| If you think getting pulled over by the police is intimidating, wait until they start piloting giant robots.
Patlabor: The Mobile Police (1988) is set in the near future (the late-’90s!) in which giant robots are used in construction sites and whatnot. Overpopulation has made construction more important than ever before, so the big machines become an accepted part of modern life. The human-piloted contraptions (called "labours") are powerful, inexpensive and absolutely everywhere, so it soon becomes practical to prepare for emergencies involving Labours, such as accidents, malfunctions, drunken operators, crime and even terrorism. Enter the Special Vehicles department of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department – the Patlabor Squad.
Patlabor: The Mobile Police is a seven-episode direct-to-video animated series that introduces us to the men and women of Section 2 of the Special Vehicles division – a ragtag band of misfit cops who have the good fortune of being the first people to pilot the incredibly sophisticated Ingram model Pat(rol) Labours – the first labours built specifically for law enforcement purposes.
The first thing new viewers notice about Patlabor is that it isn’t really about giant robots at all – it’s about people. Sure, the Patlabors are a lot more spiffy and anthropomorphic than a plain old squad car, but in the end they serve the same function. It’s the officers themselves who do all the work and it is them that the series focuses on. The cast of characters is definitely interesting enough to support the entire series all by themselves. Oftentimes, a whole episode will go by without even a whiff of giant robot action, and you won’t mind one bit because the stories and people are just so darn fascinating. In fact, the newly-constructed Patlabors get stuck in heavy Tokyo traffic en route from the factory, and barely make it into the first episode at all! Instead, we’re treated to an episode in which the Special Vehicles division has to figure out how to do their job without any special vehicles. The whole series is more like Hill Street Blues than, say, Robotech.
With high-quality material like this, seven half-hour episodes were never going to be enough. Fans around the world demanded more Patlabor, and they got it. In 1989, the Patlabor TV series was released, and it maintained the high standard set by its direct-to-video predecessor. The SV2 faced new and increasingly dangerous challenges, the character development deepened, and multi-episode story arcs emerged. The series ran for 47 episodes, but there was more to come, including a second run of video-only episodes, and a pair of movies that have become extremely popular in North America.
Patlabor 1: The Movie (1989) toned down the humour considerably, and presented an astonishingly tense and well-made drama about a city in the grip of terrorism. That goes double for Patlabor 2: The Movie (1993) that, if anything, is even more complex and sophisticated than the first film. The movies are slow paced but compelling, and have a special resonance after 9/11 that the filmmakers could not have predicted. It helped that director Mamoru Oshii went on to make Ghost in the Shell (1995), one of the most popular anime features ever. Many GitS fans have sought out Oshii’s previous work and caught up to the charms of Patlabor years after the fact. The movies and TV series are currently available on DVD (I have not yet seen WXIII: Patlabor the Movie 3 (2002), but I hear that many fans complained that the original characters are barely in it). |
Copyright ©2006 FFWD. All rights reserved.