Making a review on a 17 chapters manga is kind of a challenge, for with the slightest spoil, you end up revealing a significant part of the show. And to me, this manga is best appreciated when knowing nothing of it and discovering its content page by page. A point of view not shared by other reviewers of “All you need is kill” at the moment. As such, if you are satisfied what you will have read in this review, I would like to advise you not to read the other reviews before reading the manga. This may sound terribly arrogant, but I believe I made myself clear enough on why I’m saying this. In fact, you shouldn’t even read this review. Go read the first chapters, it will take the same amount of time as reading this review.

But if you still need more motivation, what can I tell about it? Well, I think that just by stating that this manga shouldn’t be spoiled, it already tells you something. Combine that with the genre tags, and I believe you already have a gist of what’s going on. An action sci-fi military, depicted in a real seinen way, and that cannot suffer from being spoiled. I say real seinen, because it is fairly loose term, is often to describe a shounen content with boobs (more or less). This is not what you will get here.

The other thing you also know is the manga length and its inherent constraints. You know it cannot stray too far from its objectives, and also that with 17 chapters, you won’t have the same depth as a 100 chapters manga. And that’s a fact. You can’t blame the manga for that, the same way you can’t blame a pony for not winning a race against a horse. It’s a bloody pony, what do you expect? That said, I don’t think that “all you need is kill”, which is a pretty terrible title I must say, has much in common with a pony. The annoying thing is that you’re left with the “I want more” feeling, and that’s amplified by the pace choice. But it has its weaknesses too. The story setup and the characters are pretty generic. Could the author have done a better job in that aspect in such a shot amount of time? Maybe.

I believe you now have all the elements to make an informed decision. I’m giving it a 9, which is fairly high, but I find that this manga deserves it, for it does what its design for very well.