Tekkon Kinkreet

Wow! The atmosphere is created with extreme technical skill and consistent enough style, merging different animation techniques in a time period when not many creative directors were combining 2D digital, super involved and detailed environment design in 3D, and 2D digital, invoking CEL style watercolors. Fun choreography and cinematic for action and chase scenes! The creative direction is very very impressive to me. This is a gorgeous film and for me, as I also dabble in storyboards or environment/asset design, this is a stylistic guilty pleasure.
Characters were very likeable or at least understandable. Even the "lukewarm" types, they still were written with conviction and ... personality. Very good characters! There were plenty of background characters who, even with one or two lines, still came in with personality. ENG dub kinda shocked me, I didn't expect to enjoy it. I don't speak Japanese but the JPN dub was good too hehe

Writing.
Oof. idk, I'm a girl so I like talking to.. be more like dialogue. The writing feels close to the dialogue of a Marvel movie. If that makes sense to you, then you'll love this! haahh... but the 'dialogue' of this film was not for me.
The plot was a little convoluted and difficult to understand but I think that was a positive element for this film. The rewatch value is very high, as I learned to distinguish henchman #2a from henchman #4b.. LOL there's just so many characters in this film! The first watch-through is the worst, in this respect! I found the plot to be super entertaining by my 3rd watch through.

Theme, Narrative, Message...
Hmmm.... well, at face-value you might call this a film about imperialism or gentrification... but I don't think it's quite that. The ending of the film ends in a sense of.. "Oh, I got mine, everything's fine," very very positive and happy ending. I was wondering recently... Did they just run out of money, like the Evangelion TV series? In my opinion, the film atmosphere deserved an ending with a tone closer to "Grave of the Fireflies", or if they were going to do "Happy ending beach scene", they add it in a context that feels respectful and honorable to the sacrifices or grave mistakes of their kin. In this film there is so much room for character growth, they wrote excellently balanced giant cast, and we the audience watch them all go through such a wild journey, I was hoping this would culminate to at least one of the characters figuring a method to this madness, ESPECIALLY because the climax of the film is so psychological. But there seemed to be no development emotionally, not nearly enough to warrant an ending theme of... "Choose Kindness :)" Just felt like the dust settled and ... well I wont spoil too much
Hallmark-level theme, I think that this aspect is what holds this film back the most. If you want the 8/10 version of this film, pretend the film is closer to like... 1:35:00, cut off the last 15 minutes lol. And then imagine that they had left an "open ended please give us a second movie" ending.

Sound--
Sound design was great! Music ... well it's good but in retrospect I find it boring! It certainly does not stand alone but it gets the job done!

Overall. GREAT film. Super fun to watch, possibly a few manly tears here and there. Great rewatch value if you turn your brain off!

Rate of 6 (fair)
seen via English dubbed

Likes:
Plot- Very elaborate. The writer was honest. If words were mentioned they had reason and purpose. Some writers fill up time with words not this writer. You will not feel like you watched a mystery with your W questions. And since this was a kid p.o.v. the art had a certain flare that matched the plot.

sound- was on key and right actors and the right parts.

Dislikes:
art- Sadly, the are was not realistic. Had the art would have had more detail to make it look like an actual person and not just a drawing more things would have happened. More ... compassion could be drawn, more loss of imagination. A good way of putting it is like Pablo Picasso. A world famous artist. Whom made his work on abstract (different from the norms) thinking. It is unique because it is different. Although, faces do not go that way. At least those whom did not engage in a battle and won easily. This was animation the goal is to come close enough to reality to provide a connection with the viewer. I understand a possible reasoning such as plot but still.

DIRE AND DISMAL ANIME SHOCK HORROR
(contains spoilers)

I’ve been watching anime since 1970 when “Marine Boy” first came to Western audiences, so I’d like to think I have some experience to draw upon when criticizing this effort.

THE ART: Studio 4°C, who produced this anime, have a “unique style” ), say the fans - but "Tekkon" looks, to me, like one of the ugliest animes ever.
What’s so bad about the artwork?
It resembles the closeups you would see on “Ren and Stimpy”, where the POV goes up one of the MCs nostrils, showing us snot, nasal hairs, and other unsightly things you never planned on seeing.
Studio ... 4°C may have some rep for being daring, taking chances, etc, but this was my first encounter with their output, and I’m not impressed so far. By a roundabout comparison, the composer, Stockhausen, is also said to have a “unique style”, but his work is, for the most part, unlistenable cacophony... which brings us to the soundtrack, voice actors, foleys, etc:

THE SOUND: Music was OK-ish, but be warned - have a remote control to hand if you are going to sit this one out...
The second half of this OVA will have any sane person reaching for the volume control as the mentally-ill half of the two brothers gets captured, and then starts screaming - and he just doesn’t stop screaming.
FFS, Studio 4°C, the little guy was enough of an assh*le without all the screaming. The animal-like noises coming from the TV completely alienated me from what was already a horribly unlikable character.
I started rooting for the bad guys at this point, and wished they would simply euthanize him quickly and (most important of all) quietly.

For what it's worth, I never chose this to watch, my GF recorded it from TV and I was a captive audience (and she didn't like the screaming either).

SUMMARY: Avoid it like a radioactive zombie plague rat with Super-Coronavirus.