Keiji is soldier in war against the Mimics, deadly aliens that have managed to gain control over the large part of Earth. During his first fight against Mimics Keiji ends up in time loop - every time he gets killed this very day starts over again and again .... and again.

After several iterations Keiji figures out that he needs to use this time loop in most productive way - making himself more proficient in combat. Otherwise he will just go crazy with each iteration. And so he starts to learn from his sergeant and slowly accumulating tactical knowledge for fighting against the Mimics.

As story slowly moves on Keiji finds out that he is not the only one caught in the loop - mysterious girl fighting as part of US forces seems to recognize him.

Art is good, although all characters seem to be way too lanky. At moments action scenes are bit confusing - too many things going on - but being drawn in very clear way one can discern top from bottom.

Highly recommended to fans of action adventure stories. ( )

Since watching the movie was what made me want to read this in the first place, I can't help but compare the two.
While the movie did do some whitewashing what with Keiji's character being made into a white Tom Cruise (bleh), and despite the movie actually having fewer female characters, the movie felt much more feminist to me than the manga. The two female characters in the manga other than Rita were the girl who works in the cafeteria, whose purpose was to appear cheesecake-y, and the girl who designed Rita's armour who was described to us as really smart, and was also a cute-girl archetype (one with glasses and braids). Rita herself is I guess not exactly an example of waif-fu, if you assume that the suits provide much of the power so anyone could use it for strength given enough training and technique, but she still seemed like a waify-archetype. Not that Emily Blunt isn't tiny, but maybe I just wasn't into the archetype of the little girl being an epic warrior. I might have been more ok with it had the other lady characters been less cliche.
Also I found it hard to follow a lot of the action scenes because of the art. I haven't read enough manga to know if it's because this was poorly drawn or if I'm just bad at reading manga! The story seemed to go by pretty quick as well - I wasn't really invested in the ending.

I'll probably read the novella that both this and the movie were based on to see how different it is. Right now, I'm on the side of the movie! ( )

So I just finished watching the movie and was thrilled enough to read the book it was based on, but amazingly enough, it's also a manga! Woo! So I read the manga and it's cool and streamlined and has a fancy twist ending that didn't show in the movie but pretty much everything else of the broad strokes was kosher. Not a bad manga at all, quite decent and it felt like a good one-shot.

In the first volume, you get "He Said". In the second, you get "She Said. Onto the next volume! ( )

I loved the story, but I loved the film so that was a given. Some of the characters felt very "stock trope", but with stories like this, the main protagonist is the only characterisation that matters anyway. Keiji's journey from nervous rookie to battle hardened veteran was well done, although it would have been nice to see the other characters reaction to his (to them) sudden change.

I'm not really a huge fan of manga art, but the art in this book was wonderfully done, although some panels still had that "too chaotic" feel I often get from manga. ( )