Well, I figured it's going to be nearly impossible to talk about the clip at all without mentioning what's on it, so probably anyone who is worried about spoilers and doesn't want to view the trailer should ditto not read the comments about it. But in any case here is a big ****SPOILER SPOILER SPOLIER **** warning. If I could put line breaks in this thing I would, but if you don't want to hear anything about what's in the trailer, stop reading now.

First off, thanks for finding this, Boris. Once I downloaded a copy from your site I was able to watch it a bit more closely, and think I have a rough idea of the plot, if not how it all ends. Nothing we haven't really read elsewhere already. But here are my initial reactions:

BAD: Boris's girlfriend (if that's who she is) looks and sounds like she's going to be _really_ annoying. Muk and Luk actually get dragged all the way along on the journey this time? (*sigh*) while it looks like Jenna gets left behind again. At least M&L don't seem to be in the race part (that would be pretty ridiculous). Jenna, in the one decent shot we see of her, is still off-model like she was in B2. Balto, at least at the start, seems still to be on the boat. And please tell me that isn't that bloody terrier from B2 who appears in at least two scenes this time (though he looks a little bigger).

GOOD: back to sledding and action, and away with the mystical stuff. Balto seems to have a bigger role than Kodi - he's leading the team; Kodi is just a member of it. Kodi looks really, really good. Balto's eyes are yellow again. The animation looks better than B2. It's winter. There seems to be some human-Balto interaction, with him leading the race team, meaning the alienation from the town must be at least largely overcome (though you would have thought that at the end of B1 of course.) The other female dog - if she's the same one who was in those early experimental drawings - has gone from hideous to fairly cute, though she's no Aleu.

IN SHORT: Danger signs - too much of annoying incidental characters, and too little of Jenna. Good signs - nearly everything else.

Nope, I've put the LARGE version on my site And yes, it was made for broadband, but even with my 1Mbit access, the video was awful in large version, so that's why I downloaded it. And yes, I agree with most of what you said. After watching it, I felt a bit strange ! Not that it isn't what I expected (because it IS), but after so much speculations, it was as if a bomb exploded!

Well, despite my not looking at your 'spoilers' page, I went and watched the trailer, - on the reasoning that they wouldn't put anything in a trailer that was going to give away anything THAT important. So, FWIW, I don't think I saw anything important in the trailer that I hadn't already read about, or guessed. It certainly doesn't give away anthing like "how the film ends" (well, maybe it does, but I won't know that till I get to the end of the film, or until someone actually tells me). So what I'm trying to say is I watched it, and I don't feel it spiled anything for me.

Not though, this refers to the 'small' version on the Japanese site. The 'Large' version didn't have any video content for some reason, so I don't know what's on that. I assume 'large' might just mean broadband.

As to my impressions, without saying anything specific for those who don't want to watch it: I'd just say it confirmed a couple (operative phrase veibng 'a couple') of annoying suspicions I had after seeing the cover but everything else about it looks great. It definately looks MUCH more like Balto 1 than it does Wolf Quest. Of course, anything can be made to look good in a trailer, but having now seen this I can say this definately looks promising.