Well, I just saw it, though without subs, since the only subs I was able to get my hands on were off synch and low quality.
Despite of it, it certainly seemed interesting, though I'm dying to learn what the parts my lowly Japanese skills were unable to comprehend were about. Here's my commentary with spoilers:
Spoiler wrote:Visually the whole thing seemed quite impressive. However, it seemed like the quality of 3D animation had actually gone down a notch. The Tachikomas seemed like they were floating in air, rather than moving on ground and some of the buildings seemed like unfinished architect's presentations than proper skyscrapers. Being in middle of an empty field emphasized this even further.
The music was terrific - every new tune, save for the less than interesting ending music was superb, though there could have been more of them.
The new character designs were quite good. Togusa had become darker and seemed less naïve than in the earlier series. Batou seemed strange, not smiling even once, which is extremely uncharacteristic for his SAC incarnation, but presumably there is a good plot reason behind this. Curiously Aramaki and Major didn't seem to have changed a bit.
While I can't comment much of the plot, yet, there were few things I'd like to comment about. First, Togusa's daughter. Didn't he have three children in the SAC? Which one of them this girl is - her apparent age doesn't seem to fit with any one of them, as far as I can remember.
The Tachikomas' resurrection wasn't much of a surprise to me. I just hope that if the series is continued, Kamiyama will leave this running gag behind - a noble sacrifice is touching at the first time and it wasn't bad in the second, but the effect doesn't really work when the characters always get reborn, afterwards. Incidentally, as far as I could understand the explanation for why the (F)Uchikoma's hadn't become sentient, I wasn't really satisfied - sure, intelligent machines is something signifigant, but it just made them a simple plot-device that could be pushed out of the way as soon as possible.
The ending, as far as I could understand it, was bit of a dissapointment. As soon as the 2nd Gig hand ended and Solid State Society had begun with a feeling that some signifigant changes are taking place, it all goes back to normal in the end, once again. One can only take so many such endings before it becomes dull. I hope that if there's a 3rd Gig, we'll finally see a dramatic, mindblowing ending that GitS deserves.
I'll undoubtedly have more to say, once I see the whole thing with proper subtitles.
