Watching this right after watching the 00 show, it's obvious that the show wasn't written with the intention of making this movie. The show was extremely tightly written with no loose ends, so this movie has to awkwardly contrive a plot just to exist. The comparison is pretty jarring and makes the film seem like more of an afterthought.
The music and visuals are to the same standard as the show, but with a little bit of additional quality thanks to it being a film. The music is now done by a real orchestra instead of the show's midi orchestra, but it still feels consistent with the music in the show and the change feels pretty subtle. The animation looks about the same with mildly higher animation quality and detail, I really like how the film is consistent with the show in these aspects.
The story actually has some really interesting aspects to it, I like the idea of what it goes for and some of its execution is fantastic, but it's marred by poor pacing. The film has a pretty dull start, they try to capture the mystery of the alien species, but the way they set it up is really goofy and uninteresting. The mystery of it all improves when you know more and can see how fundamentally different the aliens are, funny how knowing more about them made them more mysterious. They spend too much time at the start of the film confusing the viewer instead of pushing the plot forwards. They introduce a new character who does nothing and then leaves the film halfway through, which was a waste of my time and the film staff's time for seemingly no reason at all. They show a bit of the world after the events of the show and how it changed, which was nice and they didn't dedicate too much time into showing this aspect off, it actually felt natural. The plot is also very predictable, I figured out the conclusion way earlier on than I feel I should've, this made me feel a lot less interested in the film overall. I will say though, that the way the show referred to the upcoming communications with aliens was much more interesting than the way this film portrays it, making this film feel like it didn't need to be made in the first place and there's definitely an argument out there that this film makes 00's story worse overall.
There isn't too much new in terms of characters, Setsuna and Feldt are the only characters with new developments here. I really like the way those two aforementioned characters are developed here is really well done, they gave them a new character arc that's short and sweet. The other characters are mostly the same as they were previously, which leaves more time for the rest of the film to move forward, but this time isn't used very well and the film feels slow and bloated. I do lie the character of the aliens, the mysterious aspect of them makes them more interesting.
Overall, the film has a lot of bloat, but it also has a lot of really interesting aspects to it. I can only recommend this film to people who've seen the show already because its a sequel, and it having the definitive ending for 00 that makes it worth a watch. I will say that I found this film quite disappointing compared to the show though.
