Title All You Need Is Kill Series --- Author Hiroshi Sakurazaka Cover Art --- Publisher Haikasoru - 2014 First Printing 2004 Category Science Fiction Warnings War, Violence, Gore, Swearing Main Characters Keiji Kiriya, Rita Vrataski Main Elements Aliens

		Title All You Need Is Kill Series --- Author Nick Mamatas Illustrator Lee Ferguson Publisher Haikasoru - 2014 First Printing Haikasoru - 2014
		Title All You Need Is Kill Volume 1 Series --- Author Ryosuke Takeuchi Illustrator Takeshi Obata Publisher Kaze - 2014 First Printing Shueisha - 2014
		Title All You Need Is Kill Volume 2 Series --- Author Ryosuke Takeuchi Illustrator Takeshi Obata Publisher Kaze - 2014 First Printing Shueisha - 2014

LIVE
DIE
REPEAT
When the alien Mimics invade, Keiji Kiriya is just one of many recruits shoved into a suit of battle armor called a Jacket and sent out to kill. Keiji dies on the battlefield, only to be reborn each morning to fight and die again and again. On his 158th iteration, he gets a message from a mysterious ally--the female soldier known as the Full Metal Bitch. Is she the key to Keiji's escape or his final death? Now a major motion picture starring Tom Cruise!

Manga
L'humanité est engagée dans une guerre sans précédent. Son ennemi : une civilisation extraterrestre connue sous le nom de "Mimic", déterminée à exterminer toute vie humaine. Sur l'ile de Kotoiushi, armées japonaise et américaine tentent de lutter contre cette invasion de monstres redoutables. Mais parmi tous les soldats, seul le jeune Keiji Kiriya semble revivre indéfiniment la même bataille...

Les affrontements contre les Mimics continuent de faire rage sur l'île de Kotoiushi. Au coeur de la bataille, deux guerriers hors du commun : Keiji Kiriya et Rita Vrataski. Maintenant que le soldat japonais sait qu'il n'est pas le seul prisonnier des boucles, il va combattre aux côtés de la Full Metal Bitch pour tirer profit de son expérience... Arriveront-ils à sortir indemnes de ce piège temporel et sauver l'espèce humaine de l'extinction ?

A couple days ago, I randomly picked to watch Edge of Tomorrow with Tom Cruise off my PVR. I enjoyed it well enough, time loops where only one person remembers what happened it pretty common, but I had to sympathize with the character, not for the fact he had to relieve the war over and over again (and dying each time) but for having to relive the day that leads up to the war. Since while he's in the battle he's making progress, getting a little further each time since he knows now that when he turns that corner he'll be run over by a truck, and in that hole there will be a mimic alien, and to that side an explosion will go off. But to get to the battle he has to relive the same introduction to his troop over, and over, and over, and over, and over again. I mean it must get pretty tedious introducing yourself every day to the same set of people, and being told stuff you already know very, very well.

Anyway, at the same time I've been grabbing every science fiction based graphic novel from the library, generally without even reading the blub. Mecha-suits and aliens? Clearly SF. But yesterday I pick up All You Need Is Kill, which I had picked up from the library a week ago and as I flipped through it I saw "the basis of the movie Edge of Tomorrow". Wow. What was the chance of that? I didn't even know Edge of Tomorrow was based on something and here I had it sitting on my floor already.

Reviews on Goodreads for this graphic novel were pretty bad, generally complaining if you hadn't read the novel you couldn't figure out what was going on. Well, I saw the movie so while there are major differences (heaven forbid Hollywood keep a Japanese lead and not replace him with an American Tom Cruise...and of course now that Cruise was the token American, the American in the book, Rita, had to be converted to British...) but I had trouble getting the gist of things.

Now I'm tempted to hunt down the translation of the original novel. The library had it in French...well its not like I can read it in its original Japanese, so why not. Talk about doing things backwards though! First the movie, then the graphic novel adaptation, and only then the novel...well, to be fair at each level I didn't know there was one that came before it!

Must admit for both of them, I had to look up wikipedia to really understand their endings.

SPOILER

Again, a big difference, Hollywood had the happily ever after, time reset and everyone is alive again. While the Japanese version was as expected, darker, with the dead staying dead. But in both versions I couldn't quite figure out if they actually won the war or if they just broke out of the loop. At least the graphic novel made more sense, while in the movie, he's somehow defeated the enemy before he even got involved??? Well, the only way to bring the characters back...

The Manga

Continuing to work my way backwards to the original, I read the two manga books first. They are very similar to the graphic novel but of course with a very different feel to the art and being longer than the graphic novel it could go deeper into the characters. It of course was not in colour, but perhaps that was a good thing, I mean, you get to watch Keiji die a dozen different horrific ways, blood splurting, limbs flying...and the horror of his experiencing his first death. And for whatever reason, the library only had the books in French so I'm not only getting to experience this same story in different forms, but in different languages. If only I knew Japanese to read the original novel, but that one will have to suffice in English.

The Novel

And at last, the original novel. Of course it could go into much more detail (including graphic detail of what its like to watch your intestines fall out or have your arm ripped off). I guess I don't have more to add that I haven't said about the other incarnations, but I'd say my favorite version was a tie between the manga and the novel, depends I guess if you want pictures to go along with your prose.