All You Need Is Kill / Edge of Tomorrow

All You Need Is Kill:

Original story: Hiroshi Sakurazaka

Illustrated screenplay: Ryosuke Takeuchi

Character design: yoshitoshi ABe

Art: Takeshi Obata

Edge of Tomorrow: 

A film adaptation from director Doug Liman 

Starring Tom Cruise,Emily Blunt

1h 54 min

Note: I tried writing this spoiler free, but I can't promise that minor spoiler wouldn't appear. Sorry. Also, I haven't had a chance to read the novel that the manga originated from, therefore I can only judge the movie based on my experience of the manga. I've read the Finnish edition of the manga and I'm writing this in English, so most likely some of the terms I use will differ from any official English translation.

Summary of AYNIK:
The united armies of mankind (United Defense Force) are at war against alien lifeforms known as mimics. One day, a Japanese rookie soldier named Keiji Kiriya dies during a battle. However, instead of staying dead, Kiriya wakes up, alive and well, in his bed at the military base and brushes off his violent death as a wacky dream. But then he dies again, and before too long, Kiriya realizes that he is re-living the day before the battle in an endless loop while the people around him are unaware of this. Kiriya tries to escape his death on the battlefield by running away from the military base, but is killed. He wakes up in his bed and shortly after, commits suicide. All his attempts are futile, he just keeps waking up on the day before the battle. Kiriya comes to the conclusion that he has to survive the battle, in hopes to break out of the loop. So he spends the same day in and out training and preparing himself for the fight ahead of him. With every battle ending in his death, Kiriya's skills improve and he survives for longer periods of time. During his 158th time on the battlefield, he comes face to face with Rita Vrataski, an American soldier who is hailed to be the best mimic killer in the world. It turns out that Rita is also caught in the same timeloop as Kiriya, and so the two decide to work together in order to break out of the loop and save mankind from the mimics.

teethed balls of death vs. starfish spaghetti monsters

Summary of EoT:
Well, we have the invading alien army. We have a character who wakes up the day earlier whenever he dies, and there's a woman named Rita Vrataski. Those three facts remain intact from the original version, although some alterations have been made on them. The story line is basically the same, although the setting of the big battle is moved from Japan to central Europe. The biggest changes are the explanation on how the time loop, created by the mimics, works and also the main character. They abandon the role of the private Keiji Kiriya in favor for Major William Cage, US Army Media Relations, played by Tom Cruise. The character of Cage in the beginning of the movie is more like a recruiter and not an actual soldier. Cage gets himself sent out in the battle as a punishment of insubordination, despite having no training on how to use the military mobile suit in combat. It takes Cage a few deaths as well to realize something isn't right. Before too long, Cage meets up with Rita and they start working together to rid the world of the mimics.

As with any story that includes some aspect of time travel, it can be confusing at times. Although, the movie and the manga don't play by the same rules on how the time loop works, I felt that the manga did a better job explaining its version of the rules while the movie's was altogether more confusing and to top it off, the ending threw all the rules out the window in favor for a very dislikable, cliché Hollywood ending.

I think there is a problem with the main character in both versions. Kiriya looks like a black haired Light Yagami, he stands out too much in the wrong way. I don't remember Kiriya's age being mentioned in the manga, but he looks way too young compared to the other soldiers appearing as support/background characters in the comic. The movie doesn't do much better, as Tom Cruise is too old for the role. It's sad when the looks of the side characters are much more believable in the story, making the main character feel out of place. Still, I will say that Tom Cruise does a good job acting in this, transcending from this smug and arrogant PR person, into a scared rookie and then into an expert soldier.

However, in the manga, there's something that bugs me even more than the main characters looks, mainly the women. There are basically only three females included in the story, our second main character Rita the badass soldier, a slutty cook and a mechanic. All of them are drawn way too young and cute in a very stereotypical manga way, in order for me to take them seriously. Since the manga is only two volumes long, I understand that the side characters won't be developed very well, but the women, except for Rita, seem to be unaffected about the destruction of humanity around them and they plain and simple, don't fit very well in the world the manga is trying to create. To be fair, the movie doesn't really do any better with its representation of women either. A little better, but not much.

