Content Warning: Nudity and violence
After almost 20 years, Armitage returns...
The movie opens with Armitage being a house wife, making a cake. And then she starts seeing images from a secret Third factory on Earth. We then get to see Ross, who has taken up the alias Kevin Oldman, as he picks up their daughter, Yoko. I have to say that I like Yoko's character design as she really looks like a mix of Ross and Armitage and it works. Of course, Armitage leaves her family behind to travel to Earth and investigate what is going on with the Thirds. While she's gone, Ross foils a terrorist plot, working as a security guard, and is sent to Earth to vote on a bill about “robot rights.” Which feels very forced and I'm surprised they're still dealing with robot rights after the last movie. We return to the plot with Amritage going after the military leader who killed everyone at the facility and finally meet the real villain of the piece, Demitrio. He wants to have robots be slaves so he can live out his power fantasy but is also obsessed with the Thirds ability to conceive, making his whole goal a real mess. The plots link up as Demitrio kidnaps Yoko, forcing Ross to throw the vote on the Robot's Rights thing. Ross and Armitage link up and go to rescue Yoko, and escape Earth, only to have to deal with twin copies of Armitage that have been upgraded for combat. With knives that pop out of their bodies and roller-blades. I wish I was making that part up.
All in all, this was a movie that didn't need to be made. There's nothing really new here, except for Yoko. Ross and Armitage barely get any screen time together and Armitage just seems to abandon her family to put on a sexy outfit to dish out some revenge. The whole thing about the Thirds being able to procreate but wanting a slave race just doesn't follow any sort of logic. I think it should have gone either direction, either Demitrio wanted to eliminate anything to do with the Thirds so he could prove that robots don't deserve rights (as Armitage would prove that they can be just as human as we are) or he should have been obsessed with making his own Thirds to show that they DO deserve rights. I can't seem to wrap my head around his plans here. As I was watching it, I got a very Matrix vibe from some of the scenes. I realize that the Matrix borrowed from anime and this movie came out a few years after the Matrix, meaning that the designs were probably influenced by it. It makes sense, given how much the first Matrix film was hugely successful. I also noticed that the animation quality seemed to have dropped from the first film and it included some very early CGI in one chase scene. I'm not sure if they were cutting the budget or trying to be cutting edge. It's entirely possible that it could have been both.
In the end, there was no reason to make this movie and while it is enjoyable, it's not very good. I bought it when it first came out on DVD and got the collector's edition, including a lunch box (it was a thing back in those days) and an Armitage figurine. I don't regret buying it, I just wish it was better.
Rating: 2 out of 5
Suggestion: Watch it only if you really
need more Armitage in your life.
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