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Had to write a review, of course, SPOILERS D:

The movie, in a nutshell, attempts to utilise all its assets to convey one central philosophy - the conflict between selfish individualism and "harmonious" collectivism, the importance of the former to distinguish oneself as an unique identity and the latter for collective betterment. Sounds familiar? Yes! The shtick of literally every existential film ever made! Psst Ghost in the Shell?

Before that, let's talk about what's unsurprising about the film - the animation is slick, the music sufficient in establishing atmosphere, and the characters passable. HOWEVER, after watching nothing sticks, and certainly doesn't have the same impact as ... say GitS, why? Because like the seemingly glossy, cohesive society the movie presents, the film itself quickly succumbs and unravels at the slightest touch - the music perhaps comparatively fared the best, successfully accompanying the clinical, sterile atmosphere, but it daren't go further - the gritty environment of Old Bagdad was given the same by-the-number treatment as perfectionist urban Japan. There is no variance, there's no contrast, virtually no distinguishable change, literally run-of-the-mill in the worst sense of the phrase, which contributed a great deal to the monotonous mood that induced so much boredom in other reviewers.

he animation, though seemingly marrying 2D and 3D gracefully (you can still easily tell apart), still feels detached from the rest of the movie - WHY did the camera have to swell around the restaurant? Or around the monolithic medical facility in Bagdad, or around the urbanscape of Japan? As a tool to establish the scale of their dominance and uniformity, okay, but surprisingly repeating shots of the same slow-paced wide-angle shots don't invite much excitement! "But Lord of the Rings showed a lot of panning shots or huge monuments too!" True, but they had a COMPARISON - all shots showed the characters engaging with either the New Zealand wilderness or from the whole of Minas Tirith closing in behind Gandalf riding along its inner streets! In Harmony, the animation is either unnecessary filler to create action where there is none (swivelling around unmoving dialogue in the restaurant), thereby detaching animation from the characters, or doesn't show enough engagement between the characters and the wasted landscape shots - what's the point of empty shots around sunflower fields or reflecting lake? Perhaps to establish atmosphere? No, there is no connection between what is SPOKEN and what is SHOWN. The gravitas of the ensuing carnage in Japan is completely lost and glossed over like a passing mist, not registering any response from the protagonist, therefore not connecting to the audience. And unnecessarily long shots are set aside for empty landscapes that address nothing, solves nothing, and serves nothing except to establish a pseudo art-housey mood - as if to say "ohhh look we can FEELLLL", but feel for WHAT?!

And here comes the biggest problem - characters - we have already established there is no connection to the setting and the ants that supposedly inhabit it, so what about the protagonist? Tuan, by design, is the every"woman", a supposed blank canvas onto which the audience projects him/herself. BUT, we're not allowed to see and judge for ourselves this world, instead, we get it all via motionless exposition whilst distracted by unnecessary camera movement in a still situation that does nothing than to promote the 3D software. As others have said, it feels like an endless dialogue tree in a Bioware game. At the very, VERY least you might say it's consistent - the character is uninvested in her world, so by association neither are we.

The biggest, and central stick, is not the protagonist, but rather Miach, the driver of everything in the story. The little character development there is were all invested on her - the suspense of her motivation being the only thing that sustained me through the entire film, culminating in a tragic, but not altogether unsurprising reveal of her past and reasons. It rightly squeezed some sympathy out, if only because of the heaviness of her past's subject itself.

Which is why the end is so, DISORIENTING - for the entire runtime we were made to believe Miach's ultimatum was to unleash terror equivalent to that of her traumatic experience, only to be whacked on the head and be told the endgame was not the unleashing of survivalistic id to destroy collective harmony, but rather an UPGRADE of said colletive harmony, to further ENHANCE the trapped feeling she so hated while in Japan?! If you want that as your end, fine, but show us WHY, give us little threads to tug on throughout the film to lead up to this twist! If there's no correlation, there's no sense or rationale behind it! Frodo took the ring because it was hinted at, not because of a last minute 180 turnover!

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Bottom line, everything in the movie feels adequate enough, but on closer inspection nothing connects, between the story, characters, setting, or the audience. The philosophical conundrum turned out to be nothing at all, as the antagonist cancelled all progression to support what she originally opposed. The philosophy turned on itself, so no conflict ever happened or was resolved, the characters were neglected for vacuous shots of literally nothingness in promotion of nothingness, disconnected to the story and the characters. It held such promises as shows like GITS proved just one philosophical conflict was an endless pit of possibilities, but in this case, it all, literally built up to nothing.

p.s. knowing this is an adaptation of a novel, I'm sure the novel itself will answer and weave the various disparaging segments e.g. why was Miach killed in the end? The anime certainly gave no hint or answer, but I'm sure the book will - so like the Harry Potter movies, I suggest reading the book and just use the anime as a glossy picture reference, because unlike the Lord of the Rings movies, this film doesn't seem to stand on its own without the wider context of its source material.