I'll start off my thoughts with, if you have a theater near you showing the movie today... GO! You will not regret your decision. Alright now to my thoughts.
The animation is absolutely GORGEOUS! Their use of colored lines on characters rather than the standard black is stunning to watch both in and out of motion. The CG they used was fantastic, I actually think some of the fight scenes where it was used benefitted from it rather than having it take away as CG tends to. Overall this film at the very least is eye candy and an experience to... Well... Experience!
Secondly, the characters. The main cast consists of 5 or 6 characters and they are all interesting, even if one of them in particular lacks the depth of the others. They're still a great character. Galo, the main protagonist is like Kamina from Gurren Lagann (because of course he is, thank you Trigger for giving us just a bit more time with him) but just crank him up past his standard 11 and hit a 12. He's so much fun to watch on screen and in the English dub I watched, he was voiced by the same VA as Naofumi from Shield Hero and his voice really is wonderful. Then there's Lio, the main antagonist. He has a lot of depth despite seeming very generic at the beginning. Are the characters in this movie predictable? No doubt. Does it suffer for that fact? Not one bit in my opinion.
Alright third thing is I want to talk about the audio, that being the voice acting and the sound track. First of the voice acting. The cast was all INCREDIBLE in terms of their VA work in the english dub. Standout performances for Galo (as mentioned before), Lio (voice by Johnny Yong Bosch aka Lelouch), Vulcan (A side antagonist but he was super fun, the voice really made you hate him and you were supposed to!) and also Gov Kray was fantastic as well even if I don't know his VA off the top of my head. Now with the stellar VA work out of the way ONTO THE MUSIC! The music absolutely sells this movie! The mood genuinely is portrayed 70% through the music, the animation style is incredibly expressive itself but the music just puts this whole movie to top tier. I loved every track, the transitions were ON POINT on every scene, and I've been listening to the OST since I watched it on Tuesday. The whole movie is incredibly hype inducing and I literally wanted to get up and clap at certain points. I definitely whooped a few times.
This entire movie was a love letter to all Studio Trigger fans. From the subtle "Matoi" reference to the random drill they bring out of nowhere. It is still a stellar movie if you haven't seen anything trigger but it becomes all the better when you get all the references and nods to their previous work. This movie has made a mark on me and I truly am a Trigger fan through and through after watching it. It made me feel like a kid again watching my Saturday morning cartoons. But for 2 hours straight. And the commentary from the studio before and after the movie really drove home how much love and effort was put into the making of this fantastic product.
