A welcome surprise - the fact that this movie is here at all is a great delight. It looks great while still keeping the style of the original show. The sound mix is very nice, and gives the space battles a sense of impact. This movie resolves the series and provides an ending, which is most important, in my opinion. Now, my praises aside, things are not perfect. There is a 10 year time skip from the end of the second season, however this 10 years appears to have no impact on anyone. There are some new cadets, new machines, but character relationships seem to have stagnated.There seems to be no reason this had to be 10 years later, they could have gotten away with 2 years, probably.

What's more, the show had some very interesting character relationships, not the least of which was the Hoshijiro, Izana, Tsumugi, Yuhata love square around Tanikaze. Unfortunately, this is dropped or streamlined immediately and characters just lock themselves into their apparently final pairings. Some of the final pairings seem to come straight out of left field. Several mysteries are dropped or given a quick explanation to resolve them. Certain big things are not really explored, like "what are the Gauna". And the ending feels quite abrupt, when all's said and done.

I attributed this to perhaps necessity of fitting everything into a single movie rather than another full season of a show, but as I understand, the manga was this way as well, so I guess it isn't a fault of the movie. Ultimately it does give off the feeling of a writer being tired of his story and just wanting to wrap it up.

All in all though, its a fine movie and if you enjoyed the show that came before it, it's a no brainer. Watch it. It's fun.