The writing is quite bad in a number of places. It's predictable, too. But honestly, the character interactions were the more compelling aspect, so I didn't mind.
I watched this after watching the first film and some of the first animated series, so I was familiar with the characters and had already seen versions of scenes included in the story. One of the scenes I saw before starting this was when Reinhard and Kircheis meet for the first time in the first anime, so it was quite fascinating to see a more recent version of the same scene. Although there honestly are animation updates that are pretty neat (the development of our understanding of how technology would advance, for instance, and how to represent that on screen), the art isn't that good in a number of places - faces in particular sometimes melt in odd ways - but the art style was by and large fine? The biggest issue I took with the changed art was the redesign of Iserlohn to just outright look like the Death Star, rather than the neat liquid metal sphere it is in the anime and other films. But outside that, the art emphasized Kircheis' gay panic a lot more than the series did, and it gave people seatbelts in the ships, so I think it's doing fine on the whole.
Yes, it was weird how many characters had odd face changes in this. I read that this is similar to the manga style, which might be part of the issue. And for better or worse, most of the story focuses on Reinhard and Kircheis anyway, so at least you don't have to be bothered too much by how strangely different Yang Wenli and Dusty look here.
The sound wasn't all that remarkable. I've played in orchestras for most of my life, so yes, I appreciate the neat usage of famous pieces in the anime series. But it wasn't exactly a compelling draw for me, so its absence here wasn't that big of a deal.
The film is basically "Reinhard can't keep his hands off Kircheis", and it's lovely. If you wanted a story where that happened, and where you see the depth of Kircheis' love of Reinhard (and vice versa) on display, this is for you. People have commented this is like fanfiction, and as usual, I don't think that's a criticism, at least in my book. It IS like fanfiction, and it's a nice treat for people who are fine with that. I had fun, I laughed. Maybe if you're a diehard fan of the series this really sucks, but if you just like shippy stuff, platonic or otherwise, this is great.
