An Anime 'Remake' Of This 2014 Tom Cruise Sci-Fi Thriller Is Coming - Here's What You Need to Know

Hollywood has adapted numerous anime and manga into live-action over the years. The success of these projects varies significantly from great, like with Alita: Battle Angel (2019), to horrible, like Death Note (2017). Usually, these films flaunt their anime background, but that isn’t always the case. For example, did you know that Edge of Tomorrow (2014) is based on a Japanese light novel? More importantly, did you know that it’s being remade in 2026 as All You Need Is Kill (2026), with a much more overt anime aesthetic?

The Tom Cruise sci-fi action movie was a modest hit for its time. It made around $370 million and now lives on Prime Video, but it went to great lengths to hide its Japanese origins. So it would appear that All You Need Is Kill will be a more faithful adaptation of the light novel, right? Strangely enough, that isn’t exactly accurate. If you’re interested in learning what’s going on with the first big anime feature film of 2026, here’s what you need to know about All You Need Is Kill.

What Is ‘All You Need Is Kill’ About?

All You Need Is Kill is the story of a young woman named Rita. One day, an interdimensional alien flower spawns in Japan and lays its roots around the world. One year later, Rita volunteers to harvest elements of the plant to rebuild Japan, but it erupts and gives birth to aggressive and mindless monsters that brutally slaughter Rita and the nearby volunteers.

She then wakes up in her bed the morning of the attack and quickly realizes she’s in a time loop. With no idea how to break the loop, she continuously confronts the creatures and dies each time in the hope that she’ll discover a way to end it. Eventually, she meets a young engineer named Keiji who also experiences the time loops, and the two of them begin to develop exoskeletons to better help them fight the creatures and break the cycle of death they’re stuck in.

How Is ‘All You Need Is Kill’ Similar To ‘Edge Of Tomorrow’?

Edge of Tomorrow is structured pretty similarly to All You Need Is Kill. It lifts the core concept of two heroes stuck in a time loop, donning exoskeletons, and fighting aliens, but the perspective and execution is far different. 

Most notably, Edge of Tomorrow isn’t told from Rita’s perspective, but from Keiji’s analogue, Major William Cage. Cage, played by Tom Cruise, isn’t as meek as Keiji and is more of a cowardly soldier scorned by his commanders. Rita is still present, but instead of being a volunteer with little combat experience, she’s presented as a war hero who has defeated scores of the alien invaders, known here as Mimics. The plot is also significantly more complicated, with multiple supporting characters and a globe-spanning adventure to end the loop as opposed to All You Need Is Kill’s focus on its duet of protagonists and its single setting. 

Funnily enough, Edge of Tomorrow is actually more faithful to the light novel than the upcoming adaptation. Both it and the original book present themselves as sci-fi war stories, while All You Need Is Kill comes across more like a sci-fi fantasy. Edge of Tomorrow uses each loop and the trauma they experience as a metaphor for PTSD, which is more in line with the light novel than the romantic undertones of All You Need Is Kill’s doomed heroes.

Why Did ‘Edge Of Tomorrow’ Lose The Anime Aesthetics?

So if All You Need Is Kill is embracing its anime origins, and Edge of Tomorrow is closer to the source material, why does it hide them as fervently as it did? The answer, in part, comes from the time period during which the film was released. Anime was considered a niche subsection of pop culture in 2014 and only occasionally received mainstream recognition. Even then, when it did, it was usually for the wrong reasons. Dragonball Evolution (2009) was 20th Century Fox’s attempt to broaden the appeal of Dragon Ball Z (1989) to Westerners, but it became a laughing stock both commercially and critically.

In general, anime films, or live-action films inspired by anime, were viewed as risky prospects, which is probably why Edge of Tomorrow presented itself more as a gritty sci-fi action movie. When Tom Cruise was cast, the script changed to better acclimate the story to his particular set of skills, which meant the eccentricities of the manga diminished. Now, anime is much more widely accepted, and with less of a risk due to its smaller budget and release, All You Need Is Kill can fully immerse itself in the iconography that Edge of Tomorrow was so scared to approach.

Should You Watch ‘All You Need Is Kill’?

If you want a psychedelic action movie with bonkers animation, All You Need Is Kill certainly is that. The movie does an admirable job of making its world vivid and memorable. Like Heavenly Delusion (2023), it trusts that audiences will be able to piece together what’s going on in this strange, dystopian sci-fi world and respects their intelligence in the process.

It can be an assault on the senses with its frenetic visuals and character designs reminiscent of Tekkonkinkreet (2006), but they help to keep your attention in ways that few anime can. All You Need Is Kill balances action and drama well over the course of its 85-minute runtime, which helps make the climax an effective fever dream of emotional angst and heartbreak. It’s chaotic