Review: Kill Bill: Yuki’s Revenge: (Fortnite Exclusive)

Overview

This newly released animated short brings a long-lost chapter of the Kill Bill movie franchise to life, adapting the unfilmed showdown between The Bride and Gogo Yubari’s sister, Yuki.

Our Take

This new animated short tied to Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill movie franchise revisits the long-lost Yuki Yubari chapter from Tarantino’s original script, finally realizing the abandoned confrontation between The Bride and Gogo’s equally unhinged sister through an unexpected collaboration with Epic Games that uses Unreal Engine and Fortnite assets to blend stylized action, bold color, and a modern visual energy reminiscent of the Spider-Verse animated films and K-Pop Demon Hunters with Uma Thurman returning via voice and motion-capture, Zoë Bell handling the stunt choreography, Yuki being voiced by Miyu Ishidate Roberts, and Tarantino himself voicing Bill who does a decent David Carradine impression. The short becomes a strange yet compelling mix of authenticity and reinvention that frames Yuki’s pursuit with kinetic flair. 

In the original script, Yuki was originally supposed to be played by Kô Shibasaki (Mitsuko from the Japanese gorefest cult classic “Battle Royale”), but instead, I guess it was smart for them to re-purpose Chiaki Kuriyama’s face (who was also in Battle Royale) to emphasize Yuki resembling Gogo. But despite this, the short leans fully into Yuki’s chaotic perspective, combining fast-paced visual storytelling, anime-inflected power-up sequences, and bursts of exaggerated 2D effects with a Spider-Verse-style kinetic look, all while music choices like BABYMETAL’s “Gimme Chocolate!!” and The Ramones’ “Blitzkrieg Bop” heighten the wild momentum of her clash with The Bride; yet despite the lively action and faithfulness to the tone of the lost script, However Fortnite’s limitations keep me from giving this a higher rating such as glowing neon blue pixels for blood, or the Hollywood sign replaced with “BattleWood,” and background figures like armed banana people and fish-headed pedestrians occasionally break the immersion even as the chaotic action sequences remain intact.

Overall, as somebody who actually read the original script years ago and memorized this scene during my early 20’s, this 10 minutes and 26 second short lands far better than I could’ve expected, delivering a surprisingly faithful and stylish take on a once-lost Tarantino moment while doubling as an unconventional yet fitting appetizer for The Whole Bloody Affair’s upcoming theatrical screenings; with early attendees receiving a code for Gogo’s in-game skin and Fortnite serving as the unexpected gateway to this long-buried chapter, “Yuki’s Revenge” becomes both a curious cross-media milestone and essential viewing for anyone who’s followed Tarantino’s work closely enough to know this scene was never supposed to see the light of day.