I just saw this movie at a film festival, and it is an example of taking a generic clichéd storyline and making something wonderful out of it.
The creators of Ghost in the Shell here blend detailed 2D Anime environments with surprisingly humanoid 3D characters; no caricatures like in Pixar films, these people are designed to look almost real. Well, the four people appearing in the story; the movie takes place mostly in the mystical world of Oblivion Island, where all the clichés of an anime film come to light. Schoolgirl main character whose mother died and who feels alone and uncared for in the world? Check. Strange comic relief anthro rabbit character who looks like he got lost on the way to Final Fantasy XI? Check. Evil overlord who dresses up like an absurd harlequin and wants to use a magical object to take over the world? Check. Fantasy realm where aforementioned rabbit species take the objects that people neglect and build entire cities and s**** items out of them? Uhhhh... check.

What makes this film worth watching is not the cut-and-dried story, per-say, or even the characters, but rather the visuals. From the moment the main character girl enters Oblivion Island, the typical Japanese small city background falls away in favor of a massive world made up entirely of the pieces of forgotten items. People wear masks made from tea kettles and buttons, monsters built from quilts, rakes and peanut packaging roam the undergrounds, and a generic race against time involves the most diabolical Rube Goldberg machine I have ever seen. It's easy to get distracted by the amazing architecture (finding out that a cell phone was elaborately built into a building: priceless), but when the movie is over and you're walking home, you suddenly realize that the movie was so damn predictable.

My rating? 4.5/5. It's the kind of movie that needs to be seen in theaters for full effect, but if you can't get tickets, pretty much any other Japanese animated movie will do. But this one has a stuffed sheep doll that can talk, and that actually works in its favor.

What's this about "anthro rabbits" and "Final Fantasy XI"?

The "anthro rabbits" was because FF has anthro rabbit like characters, and FFXI was because that's what the CG in Oblivion Island looked like. Observe, screenshot.