a bit disappointing too - the story is based on the light novel,but the manga misses a few important details, which ruins the overall experience and may make the manga feel a bit rushed. Story gets something between 7 and 8, I had much higher expectations. Art - certainly one of the strongest aspects of the manga. I enjoyed both the style and how detailed everything was. Usually we only get detailed MC's, but in this case almost all the side characters are pretty detailed too. Art is a strong 9. Characters - characters sure do feel alive, the MC's personality realy changes a lot due to loop and the progress of that is well described. Side characters also get some personality, but they aren't realy developing, mostly because manga is stuck in 1 day probably. Relations between character felt a bit rushed though and it felt like relations of side characters to the MC were improving with loops even though they don't know about it. We shouldn't forget that MC is supposed to be a green newbie in eyes of the army and higher ups probably wouldn't ever pay attention to him. Characters get an 8. Enjoyment - I personally found it very enjoyable and entangling, I loved the concept of looping and enjoyed the development of MC's personality. The plot also isn't complex at all for such concept, as it usually is, so it should be realy enjoyable for a casual reader. Enjoyment is a 9 Overall I think the manga was very good (8) - it felt a bit rushed at times, but the art and some twists really kept you entangled enough to enjoy this short read. It is interesting enough to read through, but don't expect anything complex, I judged it based on the fact it's an 17 chapter manga and for such length the plot was realised pretty well, but I originally hoped they would make it a bit longer, skipping less small details.
Japanese light novels (novels with illustrations that normally target the young-adult demographic) are widely popular, in Japan, that is. Sadly, most of these novels are never properly translated and fans have to use fan-translations. All You Need is Kill is an exception to this ruler, even receiving a manga adaptation and Hollywood movie adaptation. All You Need is Kill is the manga adaptation of the science-fiction light novel of the same name. While the original novel was released in 2004, the manga adaptation was made one decade later, to coincide with the release of the movie adaptation, Edge of Tomorrow. While the original story was createdand written by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, the manga adaptation was penned by Ryōsuke Takeuchi (ST&RS) and illustrated by Takeshi Obata, who normally works with Tsugumi Ohba and did the art of Death Note and Bakuman. All You Need is Kill takes one of my favorite ideas of science-fiction, the time-loop, and puts it in a militaristic setting. While it is not exactly a new idea, it is brilliantly approached and used. The effects of the loop are fairly evident to Keiji, who learns a bit more with each iteration, but also descends further in despair. The only "but" is that some more iterations could have been adapted to better get the impression of Keiji's slow evolution.Despite that, the pacing is fine as it is. The other protagonist, who understands the first protagonist's situation, is properly introduced and brings something new to the story. This protagonist's presence also makes this entertaining story into a more emotional one. This gives a fairly decent amount of depth to it, making it much more enjoyable than it first seems. Because of the nature of the story and its small "size", the side characters are not really explored. The relationship of the two protagonists is predictable and a bit cheesy, but not boring. The final touch of it is hugely emotional and only happens because of a fairly interesting and logical twist. The art by Takeshi Obata is pretty great and full of details, but perhaps a bit too full. It doesn't pack any punches in showing the dismembered bodies of soldiers and aliens and also captures pretty well the atmosphere of a chaotic battleground. People with weak stomachs may wish to avoid All You Need is Kill, as it is pretty visceral. I enjoyed it greatly, because of my love for time-loops, but also because All You Need is Kill was much more than it first seemed. Fans of science-fiction might want to give it a try, as well as fans of the military genre. Also, if you want an emotional story, but that also has great action, All You Need is Kill is a nice option. Now, if you dislike time-loops, you will probably hate it.
One of the most compelling thing about manga as a medium resides in its capacity to convey the story conjugating between what is shown and what is told to the lector. You can make the same argument about every other media really, but there is something in the black and white panels, the moderated exposition compared to western comic and how the drawing is different from how scenes are portrayed in anime or animated shows. It's always incredible when you feel like you're being told a story from the manga itself instead of the author talking directly to you... Right? Well, you see, that's oneof the most heavy sins that I think literature can do as a whole; novels and manga being the ones that most fall under this, how things are told. "All you need is kill" is a manga adaptation from the light novel of the same name written by Sakurazaka Hiroshi, and I think every problem in this manga could be explained by this fact, and adaptation that didn't know how to make the transition from a light novel to a manga. "All you need is kill" follows the story of Keiji, a soldier stuck in a war against alien monstrosities called "mimics" who destroy everything they come across as just how those creatures are just really, really hard to kill and ruthless in killing people. He goes in his day normally as Vrataski, the elite of the elite, comes to their base... So yeah shit happens and Keiji dies... A lot... But a whole lot, poor guy didn't catch a break in any chapter of the whole manga. I've heard the novel was well-received and praised, thus making it into a manga adaptation. You see, when Ryousuke Takeuchi made the storyboard to this manga, it seems like it didn't sink in the idea of explaining things from a visual angle and with a more orthodox narrative of a novel in a medium that is not a novel: the exposition feels bad and rushed, I don't know what were we supposed to go from chapter 1: The mental downfall of the protagonist? An atmospheric manga about war? And action and frenetic work to gobble ourselves in its viscera? I don't know, and the manga don't know it either. In the first chapter everything feels so scripted to the point of being unnatural, we're being told about everything happening in the world because the narrator just fills us in with every word he can muster until we're exhausted... It's not that is dense or anything special because it comes as a