All You Need Is Kill

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Alternative Titles

Synonyms: Edge of Tomorrow

Japanese: All You Need Is Kill

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Information

Type: Manga

Volumes: 2

Chapters: 17

Status: Finished

Published: Jan 9, 2014 to May 29, 2014

Genres: Action, Sci-Fi

Themes: Military, Time Travel

Demographic: Seinen

Serialization: Young Jump

Authors: Obata, Takeshi (Art), Sakurazaka, Hiroshi (Story), Takeuchi, Ryousuke (Story)

Statistics

Score: 7.75¹ (scored by 75,332 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #1515²

² based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #91

Members: 140,661

Favorites: 3,015

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7.75

Ranked #1515Popularity #91Members 140,661

MangaYoung JumpObata, Takeshi (Art), Sakurazaka, Hiroshi (Story), Takeuchi, Ryousuke (Story)

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Volumes: /2

Chapters: /17

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Synopsis

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]

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Background

All You Need Is Kill was published in English by VIZ Media under the Shonen Jump Advanced imprint as a 2-in-1 omnibus volume on November 4, 2014. The English version was nominated for the 2015 Eisner Award for Best U.S. Edition of International Material—Asia. It was also released in Italian by Panini Comics from June 21, 2014, to September 20, 2014; in French by Kazé from June 25, 2014, to July 16, 2014; in Spanish by Norma Editorial from June 27, 2014, to September 26, 2014; in Polish by Japonica Polonica Fantastica from September 2014 to December 2014; in Portuguese by Devir in 2015; in Brazilian Portuguese by Editora JBC in December 2014; and in Turkish by Akılçelen Kitaplar in December 2015.

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Related Entries

More characters
Characters

Vrataski, Rita

Main

Kiriya, Keiji

Main

Raylle, Shasta

Supporting

Kisaragi, Rachel

Supporting

Jin, Yonabaru

Supporting

Hendricks, Arthur

Supporting

Ferrell, Bartolome

Supporting

Reviews

Feb 4, 2025

Mik0_o

Recommended

I’ll start by saying that this manga had been sitting on my bookshelf for a long time. I always thought it would be just another typical story. However, it actually exceeded my expectations—I was expecting something far less engaging.

Now, it might seem strange that I’m giving it a relatively low score while still praising and recommending it, so let me explain. Since this is a short manga, I’ll try to keep my review just as concise.

The main reason for my score is simply the length—only two volumes. Personally, I’m not a big fan of short stories, so for me, a 5/10 for a short manga ...

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Feb 12, 2025

LacingMaster

Mixed Feelings

Can a good story be told in only two volumes? My experience with manga made me skeptical about this question. However, I decided to give the short series a try, especially since it looked really nice!

Plot Summary:
Many years ago, humanity was attacked by some kind of alien "Mimics". Keiji, a new recruit in the Japanese army, is a green rookie. This is the first time his unit has to face the aliens, but the catch is that the human mortality rate on such missions is way too high. Fortunately, the rookies are not thrown to the wolves. The mission will take place in the rear, ... and the main work will go to the American unit, led by an experienced fighter, Sergeant Rita Vrataski.
The landing begins, and as it happens, the battle does not go as planned, as the Mimics attack from another direction. In a matter of seconds, Keiji and his entire squad are destroyed. A moment later, however, he wakes up in his bed in the barracks the day before the landing and realizes that this is not the first time he has died.
Plots based on time loops have long ceased to be something new, every year something with similar themes is released. However, "All You Need Is Kill" plays in this field more than worthy and will find something to surprise you.

The story is characterized by violence and uncompromising attitude towards the main character, due to which it is quite easy to empathize with him. Finding himself in a circle of deaths and rebirths, he realizes that no one is able to help him, and decides to act. The way he tries to understand and change something is quite interesting to watch.
The events are very fast-paced, but it doesn't feel stilted at all. No doubt my inner asshole would have wanted to know more about Mimics, the world outside the Mil Ops, and other details, but within the confines of a narrative similar in spirit to a short story, there is no need for additional information. The pacing is almost perfect.

Despite its brevity, the story does not lose its emotionality. The focus on the two protagonists, without atomizing the supporting characters, suits the format of the work perfectly, because it allows us to get enough insight into their personal drama. Undoubtedly, the characters themselves are rather clichéd, but I see it more as a technique. In this situation, clichés allow you to complete the picture in your mind without overloading the narrative with unnecessary elements. All of this may seem rather watery, but to say more is to risk spoiling something, and in a story that is mostly built on intrigue, that is simply inexcusable.
I'll just say that I really liked the ending and the revelation of the reasons for the time loop. I thought it was quite elegant and logical, even if some people might not like it.

The visuals perfectly reflect the mood of the story. Brutal battle suits, lots of blood and dismemberment in the fights, tough characters and a very green protagonist. The detail and dynamics of the battles are on the highest level. I can easily recognize the style of the illustrator of "Bakuman" and "Death Note". I'll say more, the main character reminded me a lot of Moritaka, and the idea that we're watching his alternate future is even a bit funny. Many people will probably be confused by the image of the warrior Rita. Well, what is a manga without fragile girls? And the story takes care to justify the physicality of the character by introducing exoskeletons that increase physical strength by a lot, so there's no problem with that.

The edition is great. Solid one-volume paperbacks in "Attack on Titans" format. The opening is excellent, each page can be enjoyed in all its glory. I would love to see more manga in this format.
Many may wonder why the book was not published as an omnibus all at once. Sounds fair, but in the context of the story, all 4 covers are important and seem quite symbolic after reading.
The result is a great mix of action and drama, spiced with science fiction. It reads in one breath. What more could you ask for in a story?

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Sep 10, 2024

Nivo3041

Not Recommended

Funny

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 one ... of 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.

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Poll: All You Need Is Kill Chapter 17 Discussion ( 1 2 ) KiraYoshikage - Jun 1, 2014	87 replies	by nidoqueen106_2 »» Aug 1, 2024 9:18 AM
How many pages Hickykissy - Mar 15, 2024	5 replies	by Anime_God_King »» Mar 17, 2024 5:57 PM
Poll: All You Need Is Kill Chapter 3 Discussion Stark700 - Feb 1, 2014	31 replies	by artheart634 »» Jun 19, 2023 2:17 PM
Meta-reference to All You Need is Kill LazerBeams01 - Apr 17, 2023	1 replies	by YahiyaX777L »» Apr 18, 2023 1:32 PM
Poll: All You Need Is Kill Chapter 13 Discussion Stark700 - Apr 24, 2014	25 replies	by marvinioh »» Feb 1, 2023 6:42 AM

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