Because of the restrictions of the story's length the storytelling has to move forward at a fast pace and some corners had to be cut in the development of the world these characters live in. The manga paints a really sad picture of the state of the army. They are sending soldiers to fight overwhelming enemies with ineffective weapons! Machine guns, rocket launchers and other explosives are practically ineffective against the mimics. The only weapon in the army's arsenal that may critically injure a Mimic is a pile driver-like weapon that fire lances. The downside is, that the weapon has an ammo limit of 20 and in order to fatally wound a mimic, a soldier would have to be standing right next to one of the deadly creatures. The reason Kiriya and Rita survive is because they abandon the army's choice of weapons and instead they use custom made battle-axes (although there are some inconsistencies in there, in one of Rita's flashbacks we see her using a machine gun against the mimics and it seems to do the job just fine).
The movie fancies machine guns, grenades and mines as the army's weapons which aren't quite imaginative when compared to the manga. Rita is shown to wield a big sword a few times, but not in the same extent like her ax master manga counterpart.

 

I have to say that the film's version of the armored battle suits looks just ridiculous. They look so heavy and slow, it's no wonder the mimics are kicking humanity's ass. It appears like the battle suits were designed only to help the soldier carry the heavy weapons mounted on the suit rather than to protect the individual inside the suit from injury. Granted, the suits didn't stop anybody from dying in the manga, but at least it looked like it could protect its carriers from some damage. The EoT's version leaves their operators as open targets. Right now, if I had to choose which version's suits looks better I'd go with the suits that appeared in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra)

Couldn't find a good screenshot from the G.I. movie. Picture from here. 

The manga does not shy away from showing off the mutilation of Kiriya, which is very fitting for a story that makes the death of its main character a major plot point. The only time we get to "enjoy" watching Tom Cruise's Cage's gruesome death is the first time he dies, otherwise he usually meets his end off screen or in a generic explosion. The movie could have been slightly better if they wouldn't have been so afraid to amp up some gore. All the deaths in the movie are so ineffective because we are never shown anything. EoT is essentially a sci-fi war movie and we barely get to see any blood! How about showing us a few torn up limbs here and there or an aftermath of an explosion? Anything!

The way the character of Rita Vrataski was handled in the film left something to be desired. The manga has three chapters dedicated to Rita's backstory while in the movie pretty much ignores Rita's past. Manga Rita seems more humane, while movie Rita is portrayed to be just a tough bitch. Then the movie specifically makes a point on how Rita doesn't like to be called a bitch at the same time they make her act like one. A good example to demonstrate the differences between the two Ritas is in one short scene that can be found in both versions. In the movie, Cage is fatally injured and Rita walks up to him, removes the battery from his mobile suit and walks away, leaving him to die. While in the manga, Rita tells Kiriya that she will wait by his side until he dies, and then she will take the battery from his suit. (What we're missing here is a third Rita, that would first put Kiriya/Cage out of his misery and then take the damn battery....) In the manga, Kiriya looks up to Rita and he becomes her equal through his own efforts, but the movie manages to turn things around that Cage, who was trained by Rita, has to save Rita from dying (making her into a "damsel in distress" while she's being a bitch about it).

As a standalone movie, and if you can avoid comparing it to its source material, Edge of Tomorrow is a decent film, and unintentionally funny at times. I'd probably recommend you watch the movie before reading any of its source material, that way the movie won't be as disappointing and possibly more enjoyable. Warning: the song playing over the ending credits is just atrocious and totally kills the mood of the film, even if the ending itself is already horrible. In conclusion, despite my whining over some stuff, the manga is the superior version out of the two. Especially the ending.