Disclaimer: Minor spoilers.I was curious about the 2025 anime film "All You Need Is Kill." And not just because it was animated by Studio 4C. It's based on the popular sci-fi novel of the same name, which, famously, was adapted into a big-budget American action film called "Edge of Tomorrow" (or "Live. Die. Repeat."), starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt. That was back in 2014, long before talk of an anime was around, even though making an anime first was the standard and logical choice. And it was a good movie to boot. For this reason, there's a slight chance that viewers that don't follow anime news will want to see this new version. Some creative liberties are taken with the characters and setting, but the basic plot is still the same. In the anime version, Rita is a loner teenager with a troubled family past, wishing for something, anything, to change the world around her. She gets more than she bargained for when a massive alien tree crashes and roots itself into Earth. The humans come to call the tree "Darol," and set up a massive force of scientists and crew members to study and slowly cut down the seemingly inert tree. But exactly one year after the tree appeared, as Rita and her crew complete yet another mundane day of cutting down roots, aliens sprout from the tree and begin viciously attacking everything in sight. Rita sees her crew members violently killed in front of her, just before they kill her... and then she wakes up. The day has restarted in the morning, but it wasn't just a bad dream. Rita is living the same cursed day over and over, watching the start of the end of the human race, and restarting every time she dies. She's seemingly the only one experiencing this... can she do anything to stop the massacre? Can she do anything to survive? Is she really the only one going through a case of "Groundhog Day?" Even with a relatively concise runtime, "All You Need Is Kill" manages to feel simple enough to be accessible. It's an alien invasion horror story. For the first act, we focus almost entirely on Rita's psychological state. She's living through an infinitely repeating nightmare, experiencing the trauma of the death of her co-workers, the pain and fear of a quick death, and no matter her attempts, she's seemingly helpless to escape her death or to convince anyone to save themselves. She can't just kill herself to end the nightmare either, as the day would just restart - after several restarts, she decides the only possible course is to fight back. So she tries, and fails, and tries, and fails again. She searches the labs for better exo-suits, better equipment, better weapons. She fights, fails, but then remembers the movements to dodge the next time, only to survive a few seconds longer. Her days become a video game with endless lives, that she can never stop until the game is beat. Alone, she'll learn by trial and error. A lot of trial and a lot of error. She'll have lived through well over 100 days before the movie is done, and the film shows you most of the deaths, sometimes through quick edits where waking up and dying occur in just seconds of the runtime. That repetition helps with the film's simplicity, and the story has a self-contained, satisfying ending, driven with the help that Rita isn't the only one with the infinite lives ability (yes, this is a spoiler, but given the live-action film starred two prominant actors, you probably guessed it). It slowly evolves from endless nightmare to heroic battle, with Rita able to fight and dodge with the timing of an expert "Dark Souls" game player. The music score stands out for its power to set the emotional tone from one scene to the next, be it mundane, horror, or epic superhero fight. There isn't too much weird scientific jargon or rules - just that the lead character is stuck repeating time - so it's easy to just "get." And focusing on Rita and her backstory makes it an emotional journey with a massive evolution to her character, all in less than 90 minutes. Even though the story isn't groundbreaking, it's effective. 
The visuals are an interesting subject for a few reasons. First, this is a 3D-CGI movie, one of the very few I've reviewed here in a primarily 2D-focused review collection. You wouldn't know that from the posters, or even the trailers. In part because the designs are so distinct (I'll get to that later), that it wouldn't make sense to animate this with 3D character models. But it does, and characters are 3D models in almost every shot. But even with a keen eye, I'd have trouble describing exactly HOW they animated this without a behind-the-scenes video. My guess is they rendered 3D models just for shape and colour, and drew 2D lines for outlines and faces afterward, or perhaps rigged those lines directly onto the models themselves? Studio 4C isn't a stranger to 3D animation (see their "Berserk" film trilogy or "Harmony"), and has tried to push the limits of making it look like anime. In "All You Need Is Kill," the CGI is practically seemless. It's 99% the way of looking like a 2D anime, and while my brain was still distracted by that 1% of "uncanny valley," I think the vast majority of viewers will be fooled, or at least will agree it's seemless enough that they won't care. ... although this also begs the question WHY the studio chose 3D for this movie? Most of the shots are repeated with only slight differences, a trick that could easily be done in classic 2D. Character designs are complex not from a 2D drawing perspective (in fact, they appear quite simple), but from a 3D modeling perspective. Despite the many action shots, there isn't anything so dynamic and complex that a 3D camera would be necessary. As a shot in the dark, my guess is that this is a lower-budget-than-normal film for Studio 4C, and that using 3D helped reduce work required on some level, or that this was meant as a testing benchmark to experiment with pushing 3D models to look 2D, which they might rely on further in future films. I'd love to see this movie in full 2D, and would be disappointed to never see a new 2D film from 4C (to date, they're still one of the most impressive anime studios in the business), but increasingly, that seems to be where trends are going in Japan. Beyond this technicality that you probably don't care about, the character designs are unusual. It's hard to describe... it reminds me of the older anime "Windy Tales" with character designer Masatsugu Arakawa, who coincidentally has a 2025 film called "Toritsukare Otoko" coming soon. Or like another 2025 film "Chao," also by Studio 4C, which might be less of a coincidence. Perhaps Masakki Yuasa, who debuted with Studio 4C way back with "Mind Game," is also an influence. Regardless, eyes, mouths, and hair look distinct in "All You Need Is Kill," but also weird and not visually pleasant, and unlike other movies, I'm not certain the animation style, setting, or story benefit from this design choice. On the other hand, the movie takes liberties with the alien designs: "Darol" is a giant tree, and the aliens are giant walking carnivorous flowers that pollinate from the tree. With that, the aliens feel distinct but consistent, and this was a smart choice. "All You Need Is Kill" is a straightforward but effective science-fiction action horror film. If you've already seen the live-action Hollywood movie, or even read the book or manga, it's also a new take that differentiates itself just enough to feel fresh. No, I don't think I'll rewatch it 189 times, but it's a good crowd-pleaser to recommend to at least that many people.