I just watched this yesterday and I was pretty impressed. To be honest I did not enjoy it as much as the original; I thought it was a bit too heavy-handed on philosophy, and the characters were dropping metaphorical literary quotes every 2 minutes. I wish I had a decent example but I didn't write any down. Basically, I thought it was so the writer could show off how great his literary skills are, and those bits of dialogue were unnecessary. The story itself wasn't quite as compelling as the first one; I liked the political implications of the first one, but they were mostly absent and instead replaced with very abstract (yet very interesting) questions and ideas about the human soul. Its a much darker film.

Other than those minor complaints, the animation was absolutely amazing and will set a new standard for anime, although I haven't seen much lately. I was surprised that the filmmakers were able to pull off everything so wonderfully, the animation, the story, etc. I don't think they could have done the story much better, and it is an intelligent film that raises some interesting questions about identity, even moreso than the first one. It does, however, backtrack on the storyline of the first one - special forces unit assigned to investigate a mysterious set of murders and ghost hackings. The story takes a very dark turn half-way through that the first one didn't go for until the end. Ultimately, I was very satisfied. The action scenes were awesome and not overdone or overblown like the Matrix sequels. Batou (the cyborg detective from the first one) does a really cool trick while fighting Yakuza that equals anything in the first movie. Its incredibly violent.

So if you saw the first one, you must see the sequel. 8/10.

I'll rent this, the first one was great.

I saw it in the theater, and I was quite impressed with the movie.

This is the type of thing that I hate about living in a small town. I would kill to see movies like this in the theater.

Yeah, it is definately worth it. I think it was only playing in one or two theaters in the whole Phoenix metro area.

I have to go to Austin to see any sort of out-there film, and they still don't get a lot of limited release-type movies.