Mixed or average reviews - based on 17 Critics  Critic score
distribution:   1. Positive: 0 out of 17   2. Negative: 3 out of
17   1. At this point, there's something almost masochistic
about the way animators in Japan use cheesy ''Westernized''
heroes to fuel their fantasies.   2. 50     The film's lingering
exploration of their sleek surfaces verges on roboporn.   3.
Only real fans, however, will be willing to slog through the
heaping helpings of incomprehensible exposition.   4. 50     The
stock characters and leaden stretches of expository dialogue are
welcome evidence that there's still no computer program capable
of telling a decent story.   5. Dazzling visually but is
flattened by corny dialogue better suited to the 1936 "Flash
Gordon" serial, a needlessly hard to follow plot and heavy-
handed exposition clotted with pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo.
6. The characters are (hand-painted) so flat that the film looks
like a paper-doll convention at Epcot.   7. 40     Much of the
movie is dull, and as it has