"Variety" commends the film's "imaginative and detailed design of tomorrow to the booming Dolby effects on the soundtrack" but criticizes the "slight stiffness in the drawing of human movement". Kim Newman of "Empire" commends the film's "scintillating animated visuals, with not one – not one – computer-assisted shot in sight". "Chicago Tribune"s Dave Kehr commends Otomo's "excellent animation-specific ideas: Vehicles leave little color trails as they roar through the night, and there are a number of dream sequences that make nice use of the medium's ability to confound scale and distort perspective". Helen McCarthy in "500 Essential Anime Movies" claims that the anime "remains fresh and exciting, easily holding its own against the products of two decades of massive technical advancement". Meanwhile, in February 2004, Dan Persons of "Cinefantastique" listed the film as one of the "10 Essential Animations", simply referring to the film as "the film that changed everything."