I'd been looking at the DVDs for a while, but the different titles on amazon confused me, so a complete boxed set of season 1 was excellent.
I'm a major fan of the movie, and i saw innocence recently, which was stunningly animated, even if it occasionally went up it's own backside with the philosophy side of things.
The series and the movies need to be treated as separate entities, both tell similar stories, but they were produced for different contexts. the animation in the series isn't as polished as the movie, but why would it be? there's an overarching storyline, but it doesn't get in the way of the standalone episodes which have their own separate stories. a few are a bit "huh, what?", but most are nice, compact and exciting, and work their way into the whole nicely. as to one of the other comments here, anyone who looks at it as Anime for teen boys is missing the point, there's a real plot here, and real characters who work in a team dynamic, you need to watch again.....