simple war premise, but is just that it doesn't take advantage of the setting to make anything appealing, the setting and every character's main traits are told to us in the most straightforward way possible in that we don't even get to explore character's mentality: Keiji, Yonabaru and Shasta doesn't feel human at all, the only point of the first character was to show how our protagonist becomes a killing machine whose all he need is to kill (no fucking way...), but how the protagonist is going insane is just nos attractive for the lector, why? Because as the setting and characterization is poorly presented, as being too unnatural making it for us to feel the raw pain and desperation feels like out of nowhere, and it just doesn't concern us at all. The characters are also kinda... Lacking? I don't know, it's not like I don't exactly know, is just that there is so little to say about them. Everyone here's just have dialogue concerning the battlefield and mimics, it just feels soulless that the narrator tell us everything, from every one of Keiji's loops and then having the character talking about more battle and more killing feels redundant, few moments are when character talk about themselves honestly without the use of such a straightforward dialogue and even those moments just feel so short compared to all the narration doing the work of over exposition in the world building, I just don't see a moment when characters are really themselves, I would understand if this were just a manga directed towards fighting and being almost like a gore fest, but even the action scenes have a weird paneling in which actions scenes don't feel frenetic neither interesting nor including anything charming neither crude about it. Just showing our protagonist dying and dying over and over isn't enough for me to make it frenetic or interesting, it just goes from start to finish without doing nothing in between. And the main dynamic isn't that interesting neither, it isn't awful nor terrible, but it just feels shallow and made up in the last chapters, they build a relationship made from an understanding and interlinked pain no one has ever felt: the pain of coming back from death, to hours before you died. As it seems like an interesting dynamic, due to the little screen time we can't really grasp the feelings of neither of our main duo (letting aside that all the other character aren't relevant at all) but its the closer we are to get humanity from this adaptation. The art is good, I like the drawing and expressions when the protagonist died, sadly it wasn't used as good as it could due to the try of iterative narration to not make us bored from those aspects, which is a weird choice, why would you skip some moments from your story while also keeping everything related to the worldbuilding and characterization to a narrator? Is just like a mess of dissonances between narratives that just makes no sense when we analyze the pacing of the series alongside the cohesion between chapters, its like if they are so far away because we never see the journey to reach them, we just see the story progressing so straightforward that it just cast everything aside to tell us a story in the most mundane way possible, it's not that it is awful but just feels incomplete, the ending of one chapter and the continuation of the next feels so anticlimactic that I just enjoyed some of the art with some actions scenes... The ending itself just felt like an excuse to make it more tragic, with such an asspull of explanation that I couldn't bring myself to feel bad for our main cast. Well, it seems everything about this manga was bad in my eyes, that's not true. The art is great, some expressions are well-defined, the actions scenes aren't that bad either and at least the manga try to make a meaningful interaction between our main cast (although it mostly falls apart). But I won't say this is good because I feel like the core and essence of what this could have been got lost some place between the narrative; bad character, a downright awful narrative with just one dimensional characters with boring dialogue and a weird progression is what comes to mind when remembering this work... I love media about war, because it shows tragedy in such a realist yet with also an excuse to make everything to dense and heavy to the lector, even better if you add dark fantasy or sci-fi elements as the fear to the unknown and body horror are my main dish when it comes to uncomfortable and horrid moments... But this one just doesn't get it, this one just glorifies and rejoices in its own little world of dying again and again and again with too little relevant in my mind to keep it near my memories, a missed attempt and a forgettable work at this caliber it is sad to see yet make us appreciate literature and story telling as a whole.
tl;dr: A manga carried by having a really interesting core concept, but that overall feels like a waste of potential. This manga is an adaptation of a novel that was also adapted into a Hollywood film, though the film is quite a bit different from the novel and manga. The central premise is that humanity is in a war against a mysterious alien force dubbed Mimics, and in the midst of that a soldier named Keiji learns that he loops back 30 or so hours upon death. It’s a very interesting concept and the first volume uses it really well. It fleshes out Keiji’s panic andconfusion at his circumstances, and then shows him ultimately accepting his situation and then exploiting it to grow from an amateur into an incredible soldier, both in terms of skill and mentality. It’s well written and pretty satisfying. The second half doesn’t fare so well, largely in part because it feels so rushed. A core part of the second half is Rita, another soldier whom Keiji grows very close to romantically. However, neither Rita’s character nor her relationship with Keiji is developed all that well, and thus the emotional beats centered around her fall pretty flat. This is especially disappointing because the premise with one person remembering everything and the other person nothing could have resulted in a really interesting relationship arc. It’s similarly disappointing that none of the rest of the cast got much focus either. There aren’t a lot of supporting characters and the few that there are aren’t developed all that well. Still, in what little we see of them it felt like there was a lot of potential to showing how they react to Keiji as he grows and changes which was left unutilized. It should also be noted that the plot gets a bit complicated towards the end. Not extremely complicated to be clear, but enough so that the rushed writing results in things being more confusing than they needed to be. This combined with the aforementioned issues with Rita results in the ending overall being pretty unsatisfying. The art is pretty great, with good designs, consistently high-quality art, and a style that fits well.