It’s a beautifully drawn film, mixing futuristic post war dystopian cities, super powers, religious cults, gangs, and corrupt governments, with themes of friendship and abuse in a sort of teenage coming of age story. It’s been done before, but something about the way it’s done here is different, and more than one watch through is needed to fully understand it all. It’s been done since, which when so of science fiction and anime pull from it, now on my first watch through, I’m left without the mesmerizing experience of others who saw it when it first came out. It’s good, but I think so much of what makes it great is those first viewings in 1988, before The Matrix, before Neon Genesis Evangelion. Seeing it for the first time now, it’s just one more heap on the pile.