I quite liked this movie, but was I the only wone to see the similarities to FFVII? I could understand why this might be (as the movie was years in production), but I was a bit annoyed as to the originality problems.
The way I thought of it was that Square had Final Fantasy 7 plot A and plot B. Both were loosely based around the same ideas and themes, but also quite different. The biggest similarity would have to be Gaia. The idea that every living thing has a spirit that returns to Gaia when it dies (and the fact that Gaia can be hurt), is very similar to the lifestream*.
Great movie, but more originality was called for.
They even look almost identical.