ALL YOU NEED IS KILL

A giant flower called Darol comes down on the Earth and creatures come out of where it opens. The army answers and loses. Keiji is a new recruit; on his first sortie he dies within minutes. Then he opens his eyes a day earlier. The same morning, the same conversations, the same battle. He dies again and returns to the same morning again. Each round he fights a little better. At some point he realises that a woman he knows at the front has lived this loop before. Kenichiro Akimoto directs; it is his first feature. The film is adapted from the 2004 novel by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. The animation is by Studio 4C and Warner Bros. Japan produced. It is a Japanese production. The film screened at the Annecy animation festival on 9 June 2025 and opened in Japanese cinemas on 9 January 2026. The same novel had been adapted before as a live action film in America; this is the first anime version. About a tenth of the film is hand drawn; most of it was made in three dimensional computer animation and the rest retouched by hand. The matter it treats is repetition; dying here is not an end but a method of learning. The film shortens the loops and tries not to tire the viewer. The narrative builds its battles crowded and fast. The design stays close to the world of the novel and differs from the live action version. The ending turns on how the loop can be broken. Its limit is originality; the setup is familiar by now and the narrative gives little time to deepening the characters. Who it is for: viewers who like science fiction anime and time loop stories. Who it is not for: it is familiar, fast, and the ending harsh.