Koutetsujou no Kabaneri Movie 3: Unato Kessen

I seem to be one of the only people who liked the original series but hate this movie. This movie is a distillation of everything bad in the series, with some added garbage for flavor.

The only reasons I can see that people like this more is that it's almost nonstop action and Mumei is now a useless waifu.

In the previous series Mumei was the power house, who basically carried everyone for most of the show. Sadly, she's now Ikoma's main love interest and as such she can no longer be good at anything. A proud tradition carried on from Orihime, Asuna, and many ... others. While she still manages to get some shots in, Ikoma must rescue her literally every battle, twice in one of them. She spends most of her time fawning over her attempt to confess her feelings to him and being rescued by him. A previous complaint people had about her was that she kept 'stealing the spotlight', so I guess that's an improvement for some people. I miss when she would punch people in the crotch.

The actual plot is almost a moment by moment repeat of the previous series. Ikoma is part kabane, and part human, so no one trusts him even though he's right! He gets thrown in solitary for 3 days to prove he's human even though he's not. If you guessed that he will also have to break out and prove he's right as the place descends into chaos under an attack, requiring him to save everyone, well then you've seen the original series! This is trash.

It's also full of characters who are basically rehashes of characters from the original whom couldn't be brought back to be minor antagonists because they're dead. The solution then, was to make nearly identical characters. However since the characters behavior is identical to the ones they're based off of, most of what they do doesn't make sense in the situation. You'd almost have to believe that they're literally trying to get killed. At least one of them disappears with no conclusion on what happened to him or his men. This is despite the fact you're repeatedly intended to care about these characters who have all of 10 minutes of screen time.

The series also finally goes the full way into making Kabaneri coordinators/newtypes. Before they certainly occupied the role of Coordinators from SEED in some respects. Ikoma was the ace fighter new to the situation, in a conflict where he was of the same breed as the enemy. A super human above everyone, who didn't trust him for it or wanted to use him. The train went from colony to colony seeking refuge and supplies on its way to the main base. Eventually the show even went as far as to turn Kabaneri into cyber newtypes who more or less piloted giant Pschcho Kabaneri. That not being enough, they can now also see into each other's hearts and minds.

The movie also works to finish pairing off every character it possibly can, once again prioritizing this over a meaningful epilogue. I mean, it's 6 months later and they're still planning to do the exact same thing that they were planning to do at the end of the series. What happened? Why haven't they? How did they get involved in this at all? Nothing is explained, no one cares, nothing matters.

There is no resolution to this series, the characters are all worse, the plot is worse, the events are worse. The art and animation are great, however it takes the superfluousness to the next level. Everyone spins all of the time. There's so much unnecessary spinning. Even bodies spin in air. It gets comically over the top, even in this franchise. Mumei spends fights twirling her weapon because she can more or less.

A lot straight up doesn't make sense too, or you're asked to really suspend your disbelief. Ikoma is shot like 5 times and it doesn't affect him, but 1 bullet from the same type of gun takes out his leg. It's nonsense.

If you liked the music, it's literally all the same music except for I think one new song. It's nice, but I don't care about that nearly as much as everyone else does. All around this just exemplifies why I hate OVA/Film sequels. This was an unnecessary, even harmful additional to the story, and I didn't enjoy watching it.