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In this episode, Gerald has this terrible feeling of…of déjà vu. Nevertheless, we’re getting this episode out just on the edge of tomorrow. Fitting, since we’re in a live, die, repeat sort of cycle this time around, as Gerald reviews the feature film anime adaptation of All You Need Is Kill, which is not quite the same as the original light novel, manga adaptation of same, or the Hollywood live-action film.
Introduction (0:00 – 58:03)
We somehow got emailed about potentially being a consultant by an alleged Japanese company that perhaps didn’t grasp that Anime World Order is not, in fact, a licensor or publisher of anime or manga in the US, but after the answers Daryl gave them to the sample questions provided, it’s not a surprise they never did set up that Zoom meeting.
We’ve debuted the first episode of AWOmake, a bonus podcast for our Patreon subscribers at the $5 and $10 tiers (and soon, the $3 tier when we add it, which will be once Patreon moves us off of per-creation billing and we have to begin the process of sunsetting the $1 tier). The plan for that is to be an irregularly produced freebie bonus where we talk about non-anime/manga topics. For episode 1 Gerald has thoughts on The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, and we all weigh in on our feelings regarding the Fallout series of videogames. If you need to hear more of Daryl, The Greatest Movie EVER! Podcast celebrates its 20th anniversary, and he was on to discuss Robocop and remember that time when Robocop shot that dude in the dick.
There’s an upcoming short film called Found in Translation that’s going to be all about the VHS “fansub” operation Arctic Animation. We were too slow in getting this out in time before their crowdfund campaign ended, but fortunately they met their goal successfully. We relay some of our own experiences and memories of Arctic Animation as well as their enduring legacy on subtitling efforts both fan and official which endure to this day, since one way or another, they are undeniably of historical significance.
What had better NOT become historically significant is the latest attempt to force a speculator-driven market upon Japanese comics and animation through blatant falsehoods and deception, as was recently previously successfully carried out upon the retro videogaming and Pokémon trading card hobbies by the exact same perpetrators. We have nothing but scorn for this, but this time the perpetrators are two of the most popular influencers in the world staging a disagreement in order to drum up interest for yet another worked contest. They’re correctly banking on the fact that anime and manga fans by and large aren’t paying attention to the fact that they both literally just collaborated on a storyline that culminated in a match at Wrestlemania that aired on ESPN. This is their next one. Any so-called news media which fails to point out the obvious grifting here–as they already have failed to do for the same grift done for retro videogames and trading cards–is in active dereliction of their duty.
Finally, we go over some initial early impressions of the current anime season, which as of the time we recorded this was only just beginning and so there remain several noteworthy titles that we just hadn’t quite gotten around to watching. This culminates in yet another airing of grievances, this time with regards to a collected group of terminally online hyper-puritans we refer to as “antis.” Perhaps you’ve encountered them at some point.
Review: All You Need Is Kill (58:03 – 1:49:26)
Gerald reviews this recently-released theatrical film from Studio 4°C, which is a rare instance of a 3DCG animated film that he is NOT thoroughly repulsed by! It’s an adaptation of the 2004 light novel by the same name, which was previously also adapted quite faithfully into a really great manga. But much like the Tom Cruise/Emily Blunt movie [Live Die Repeat] Edge of Tomorrow, the story here isn’t quite the same as the book/manga. Clocking in at around 80 minutes of story time compared to the 105 minutes of the Hollywood film or the 230 pages of the light novel/17 chapters of the manga, this is a much more streamlined take on the concept, but it also features a visual aesthetic that is extremely different from all of the other versions made to date. The film is currently only legally available to watch as a VOD on Amazon Prime, but since GKIDS handled the theatrical release a Shout! Factory home video will be coming out later this year at some point. You can preorder it here, bearing in mind the current release date is a placeholder value.
So, for a variety of reasons that aren’t particularly interesting, I actually read the light novel of All You Need is Kill immediately after it was first published in English (as I did with all of the first set of Haikasoru releases), and I’ve now read that, read the manga, and seen this movie twice and Edge of Tomorrow a bunch of times. My somewhat contradictory review is that this is simultaneously a solid 7/10 adaptation and on my shortlist of favorite anime movies. It’s a beautiful, courageously designed and animated film that has kinda janky pacing and does a poor job of explaining itself in the third act.
Something you didn’t really harp on in the review that really jumped out at me was the originality and diversity of the character designs (you mentioned Tekkonkinkreet in the episode, but did you remember that Sudio 4°C did that as well as this? Pretty sure that a bunch of the digital compositing + 3DCG techniques that everybody uses now were pioneered in that movie), as well as the very strong character writing. Regardless of how you feel about the art style, the characters are very distinctive, and the voice work really does a lot to establish that this is a group of people who have been up against each other for a while, even if they don’t particularly like each other. For me, this pays off when you see them responding to Rita’s increasingly extreme behavior, and the sort of bewildered gratitude they offer her when she comes in like an avenging angel to save them from the Mimics. That did a lot to ground the movie for me.
I was a little surprised the you didn’t mention the increasingly prominent use of time shenanigans in recent high-concept anime, in particular the works of Nagatsuki Tappei, aka the author of Re:ZERO and co-author of Vivy -Fluorite Eyes’ Song-. Re:ZERO in particular does a good job of making clear how the trauma of being immortal the hard way (as well as being incapable of explaining why he is the way he is, even/especially when it really, really matters) breaks Subaru down. I think the movie does a pretty good job of striking a balance between Bill Murray’s weakly godlike entity in Groundhog Day and the trauma porn of Re:ZERO or GANTZ.
I saw this once on the (smallish) big screen and have now watched it once at home, and after that most recent viewing I just threw on Edge of Tomorrow because why not. My main thoughts were that Edge of Tomorrow is funnier and more faithful to the LN than All You Need Is Kill, but All You Need is Kill is weirder and more distinctive and I can relate to these iterations of Keiji and Rita far more. They’re kinda fucked up even before a giant alien tree starts killing them, and they’re just normal people doing their best under unimaginable stress.
I guess, to come back to my score at the top, the areas where the movie is weak (plausibility, pacing, internal coherence of the plot) are areas that don’t matter that much to me. So I can say that objectively, this is not the best movie ever made (arguably not even the best version of this story), but that I cherish it and would like to see more studios making movies like this and 100 Meters and fewer glorified clip shows.
A bit of context for the Nakamura-kun “controversy” that drove Syundei off the internet: apparently the antis were angry about something from the second manga volume, where it’s heavily implied that Nakamura’s love interest has a crush on his teacher. Nothing happens, and it’s from Nakamura’s POV (which can be paranoid and skew things).
This lead the antis to dig through the rest of Syundei’s works, which are much darker than the Nakamura-kun series. One that was available in English has a student/teacher pairing, and despite not being a romance (I’d call it more of a psychological drama), antis started accusing Syundei of horrible things. The author likes exploring darker themes in their stories, and some of those stories have teenage characters. A lot of their short stories, even the happier ones, are a bit fucked up in some way. Hell, their other manga released by Seven Seas, Total Eclipse of the Eternal Heart, was a psychological horror manga. But it didn’t get the publicity that Nakamura-kun got, so it’s forgotten about.
Obviously depiction isn’t endorsement, but antis don’t give a shit about that, unfortunately. They were angry that their “pure” BL series was created by someone who could also write what antis call “drawn CSAM.” So they drove Syundei off the internet.
It’s a very fucked up situation, and like the three of you said in the episode, it’s related to this weird pearl-clutching over sex in media, too.