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Review: All You Need Is Kill

All You Need Is Kill All You Need Is Kill by Ryosuke Takeuchi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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Series Review:
That was an experience. Why have I heard LITERALLY NO ONE EVER talk about this manga? It was perfect. I can't think of a single thing that could have possibly made All You Need is Kill any better. I'm not even joking. The art, the pacing and development of the story, the slow but definite retrograde in the main characters' psyche, the way the relationship between the two leads was developed in the most succulent way possible. A masterpiece.

This really doesn't feel like a young adult series. It feels incredibly mature, and is quite gory, but it was serialized in a magazine intended for young boys. I've read a lot of comics from this magazine and can easily say this blasts all of them out of the water. The closest series would probably be Death Note, which makes sense because that's another really serious, mature, and intense manga that also happens to share the same illustrator.

I found out about this manga in the most random way. I was researching Shonen Jump (the magazine that this manga was originally serialized in), and while I was looking at the issues on Amazon I noticed that they have a free e-book that has the first chapters of all their big series like One Piece, Naruto, Food Wars, Bleach, and this weirdly named series that I had strangely never heard of before: All You Need is Kill. I consider myself relatively well versed in most things Shonen Jump and shonen genre in general, so this was very perplexing for me. Needless to say, I started reading the first chapter.

The first chapter kills it. It's 70 pages (a gigantic number, even for first chapters) of intensity, revelation, brutality, hype, and absolutely breathtaking art, just like the entire rest of the manga. Anyone can go and read the first chapter FOR FREE right now, and I guarantee you'll be sold on this series like I was. [USA Link], [Canada Link].

When you do eventually buy the whole thing, I strongly recommend getting the e-book. This is because reading this in paperback format provided the one fault I can give this book. There are certain parts in the manga that end up losing nearly any and all tension that would otherwise be very present because I could see that there was still so many pages left so I knew it couldn't end there. That was a bit of a buzzkill, but it's something that comes with the format of the book and nothing that I could possibly fault the author for.

I've touched on literally none of the actual plot, and tried to be generally vague on the specifics of this manga while still making sure to instil what makes me feel so enthusiastic about this series. This is a manga I strongly recommend. Though since it does feel more mature, I agree with the 16+ age rating, and if you're not keen on seeing lots of violence, gore, and death, maybe give this one a pass. If you're unsure, like I said, give the first chapter a go and see if it's to your fancy. If it is, then the rest of the manga will be too.

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