YMMV / Next Gen

• Awesome Art: This movie has some absolutely stellar CG animation work, the fights are tight and fluid and it the CG all flows really well. Pretty impressive considering it was rendered in a free-to-use program (Blender, specifically).
• Awesome Music: "Rebel Girl", courtesy of Bikini Kill.
  • From the trailers, “Starlight” by Jai Wolf and Mr. Gabriel.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The escape scene in the sewer. Shot in slo-mo reverse for no reason, before playing forwards and at regular speed.
• Complete Monster: Ares, initially Justin Pin's hulking robot bodyguard, is revealed to be far eviler than he lets on. Having been created by Justin Pin to be the perfect machine, Ares deduced that humans are flawed, and that they should be destroyed, starting by killing Justin. Using Justin's altered body to serve as his puppet, Ares creates the Gen 6 Q-Bots for everyone to own, planning on having them detonate and wipe out all of humanity. Seeing 7723 destroying his machines, Ares kidnaps Mai's mother Molly, then tries to kill the two before leading them to a trap once they manage to escape. Revealing his plans to Mai and 7723, he casually disintegrates Dr. Tanner Rice and orders the Q-Bots to detonate a full soccer stadium once his plans are leaked to the public to kill as many people as he can, before trying to disintegrate Mai for foiling his plans. A sadistic killing machine, Ares, despite his funny personality and claims of creating a better world, is nothing more than an egotistical monster willing to kill both human and robot alike to suit his needs.
• Dancing Bear: Critical consensus is mixed on the film itself, but nevertheless it's still praised among independent artists as quite the accomplishment since most of the film was produced primarily with Blender, a free and open source 3D modeling and animation program that has only gotten significantly more versatile and powerful over the years.
• Evil Is Cool: Despite Ares killed Justin Pin who was his creator, attempted to kill all of humanity through the Gen 6 Q-Bots, tried to kill Mai who a little girl and overall being a Complete Monster who seeked his own gain, Ares manages to be this thanks to his hammy personality, a dark Laughably Evil Villain and an impressive design.
• Foe Yay Shipping: Mai x Greenwood.
• Inferred Holocaust: Justin's goal was to "put a Q-6 in every home", and he started by giving out free Q-6s to everyone who had attended his show. When Mai exposes him before he could get them sold worldwide, he starts detonating them all then and there out of pure spite. Given how unlikely it is that everyone in the city would be present at or watching that particular soccer game to get the warning they would explode, Ares' plan likely still killed thousands. Incidentally, the writers seem to be aware of this, as the OST's label for this scene is "The Everyone Dies Part".
• Jerkass Woobie: Mai... where do we begin? Her father walked out on her mother after an argument and died, her mom copes with the loss by neglecting her in favour of Q-Bots, and she's a loner at school who gets bullied constantly by Greenwood and the rest of the soccer team. You can totally understand why she acts the way she does for most of the film.
• Moral Event Horizon: It's difficult to tell where Justin Pin/Ares crosses it exactly. Whether pulling a Kill and Replace on the real Justin Pin before the movie actually began, taking Molly hostage solely to serve as bait, and then killing Dr. Rice using his Disintegrator Ray without hesitation... and this is before it's made clear he plots to eradicate humanity.
• Realism-Induced Horror:
  • Mai using 7723 as a means to get revenge on others can be quite disturbing as it parallels incidents of gun violence in schools, especially in the United States.
  • The violent way Mai is bullied isn't far off, made worse by the fact that she's hitted by metallic objects. It not only generates psychological trauma but has the potential to cause permanent damage.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The film's got Hollywood-level visuals scattered throughout, special mention goes to the moments during the memory sequences and 7723's entire battle with Ares, from start to the very end, which is not only super-fluid, but utterly exhilarating and gripping.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: A fun, colorful movie about a girl and her robot pal...filled with scenes of bullying, parental neglect, bleeped cursing and an on-screen murder.

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