The whole plot has less of a hold on to it. I expected the same solid, deep plots as Masamune Shirow’s previous works. In this movie I guess, the Deus Ex Machina moments are a little too far fetched for me.

As to answer your spoiler question- It was lame, lame lame. David has much more to say about that than I do however. My main beef was with ***SPOILER****
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the weak Borg reference at the end. What the hell? That sucked harder than the zombies. It also reminded me of a boss fight from FF VIII. Gah, that was horrible.
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*END SPOILAGE

About the character animation, there’s no doubt in my mind that it is a huge improvement over the first movie. The shading was better, and *some* of the characters looked like they had more depth to them. I was also quite surprised at how well they animated some of the more subtle facial expressions during certain scenes. On the downside, I agree that some of the characters looked creepy because they were so shiny, almost like they were all walking and talking barbie dolls.

And finally …

*SPOILER AHEAD*
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I would’ve liked to have read your thoughts on the whole “everyone turns into a zombie!” thing. That screamed cheezy B-movie to me.

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