Pretty sure the bodies not decomposing is because the gas wiped out bacteria and any other organism that would break down a corpse, thus leading to mummification rather than skelification. The only place in the movie we see a skeleton is in the factory, which makes sense, as why would the fabrication machine gas itself? Thus there may have been bacteria around the machine or the person who died did so before the gas became widespread enough to kill the bacteria in that location.

can't believe i'm listening to a video about a 2009 dark children's movie lore from ben 10

I was fucking obsessed with this film as a kid. It shaped a lot of my interests growing up. I used to pretend I was The Machine building beasts when I'd be making stuff with a huge bin of Legos I had.

i am SO glad you covered this movie, i've been thinking about it for years without even knowing about the promotional material. it's a shame films don't really do that sort of interactive worldbuilding more often.

One of the things I love about this movie is that you can see the passage of time and the decreasing resources the Scientist had available to him in the design of the ragdolls themselves - 1 is made out of finer fabric, with fancier eyes and and more articulated metal hands.  Each doll after him gets rougher, made of more patchwork or less fine materials.  Until you get to 9, who is literally made out of burlap and has very basic eyes and wooden fingers.  It differentiates them visually, but also shows how much the world had changed between the creation of the first ragdoll and the last.

Also, regarding sympathy for the machine - I think the film does a lovely job of showing the machine wasn't inherently evil.  If you are paying attention, in the visual flashback that shows the creation of the brain, you see it with the scientist, happily (?) tinkering away with something in front of it.  Then the soldiers come in, and you can see it reaching for the scientist as he is dragged away.  I think it really shows the Brain's innocence - it had literally just been born, and then it was turned into a slave and forced to work endlessly to create things that kill.  It may have been an artificial intelligence, but it was still a child, developmentally speaking.  What would a child learn in such circumstances?

I love 9 so much, I even tried to make all the Ragdolls.

In regards to the timeline, I think 1-8 were in fact made years before 9 was, and I think the scientist somehow hid and watched the world end and burn. Once he realized the rebel's final attempt to stop the machine, years after the war started, didn't work, he put the last of his soul in 9 and finally passed. But thats just my thought

I love how the movie directly contradicts the quote by French filmmaker and director Francois Truffaut, "Every film about war ends up being pro-war."

7 & 9's potential romance could hint at "soul" mates. Some ideas of soul mates indicate a connection between two souls. Others suggest that it's two bodies that share the same soul. The love felt is a desire for the soul unifying.

...In that segment about Frankenstein, that wasn't a picture of the monster. That was a picture of it's victim.
The thing about Frankenstein is that it neatly wraps around. You go from "Frankenstein is the monster" to "No! Frankenstein is the sciencist who creates the monster!" and then, much more sagely, back to "Frankenstein is the monster" for creating life and then refusing to take any semblance of care for it, show it any love or kindness, or provide it basic education.

I love how you're just casually wearing the Ben 10 classic fit.

Man, I honestly LOVED 9, I was so morbidly fascinated by the much darker, creepier tone for an animated film.

I did not understand the souls dispersing into the clouds caused life to return. That clarifies a few things.
Also, the scientist not having decomposed might have something to do with the poison also killing the bugs that would've consumed him. Same with the other corpses, it seems more likely they mummified.
EDIT: Seems I'm not the first to think of this.

My guess about the corpses being not as decomposed as you'd think they'd be, keep in mind that the machines didn't just kill all humans, animals and plants, they also destroyed bacterial life as well, which is an important part of the decomposition process. Since they restored bacterial life at the end of the film, these "preserved" corpses should now also start rotting again.

Note: And right after writing this, I see another commenter already said this. Darn.

9 is such a great movie. I loved how the machines looked like “they work”, which as a kid I didn’t see in any other kids movies. Machines tended to be simplified, but in 9 you got to see the inner mechanisms, this eventually led me to my love of steampunk! Funnily I have a book on steampunk which lists 9 as “stitchpunk”. This movie may have freaked me out, but man, it fascinated me, I was obsessed with the cat beast and the pterodactyl.

Now… there was a short film I saw when I was very little, one that also gave me a fascination with steampunky things, but it really terrified me and left me queezy… The Mysterious Geographical Explorations of Jasper Morello.I remember wanting to watch something and my mom was just like “oh yeah, here’s a thing I have downloaded”, why???? Highly recommend it if you like 9!

im glad this film lives rent free in your head too

Gotta love the Ben 10 outfit!

I remembered begging my mom to watch it after I saw the trailers and to this day don’t regret seeing it as my birthday gift since it came out the literal day after my 11th birthday. All these years later I’m still blown away by the amount of lore this one movie had.

A couple of expository thoughts:

8 having the only "strong" body could have some significance behind it.  Each number is literally experimenting with something completely new through its creation.  The scientist may have, upon working on 8, decided to finally consider if a larger body would give more physical enhancement.  Perhaps a realization a bit too late, but it seems to have come with a comparative reduction in mental faculties, indicating that the soul-fragment can only power so much in these dolls, like having only so many points to assign your D&D character's ability scores.  And, since the scientist is a man who values mental over physical, all the others are more mentally powerful.

The relationship between 7 and 9 is fitting.  Curiosity and adventure go hand in hand, so why would those two not be the most suited to friendship?

Fun fact: in Russian version of the movie they added an interesting bit, that changes quite a lot:

The rackdolls are not just the parts of the Scientist’s soul, but his memories of different people.

1 - the Chancellor
2 - Scientist’s assistant
3 and 4 - Scientist’s children
5 - Rebel doctor
6 - An engineer that was forced by the Chancellor to remake Brain into the Machine
7 - Scientist’s wife
8 - Chancellor’s bodyguard
9 - the Scientist himself

I think that is much cooler interpretation that just the “aspects of the soul”

One of the movie’s producers was Russian and they added those things together with famous Russian Sci-Fi author (who wrote Metro2033 books)