The east to west cycle never fails. All You Need Is Kill is based on a book and manga series. Doug Liman was so inspired by the premise he sold Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt on it. Seeing how big of a deal that was, we come back to Japan, and story’s roots. Live, Die, Repeat, if you will.
We invert the story a bit. We open on Rita (Ai Mikami) at 7:03 AM being awoken in her dorm. It’s the 1 Year Anniversary of Darol’s landing on Earth. Darol is a flower like alien behemoth that landed, laid waste to large chunks of Japan (quarantining it), and then laid dormant…until today. Large Demogorgon like things called mimics shoot out of Darol, which Rita slightly evades, but then gets killed. Or does she? Cause the next morning she is also woken up at 7:03 AM, and starts having the same conversations she had the day before.
So yeah, if you saw Edge of Tomorrow in 2014, or read the manga, what happens won’t shock you in any way. Yûichirô Kido’s screenplay makes some changes that smartly differentiate this story from the earlier adaptations. The point of view switch is the key one: we’re firmly in Rita’s here, learning as she does. Keiji (Natsuki Hanae) doesn’t show up until halfway through the story in this one, more the sidekick. The movie also makes both of them very young, and at the same knowledge level as the other. There’s no real imbalance in what they know when they come into contact, keeping the dynamics between them on the same level instead of the student/mentor relationship in the other adaptations. This then allows the story to do what all manga movies do: make the movie a tween romance for the kids watching. It’s good to know that Edge of Tomorrow’s weakness (a convoluted ending) is the same problem across all the adaptations, as it is in All You Need Is Kill, using dense character/plot dumps to stake set for the big epic finale showdown.
At least the animation rocks. The mimics here are 13 year old scary, not adult scary like in the cruise movie. They do murder, but they’re wonderfully liquid and colorful venus flytraps basically. Directors Ken’ichirô Akimoto and Yukinori Nakamura make Darol epic in size and beautiful to look at, if a bit scary, so we know where Keiji and Rita have to end up. Each of the humans here has a unique slightly off kilter design that fits the world we’re in. But its the action sequences that rock just like in the Cruise Blunt movie. We’re in mech suits wielding giant hammers laying waste to all sorts of mimics near and far, with the occasional death or two. And in the finale, we shapeshift across animation styles in really exciting fun ways to help make the conclusion feel as big as the directors want it to be.
Let’s keep this going with the East West shifts. Next is Musical right? Then we go back, but instead to Korea, to make the Kpop Musical. Then we get the Disney Plus TV series version? Back and forth, back and forth. Living. Dying. Repeating. The loop never ends! DAROL!!!!!!