"Woah, am I watching the Armitage III OVA all over again, or is it just me?" That's what I was thinking when I began watching Armitage III: Poly Matrix until I remembered that this wasn't a four-episode OVA series. This is a movie. Unfortunately, the transition from four thirty plus minute episodes doesn't translate too well into a 90 minute movie.

The first thing you'll notice when you watching this movie, besides the fact that you're rewatching the beginning of the OVA, is that the artwork is a slight improvement over that of the series. It's not that noticable, but it's definitely an improvement that you can see in some of the more action packed scenes. However, the music, which I liked a bit in the series, took a wrong turn somewhere and headed downhill for the rest of the movie. It starts out nicely enough, mimicking all of the music from the series, then it just goes sour.

When I first noticed the length of the movie, I knew that SOMETHING had to be cut out from the series but I didn't expect the parts to be so crucial to the story. Subplots are completely erased, and the dialogue remained exactly the same in the transition. Characters are often talking about things that happened in the OVA series but were erased for the movie! The movie also leaves out a bunch of scenes that revealed a lot more about the Thirds as well as a few of the characters. However, one thing that both the series and the movie had in common is that neither put much depth into the character of Julian, which is something that annoyed me even further in this movie.

There isn't anything else I can complain about, though. The ending in the movie is a vast improvement over the ending in the series, though it's still pretty cruddy. What happens is almost EXACTLY the same, the creators just decided to make it less corny. Unfortunately, the ending is a total impossibility. I'd go a bit further in-depth, but that would risk spoiling the already predictable ending. It was almost funny how they changed it from the believable one we saw in the series to the dumb one in this one.

In conclusion, if you have an hour and a half to spare, watch this movie! However, if you have two hours to spare, you should watch the Armitage III OVA series instead. Not only does it contain a lot of scenes that were deleted to make the movie able to be watched in one sitting, but... but... I can't believe I'm saying this, but it has a better ending too!