One Of 2026's Best Anime Movies Is Based On The Same Book As A Tom Cruise Sci-Fi Classic

In Doug Liman's 2014 sci-fi action movie "Edge of Tomorrow," Tom Cruise plays William Cage, a cowardly public relations officer drafted to fight in the front line of an alien war. Dying due to exposure to an alien's acidic blood traps Cage in a time loop, and with help from decorated soldier Sergeant Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt), he has to find a way to break the loop and win the war. The movie did not perform especially well at the box office, grossing $381 million against a $178 million budget, but it earned good reviews and, to this day, fans and the creative team remain hopeful about an eventual "Edge of Tomorrow" sequel.

You might assume the nifty premise of "Edge of Tomorrow" is just an action movie riff on "Groundhog Day," but its real origins are more obscure. The movie adapts a 2004 Japanese light novel, "All You Need Is Kill," written by Hiroshi Sakurazaka with illustrations by Yoshitoshi Abe ("Serial Experiments Lain"). The movie and novel share a basic premise, though the movie moves the setting from Japan to Europe. It also turns the novel's hero, a young Japanese man named Keiji Kiriya, into Cruise's William Cage.

Fitting for a story that's all about its characters caught in a loop, "All You Need Is Kill" has been adapted several times. In 2014, Weekly Young Jump serialized a 17 chapter "All You Need Is Kill" manga written by Ryosuke Takeuchi and drawn by Takeshi Obata, artist of "Death Note." Most recently, Japanese studio Studio 4°C turned the story into a mostly 3D-animated film that opened in theaters this past year. The "All You Need Is Kill" anime does justice to the story while making some of the biggest changes to it yet.

The anime "All You Need Is Kill" retains the title of the novel, unlike "Edge of Tomorrow." ("Edge of Tomorrow" was originally titled "All You Need Is Kill," but was then renamed in 2013 ahead of release. Confusingly, it's also since been labeled as "Live Die Repeat" on home media.) 

You might expect that the animated "All You Need Is Kill" is a more faithful adaptation, one that strives to tell the real story after Hollywood distorted it. But that's not quite true. While the animated movie retains the Japanese setting, it flips the story in another way: Rita Vrataski is the protagonist. In the novel and "Edge of Tomorrow," she's a soldier who got caught in a previous loop, escaped it, and walked out a hardened battlefield hero distinguished by her large war axe.

In the animated "All You Need Is Kill," we see her stumbling through loop after loop learning to fight. She's more like the novel's Keiji but with Rita's name, and then Keiji being caught in her same loop is the midpoint twist. The movie's ending also echoes "Edge of Tomorrow." The hero (William/Rita) breaks the loop, defeats the aliens, and arrives back at the beginning of the story (but now free of the loop). They then reunite with their partner (Rita/Keiji) with the hope they'll become close again.

The novel and manga's final twist is that, to escape the loop, one of Rita and Keiji has to die. Rita lets Keiji kill her, and he has to carry her sacrifice through to all his tomorrows. Therein lies the meaning of the title, "All You Need Is Kill."

In "Edge of Tomorrow," the soldiers fight with mechanical exoskeletons with guns directly attached to their forearms, while the alien "Mimics" resemble writhing, glowing masses of black tentacles. The manga has a similar aesthetic; Takeshi Obata draws the soldier's uniforms resembling Spartan armor from "Halo" (a vibe also seen in "Edge of Tomorrow" concept art), while the Mimics are also depicted as pure black orbs with large, toothy mouths.

The aesthetics of "All You Need Is Kill" are much stranger and more alien. Rita's armor more resembles an astronaut or a deep sea diver's suit, complete with a transparent bubble helmet. The limbs of the armor are also lanky and exaggerated, with digitigrade legs. The suit looks like it was designed for wider reach than a human can manage, but it doesn't scream "armored" or "intimidating" like the manga or "Edge of Tomorrow" suits do. The aliens are also even weirder, resembling giant, mobile flowers with bright purple-green color schemes.

In an interview with Animation Magazine, "All You Need Is Kill" director Kenichiro Akimoto explained he wanted to depict something a bit different than the "space marines blasting aliens" look of past iterations:

"I wanted to depict a colorful, vibrant hell. The thinking behind that was that this time loop repeats the cycle of life and death. Rita needs to live repeatedly, beautifully, as she faces this inevitable death. I wanted to send the message that life can be beautiful — that's the reason for the film's hypersaturated color palette."

The palette does indeed clash with past iterations' violence and brutality, resembling a landscape of imagination more than a warzone. But at its heart, "All You Need Is Kill" is a romance, and the movie's look grows out of that.