Fantasia Fest 2025: All You Need Is Kill Review

This will be one of many reviews during this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival, to keep up with our latest coverage, click here.

Kenichiro Akimoto’s All You Need Is Kill is the first official anime adaptation of Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s light novel, following subsequent manga and live-action adaptations (including Doug Liman’s Edge of Tomorrow). The film follows Rita (Mikami), a volunteer fighter who found themselves stuck in a Groundhog Day type situation, reliving the same tumultuous and tragic day involving the attack of an extraterrestrial threat, called Boral, a botanical-like species that is trying to lay claim to the planet.

Akimoto’s adaptation intriguingly switches focus of perspectives from both main characters of the original story. Instead centering around Rita, audiences see her quickly experience the first loop and swiftly understand the parameters of her precarious situation, exhaustively problem-solving how to defeat these menacing creatures through the vibrant and colorful landscapes within the animation. Comprehensively running through her various strategies is where audiences may start to disengage from her frustrating attempts, bordering on boredom as she repeats through almost 100 scenarios in under 30 minutes. Previously alluding to the energetic animation, the film is unequivocally captivating in visuals, filled with baleful creatures and sanguine world design compared to Liman’s grounded bleakness.

Succeeding Rita’s montage of simulations is the introduction of Keiji (Hanae), Sakurazaka’s original protagonist, who is also distinctively caught in the crosshairs of these abnormal circumstances, perfectly intertwined with Rita in the confines of their extraterrestrial threat. Hoping for a pacing change among the diminishing interest in Rita’s fighting montage is where All You Need Is Kill reduces much of Rita and Keiji’s character development towards an even more mundane montage, resorting to Keiji’s facial expressions as the means of communicating yet another seemingly endless cycle of repetitions that Rita must face. Already significantly short in runtime, the film’s buildup towards the integral high-stakes sacrifice is rendered emotionless through the lack of characterization and rendered pointless by a cop-out ending.

In the end, while an anime adaptation of Sakurazaka’s All You Need Is Kill has been long overdue, director Ken’ichirô Akimoto’s iteration results in an emotionless abundance of repetition montages, despite distinctly detailed and vibrant animation.

still courtesy of GKIDS

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Costa Christoulas

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