Much better than expected; the fanservice is more limited than feared, the end sequence with the mecha battle is one of the funner mecha battles I've seen in a while, and it's hard to not like a story in which the 'evil AI' wins and the film's critique of a transhumanist society actually makes sense and is valid (rather than being one of the endlessly predictable tropes along the lines of "Caveman Science Fiction" http://dresdencodak.com/2009/09/22/caveman-science-fiction/ ). And it's not at all a downer like one might expect from a project involving Urobuchi Gen, rather it's a fairly uplifting classic SF space tale which reminded be a bit of _Wings of Honneamise_ and more recently, _Gravity_ or _The Martian_.
It also ties into the Fermi Paradox in an interesting way. Deva government's actions makes sense in terms of control: limiting resources limits the number of free agents and potential random events, as does letting Earth continue to disintegrate. This resource scarcity, controlled by an apparently absolutely totalitarian government, produces predictably pernicious social dynamics and destroys Deva's claims to superiority in any way but brute force.
Resource scarcity also predictably explains why Frontier Setter is an existential threat and they cannot simply peacefully negotiate a deal like 'starship supplies in exchange for a full security audit of the Deva computer security' - since, as an autonomous AI which can indefinitely reproduce itself, it will spread exponentially through the galaxy within a million years, gaining resources beyond calculation, not to mention possible encounters with aliens (which might lead to backlash onto the origin, Earth). Logically, to maintain its security, Deva must either destroy Frontier Setter and also ensure that no such escape is possible ever again, or embark on its own exploration/colonization program. From this perspective, _Expelled from Paradise_ is offering a refutation of possibly the most common 'explanation' for the Fermi paradox: many alien civilizations exist, but all of them are, independently, too lazy/oppressive/uninterested in space colonization. Unfortunately, this explanation is totally innumerate and implausible: it requires only one expansionist entity, not necessarily even a plurality of a particular civilization (possibly even a single idiosyncratic AI, depending on how intelligent it is and how many resources it can accumulate), to kick off colonization, and if it's implausible that more than a single-digit number of civilizations would decide this, it's even more implausible that this failure to colonize would be successfully maintained over possibly millions of years (no biological or computer system has ever had that kind of track record!).
The ending is a bit unconvincing, since Dingo's political/resource concern is addressed by colonization (they can create many Devas in neighboring solar systems) and there's no particular reason for Angela to choose to be trapped on one planet rather than have the opportunity to explore many (especially since she would maintain her high-tech upload lifestyle in between solar systems).
Flawed elements here would include the CGI (good overall but what we see the most of is hair, particularly Angela's, which looks atrocious; it doesn't have to be _Frozen_ or _Brave_ levels of hair rendering but it should at least not look 'chunky' and much worse than the rest of the animation), an unfortunate reliance on some anime tropes (Angela's appearance/character-design is standard somewhat-loli twin-tail tsundere/princess fanservice & archetype, which while not nearly as excessive as I feared from the promotional materials, still unfortunately will limit its appeal outside the usual anime demographics, and does a disservice to the character and also to Kugumiya Rie, who presumably is talented enough to voice a less common archetype), and a general absence of world-building (while often gorgeous, surely the *whole planet* can't be empty desert, deserted city ruins, and one town?). The music is decent but unlike some of the other reviewers, the core song didn't work for me.
