All You Need Is Kill

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
"Is it true the green tea they serve in Japan at the end of your meal comes free?"
—Rita "Valkyrie" Vrataki, aka "The Full Metal Bitch"

There's one thing worse than dying. It's coming back to do it again and again. When the alien Mimics invade, Keiji Kiriya is just one of many raw recruits shoved into a suit of battle armor and sent out to kill. Keiji dies on the battlefield, only to find himself reborn each morning to fight and die again and again. On the 158th iteration though, he sees something different, something out of place: the female soldier known as the Bitch of War. Is the Bitch the key to Keiji's escape, or to his final death?

All You Need Is Kill is a 2004 Japanese novel by Hiroshi Sakurazaka that deals with Keiji's Groundhog Day Loop and his desperate efforts to break the cycle.

A film adaptation from director Doug Liman starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt, titled Edge of Tomorrow, was released on May 30, 2014.

Tropes used in All You Need Is Kill include:
  • Attack! Attack! Attack!: The Mimics seem to have a single battle strategy. Justified in that the "looping" Mimics use the same method Keiji does to re-do the battle if they lose. Unless they are killed in a specific manner, anyway.
  • Awesome Yet Practical: Rita (and later Keiji) realize that to single-handedly fight off an entire army of Mimics, you need a weapon that doesn't run out of ammo. Hence the huge axes they use to tear through the Mimic hordes when everyone else is using guns and striking from a distance. Also crosses over into Awesome but Impractical because, as Shasta soberly points out, improper handling of an axe swing's powerful inertia can easily lead to a broken spine or even death. It's only the consequence-free nature of the time loop that allows Rita and Keiji to perfect their own technique.
  • Big Bra to Fill: Inverted. Rita is flat-chested but the actress who plays her in the Hollywood movie based on her life is far more glamorous and curvy. When Rita is presented with a Japanese figurine modeled after herself, she has to be told that it's supposed to be her because of the utter lack of resemblance.
  • Blood Knight: In their introductory meeting, Rita told Shasta that she was glad she lived in a world full of war. Rita herself admits she's skilled as a great warrior but does have some inner doubts about whether becoming a warrior would have been her own choice of destiny.
  • But Not Too Foreign: Sergeant Ferrell, a Japanese-Brazilian, immigrated to Japan after his family farm was destroyed by the Mimics.
    • One could say that the casting of The Movie is going to be this in spades.
  • Crippling Overspecialization: Keiji feels that this is the Mimic's one weakness, as their reliance on looking into the future, and acting solely on that foresight means that humanity can learn faster than they can, and that humans can specialize in other ways (as mechanics, or soldiers, or inventors, etc.) that Mimics can't with their shiny hammer.
  • Friend or Foe: Result of heroes Roaring Rampage of Revenge
  • Groundhog Day Loop: Keiji and Rita (but not in Keiji's loop) are stuck repeating the same 30 hours.
  • Innocent Aliens: Ruthlessly subverted. The aliens decide to ecoform the Earth without checking to see if it's inhabited by intelligent life, because sending a radio signal and waiting 80 years for a reply would take too long. Worse, even if the Earth is inhabited by intelligent life, the aliens decide that they should ecoform the planet anyway, reasoning that civilization is always built on the sacrifice of the natural world, so xenocide is no big deal.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: Minor example occurs after Keiji sees results of his rampage
  • One-Man Army: Played straight, deconstructed, and discussed. Both Rita and Keiji are clearly One Man Armies, and it's stated that without Rita humanity would have lost the war years ago, but they're not so powerful as to be able to save all their teammates, a failing which rips them up inside. Some of Keiji's army friends think that Rita is just a propaganda creation meant to raise morale and that she doesn't actually exist because nobody could possibly be that good. After Keiji breaks out of his loop, his incredible battlefield prowess causes his old teammates to regard him warily.
  • Powered Armor: Called "Jackets" herein.
  • Roaring Rampage of Revenge: After he's forced to kill Rita to break the loop, Keiji goes into such a rampage that he barely remembers the resulting fight, in which he kills more Mimics than all of Rita's kills combined.
  • Save Scumming: The author's inspiration for the novel. It's the source of Keiji's and Rita's advanced combat skill.
    • Rita was actually skilled before her looping began, but it was the looping that enabled her to figure out how to finish off a Mimic troop.
  • Starfish Aliens: The Mimics landed in the ocean, and copied what they found there (Starfish), which they now have much more in common with them than humans. There is little mention of the real aliens though, other than that they require a much different biosphere than us.
  • Stay in the Kitchen: Partly subverted. Rita is by far the greatest fighter the Earth has at its disposal, but among Keiji's Japanese squad there are no women. Men are also referenced as making up the majority of Jacket users worldwide.
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