I said there would be spoilers, so I'm not going to bother with the tag.
Where I'm coming from: I don't keep track of the manga nor have I've seen the TV-series. I've seen the first movie a few years ago, and I really liked it.
This sequel though....I didn't like all that much. The art was awesome, specifically the settings. Prettiest use of CG in anime I'd say. Even though they did go a bit overboard on the CG scenes -- it was still a visual treat. The world seemed completely different from the first movie too. The original had a real neo-tokyo look going for it, while this one seemed more dark and down to earth (at least for the majority of the film). Like the movie "Se7en" but in the future.
Everything else though was a bit weak IMO. The story has 2 parts to it. The overall plot, and the underlying questions of a world mixed with humans and machines. The story's plotline isn't very complex. Evil corporation kidnapping little girls to put their souls into sexbots to make them more human. The plot is pretty cut and dry (at least for anime). The meat of the story however deals with the aspects of humans, and souls. Can robots have souls? What is a soul? etc etc. However, everything about the aspects of robots/souls/etc were pretty much explored in the first movie. This sequel basically repeats the same message, leaving you only interested in the plot -- which moves a long at a snail's pace. It certainly doesn't help that the characters seem to quote from books in almost every sentence.
And because of this, the sequel lacks everything that the first film had. There were no challenging questions to be explored, the action scenes were more mundane and sporatic, and the overall plot was weak compared to the first film.
Go see it for the visuals alone.
Where I'm coming from: I don't keep track of the manga nor have I've seen the TV-series. I've seen the first movie a few years ago, and I really liked it.
This sequel though....I didn't like all that much. The art was awesome, specifically the settings. Prettiest use of CG in anime I'd say. Even though they did go a bit overboard on the CG scenes -- it was still a visual treat. The world seemed completely different from the first movie too. The original had a real neo-tokyo look going for it, while this one seemed more dark and down to earth (at least for the majority of the film). Like the movie "Se7en" but in the future.
Everything else though was a bit weak IMO. The story has 2 parts to it. The overall plot, and the underlying questions of a world mixed with humans and machines. The story's plotline isn't very complex. Evil corporation kidnapping little girls to put their souls into sexbots to make them more human. The plot is pretty cut and dry (at least for anime). The meat of the story however deals with the aspects of humans, and souls. Can robots have souls? What is a soul? etc etc. However, everything about the aspects of robots/souls/etc were pretty much explored in the first movie. This sequel basically repeats the same message, leaving you only interested in the plot -- which moves a long at a snail's pace. It certainly doesn't help that the characters seem to quote from books in almost every sentence.
And because of this, the sequel lacks everything that the first film had. There were no challenging questions to be explored, the action scenes were more mundane and sporatic, and the overall plot was weak compared to the first film.
Go see it for the visuals alone.