Note: I also wrote this review on Goodreads under the name Animelove24 but it is my review.

All You Need Is Kill is a manga drawn by Takeshi Obata(the same guy who did Death Note and Bakuman) based on the light novel by the same name written by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. In it the main character Keiji is in the army trying to defeat a group of aliens called Mimics who have come to take over Earth. During his first battle, Keiji is seemingly killed by a Mimic but somehow wakes up the next day. This is repeated a few times before he realizes in order to get out of the loop he must defeat the Mimics and the story is basically him running around training and trying to go through the same day over and over without dying. It's like Groundhog Day but with aliens.

I found the story over all to be a fun little adventure story. It was funny at parts like with the sour plum eating contest, and heartwarming in others, such as wheb Rita and Keiji find, what I'll call their "common ground" without giving away spoliers. We also see the main character, whose very relatable in his quest to just live, grow as a person and push himself to his physical limits. It's also fun to watch him go through all the same things everyday. While it does exhaust him a lot after a while it's pretty funny to see him know everything that's going to happen, especially when he uses that knowledge to sneak past a bunch of guards. Keiji is also strong willed and I like the even after over 50 loops he still hasn't given up and doesn't even go off of his mission for a second even though he very well ould and it'd be understandable. I liked Rita as well. She definitely a badass as the only one whose known to been able to take down the Mimics in combat and she walks around carrying a giants axe that ways a couple tons so she's pretty tough. But she also has a softer side as we get to see in her backstory. Rita loves her family and her friends and is shown to be just a regular girl at heart. She's stubborn, she cries, loves jewellery likes to have fun as shown in the cafeteria scene and that's what I really enjoyed about her character. I like it when writers create female characters who have all kinds of different facets to their personalities and aren't just the stoic, unfeeling, bitchy type characters we usually get; she is called The Full Metal Bitch but she's also called The Valkyrie so it evens out. That all being said, I hated what became of her after she and Keiji have their "bonding moment". She just becomes the love interest after that and has no real character besides at the end which I won't spoil, but it's a bunch of crap.

The artstyle is well done. Takeshi Obata is also very detailed with his work and has his own in dividual style which a lot of sharp lines and hard edges which is different to see inanineor manga. It's part of what made Death Note stand out more than it already did. He also does good with movement especially with hair. It actually moves like real hair and seems silky and smooth. He also didn't great with making Keiji look exhausted from all the hard work he was putting in to defeating the Mimics. He looked exhausted and like he was about to break and just the way the eyes were drawn and the bags under them made me feel tried just looking at him. I also liked the interpretations of the mech suits and the Mimics. The suits looked sufficiently heavy as well as the axes and the Mimics looked like what the Langoliers should have looked like. Terrifying monster balls with teeth that look like they're oozing evil. I will say on downside is all the action scenes. I'm not sure if it's just the style of manga books overall or if it's that Obata doesn't draw action that often but I found it hard to really tell what was going on half the time. The characters would start doing something and then the next panel would be them doing somethibg completely different with no inbetween panels. This was especially prevalent in the final two battles. Overall I do enjoy Obata's art however but perhaps he should stick with doing the more person centric stories.

Other things I didn't like besides the action scenes and the way Rita was treated as a character were...well there's really only two things. #1 The ending. The ending was a load of bullshit. Without saying any spoilers, it makes sure Rita definitely not pass the Mako Mori test, if you catch my drift. She's such a cool character and to be reduced to THAT pisses me off. It also brings my to #2. The whole thing with the Mimic antenna makes no goddamn sense. Here's where it's going to get into spoilers, so if you don't want to read those, skip to the 👍(this includes ending spoilers). Okay so here it's goes. If whomever kills the antenna Mimic in their first loop slowly becomes an antenna over many different loops, made known by a headache one gets when becoming one, Rita should have never been able to leave her loop without the Mimics winning that battle and leaving her alive. Because the way it is explained in the story, is that the only way to get out of a loop is to ultimately kill all the antennas after destroying a bunch of other parts of the Mimic army, and Rita was an antenna during that time then she should have been stuck there forever because killing the antenna ultimately also restarts the loop so she couldn't kill herself. Therefore the only way to win an battle with antenna type Mimics is to let them win because that is the only way the loop stops. That also brings me to the bullshit ending where Keiji and Rita have to fight to the death because they have to kill all of the antenna but they're both antennas because they've both gotten the headaches for this loop and therefore there was no reason for Rita to fucking die because they shouldn't have been able to get out of that loop. What I'm saying really, in shortened terms, is that either the Mimics should have won that battle a longtime ago or Rita should be stuck in her first loop forever. I don't know if it's explained better in the books or not but here that whole thing makes no sense.

👍 Okay spoilers are officially over. Time for the end thoughts. Overall I did enjoy reading this book. Like I've said, I liked the artstyle, the story is an interesting look at what someone might do if the were stuck in the same day forever and the characters are fun to watch. There are a couple nitpicks here and there and two big nitpicks near the end of the book, but in the end if was a fun adventure to go on and makes me want to read the actual book and see the Tom Cruise movie. I probably won't read it again just because it's not really my genre but for anyone whose really unit sci-fi I'd say give it a whirl.