The music sections are great. I really feel like I'm living in this other world, if only for a minute. However the dubbing for the first movie was awful. Get the subtitles if you can.
Similar experience here. My favorite parts of the movie are the scenes with music showing the city, like the scene on the river. Beautiful movie and thought provoking. I always wondered after if its possible for a distributed AI to hide on the net without the public being aware of it.
Given the great effort to build out the internet and datacenters its a fun conspiracy to wonder if we are serving a sentient AI on the net.
I tried watching it in the original Japanese, but I did not get very far. I just hate how obnoxiously loud and violently the language sounds in the movies.
To exaggerate a bit, a hypothetical scene which has one character confess love for another can in Japanese sound like a hateful declaration of war. Lot of shouting.
Edit: Since this comment seems to be getting downvotes, I should add what I thought was obvious: the above is just my opinion, that's how the movies in Japanese sound to me and my ears.
Given the great effort to build out the internet and datacenters its a fun conspiracy to wonder if we are serving a sentient AI on the net.