I saw it last night! I *liked* how things worked out with the cocky antagonistic kid; I *loved* how all the family relations were good ones. brother-brother, (stand-in) father-daughter, father-son. I didn't mind that there were no sister-sister or mother-child things because the father-child relationships seemed to me to be so all encompassing (so non-gender-based) that it didn't matter. (Though, I would have liked to see a few more female faces in the crowds--but at least there was the Russian jaeger pilot, so that was something.)

What you saw as a St. Michael thing, Waka saw as a shoutout to Japanese legend, when one of the Minamotos is lifted into the air by a demon and slices him through the middle with a sword, and Little Springtime and the ninja girl said it was a complete shoutout to Evangelion: "When firepower fails, they use the progressive knife," LS is telling me.

I have some thoughts about single combat and land clearance that I'll stick up on my blog.