The best animation in this film is the first 10 minutes of the credits. It's the Super Hollow Ichigo vs Ulquiorra fight. It's bad ass, the music is awesome and the animation is sick. They must have spent a lot of money on this first 10 minutes because the animation in the rest of the film ranged from decent to really f*cking crappy.
Okay so the basic plot is this:
The shockwave of power that emanated from Ichigo after he went Super Hollow in his fight with Ulquiorra awoke a bunch of souls that had been condemned to the lower realms of Hell. It became their goal to get Ichigo to Hell because only his power was strong enough to break the chains that bound them and free them.
In order to do this, they attacked Ichigo's high school, hurt Tatsuki (
) and kidnapped his sisters.
Karin gets rescued by a new guy named Kakuto. He shows up out of nowhere to help a brother out. Yuzu gets sucked into Hell and Ichigo, Renji, Rukia, Ishida and Kakuto jump in after her to save her.
Kakuto says she's already dead and it's a lost cause, but they go anyway. Orihime and Chad get left behind.
The Director decided to portray Hell with having a few different levels (kind of like Dante's Inferno).
The first level looks a bit like Ichigo's inner world except there are blue roads and you can see all the condemned spirits screaming in agony, drooling from insanity or doing pointless tasks like walking into walls. At this point the Kushanada show up. They are giant skull headed things (see photo) that repeatedly devour the souls of the dead. They eat their sins or something like that and then the souls are reborn in Hell so they can re-live the punishment over and over again.
Ichigo and co. escape these guys when Ichigo busts out a hollowified Getsuga Tenshou. Everyone tells him to put that hollow shit away
and he's like "But I had no control over it?"
The group jumps down to the next area of Hell that kind of looks like flowers sitting on a lake (strange, I know). This is where the lackeys from last week's manga show up. Renji gets matched up with the hulk, Rukia gets paired with the guy sporting tentacles (of course) and Ishida fights the fatty. I won't go into the fights beyond saying that Renji FINALLY redeems himself.
At this point Ichigo splits off from the others and goes on ahead with Kakuto to find Yuzu. They jump down into yet another realm of Hell. This is where Yuzu is being held captive. The bad guy here, the one you met in the manga last week is named Syren and he's basically running the show.
Syren makes new copies of the lackeys you saw last week for Ichigo and Kakuto to fight. He then threatens to toss Yuzu into some pit of lava. Ichigo freaks the fuck out and goes Super Hollow which is exactly what he wants. He saves her and blows a bunch of shit up. In the midst of his tantrum he blasts a hole through Hell to the living world, creating a gate. At that point Renji shows up out of nowhere to transport him and Yuzu back to the world of the living.
Ichigo makes it back up top, still freaking out, and discovers that despite all that tantuming Yuzu is still dead. Orihime is called into save her but she can't do shit.
Yuzu has some chain from hell on her chest keeping her soul in Hell. Ichigo loses it (he's super emotional in this one).
Everyone else is still trapped in Hell and it looks like they're stuck there for good.
Byakuya is once again brother of the year and shows absolutely no emotion whatsoever that Rukia is gone. Ichigo calls him out on it and he says something like everyone knew what the risks were when they journeyed into Hell with him. Ichigo decides to go back to Hell to rescue his friends (of course).
I won't spoil the end for you guys but it's good. I really liked this film. It had some good fights, great tunes and a little something for everyone.
Orihime's rack looks absolutely fabulous 
and for Ichi/Hime shippers there is a really tender scene between the two of them at his place.
For Rukia fans there's a
Rukia nude scene you might enjoy.
My only beefs were with the really really crap animation in some parts and the fact that Isshin was conveniently written out of the entire film at the very beginning. The arrival of SS was really nothing more than fan service since they didn't do much of anything.
The movie had a strong "the gangs all here" type feel with the original crew, minus two, doing all the fights.
Ichigo also gets a new form. Yes, he evolves BEYOND Super Hollow Ichigo into something new, so look out for that.
I'm looking forward to the subs whenever they come out. Outside of the theatre they had some original art from Kubo, which was pretty cool (sorry for the crap picture quality). Also, they gave out a free special copy of the manga with character profiles and last week's prologue chapter called "The Hell Verse" (see picture).