It is a theater release atm, not sure how many screens are still playing it however. It looks like it's got a couple days left in my city before its out of circulation, not sure about your area

It's not necessary, you could have a complete experience without it for sure. But I will say you feeling like that about season 3 doesn't surprise me at all, and it was a risk the team took that I personally loved but I can totally understand why people wouldn't like it.

I'll put it this way; the movie fills in the gaps that season 3 introduces, and there are story beats in the movie that I think only truly hit with the context of season 3. But if you didn't like 3 that's totally fine, tonally it's a mix of case 1 and case 3 of Sinners of the System, if you liked those two movies (not sure if they technically count as movies lol) you're probably gonna like the movie.

I could go further in depth but it will spoil things, just let me know and I can go more in depth :)

Cowboy Bebop

Samurai Champloo

Terror in Resonance

Beastars

Land of the Lusterous

Ghost in the Shell

Gundam

Big O

Berserk

Monster

Psycho Pass

Akira

Gunslinger Girls

Serial Experiments Lain

Haibane Renmei

Parasyte

Evangelion

Escaflowne

And many, many, MANY more. These are all things off the top of my head, and most of them are fairly different in genre. It's kind of a broad request, super deformed art styles are common in assorted anime but it's not like it's a defining feature of all anime, so most recommendations you'll get are gonna be pretty varied.

One thing in common is typically more mature anime are less likely to use it, so that might be the only common denominator between all the stuff I recommended

Man there's something about this series that's really hitting for me. I know Akane Banashi is the "successor" of Act-Age but this is very much in that vein as well and has hooked me more than Akane has so far. Hopefully it ends up lasting long, I don't think it's been doing well on the ToC rankings from what I've seen

So I looked further online and it looks like season 3 will be referenced but isn't necessary to enjoy the movie, so I think we're safe there. But it does look like at least case 3 of Sinners is a necessary viewing, as well as seasons 1, 2, and the first movie, which thankfully I have covered lol.

Much less to cram in a couple days thankfully, I'll just watch season 3 and First Inspector after unless I find the time somehow

The first manga I bought was volume 31 of Berserk, the scanlations I was using had a huge gap that started at that chapter so I said wtf why not.

My first full series purchase was the full box set of A Silent Voice, top 10 all time for me so I had to have it, sadly got ruined when my old home flooded but hey what can you do lol

E: Actually if you count issues of Shonen Jump as physicals then I'd been sporadically reading chapters off those when I was younger, they used to sell them in the local blockbuster I believe, though it was never consecutive so I couldn't actually follow any stories lmao. I vividly remember reading chapter #504 of Naruto and being very, VERY confused lmao

Wayyyy too rushed, I'm very surprised to see this didn't get the standard 50 ep run that most AU gundam series get. Especially since it seemed to be doing quite well as far as I understood, anyone have any insight?