Patlabor: The Mobile Police

HasseRovdjur

HasseRovdjur

Breast Claw
Patlabor: The Mobile Police
Alt title:Mobile Police Patlabor

Synopsis, Screenshots, Reviews, Recommendations ~ Add Your Own Recommendations

Discuss individual episodes and first impressions of this anime here. Full reviews should be posted here. Forum rules and post guidelines can be found here.

__________________________________

Just making a thread for the buddy group, which starts on Wednesday.

Episode 1:


The OP was pretty damn eargasmic in all it's 80's glory.

Okay, so the premise seems very similar to Dominion, though they differ in execution. Dominion was more full-speed ahead action and comedy while this feels more like a down-to-earth (with mechs!) police workplace comedy. Good then that the comedy in Patlabor is more to my liking.

Anyway, Captain Goto is all I aspire to be in life. He's remarkably deadpan and laid back for a police chief. The mechs have revolvers, which I've never seen before. You'd think that the mechs in Saber Rider would have them, but no.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Episode 1

Well I too thought the OP was awesome, proper 80's cheese! The characters seem pretty good so far, Captain Goto being my favourite by far. It's also completely different in atmosphere to how i though it would be, I saw Patlabor: The Movie when I was about 15, and that was quite a serious film, this is pretty comedic so far. As Hasse said, it's a humour that you tend not to see in anime too.

I love the revolvers, but at the same time, don't they seem strangely placed to you, on the 'calf' of the Labors? The hands have to extend to reach them, wouldn't it have just been easier to have them on the hip? Anyhoo, that's just nitpicking, I'll save my judgement for when I catch up!
 
Last edited:
I think there's too much gears and shit (like stuff that makes the legs move and stay on) in the hip section for a revolver to fit, and they probably want the revolvers to be stored inside the mech so that no unauthorised persons can get to them. I mean, doesn't Japanese police have their guns fastened to their uniforms? Anyway, that's my half-assed quasi-justification.
 
I imagine you're right, I do like the design of the Labors, especially the fact that the police actually face out of them rather than sitting completely inside surrounded by screens, and the construction ones look exactly the same inside as real construction machinery does now.
 
Yeah, I dig the designs as well. They remind me of the loader mech in Aliens in that they booth look like actual tools instead of some spiffy, futuristic science fiction tech.
 
Patlabor is kind of the natural extreme end of the turn towards 'realistic' mecha from the late seventies on, it's about as low-key and plausible a series as one could ever do with mecha. There's a tag-line the TV show, IIRC, uses, which goes something like this: 'This is fiction, but in ten years- who knows?'

Ah, ten years has come and gone without giant robot crime fighters, but unlike the heroes of Patlabor we have mobile phones... clearly our technology has been going in the wrong direction.

This is also a pretty great and thoroughly entertaining sci-fi anime franchise (the what, three OVAs, the TV series, the three movies) so enjoy, and so on.
 
HasseRovdjur said:
Yeah, I dig the designs as well. They remind me of the loader mech in Aliens in that they booth look like actual tools instead of some spiffy, futuristic science fiction tech.
Click to expand...

That's exactly what I thought about them too! Its easy with mech series to get lost in the ridiculousness of it all, especially with almost every Gundam series (except the first), and Evangelion (which I love) and RahXephon (which I don't).
 
Taekwondoin said:
That's exactly what I thought about them too! Its easy with mech series to get lost in the ridiculousness of it all, especially with almost every Gundam series (except the first), and Evangelion (which I love) and RahXephon (which I don't).
Click to expand...
Gundam started the shift towards more realistic robots. It was more realistic by the standards of the other mecha anime at the time - Mazinger and what not.

Evangelion on the other hand was a bit of a reaction against the real robot trend, bringing in some of the old 1970s super robot stuff back, and RahXephon, in the sense it bears no resemblance at all to Evangelion at all, follows its lead. (Patlabor's mecha designer was the director of RahXephon, too - small world, anime, small world.)

But yeah, unless my memory is completely shot I think the Patlabor onboard computers actually use DOS and there may be something in there about using floppy disks. The point is these things are definitely hardware, and this cast of screwups aren't even using the shiniest, latest models like you'd see in other anime.
 
valondar said:
Gundam started the shift towards more realistic robots. It was more realistic by the standards of the other mecha anime at the time - Mazinger and what not.

Evangelion on the other hand was a bit of a reaction against the real robot trend, bringing in some of the old 1970s super robot stuff back, and RahXephon, in the sense it bears no resemblance at all to Evangelion at all, follows its lead.

But yeah, unless my memory is completely shot I think the Patlabor onboard computers actually use DOS and there may be something in there about using floppy disks. The point is these things are definitely hardware.
Click to expand...

Gundam started that way, but you've gotta admit that it also abandoned it pretty quickly, things like the Dark Gundam and Burning Gundam from Mobile Fighter G Gundam, they had mystical powers!

The Eva's were perhaps a bad example because as the series go on you find out that
they're organic so not really mechs at all

Labors are definitely hardware though, but you're thinking of HOS 'Hyper Operating System' not DOS. There's floppy discs used though.
 
Taekwondoin said:
Gundam started that way, but you've gotta admit that it also abandoned it pretty quickly,
Click to expand...

Well not quickly. It kept this up for a good decade and more with a couple of anime series, movies and OVA (one of which - Gundam 0080 - not only had pretty gritty-looking mecha, but also had the future designer of the Patlabors, Izabuchi, doing the designer).

But yes, obviously not all Gundams fall under the real robot genre.

Labors are definitely hardware though, but you're thinking of HOS 'Hyper Operating System' not DOS. There's floppy discs used though.
Click to expand...

Close enough!
 
valondar said:
Well not quickly. It kept this up for a good decade and more with a couple of anime series, movies and OVA (one of which - Gundam 0080 - not only had pretty gritty-looking mecha, but also had the future designer of the Patlabors, Izabuchi, doing the designer).
Click to expand...

Its easy to forget sometimes just how long the Gundam franchise has been going, I mean christ, it's been about 13 years since I watched Gundam Wing!

Anyway lets bring this back on topic. I'll post my proper thoughts on Episode 1 tomorrow!
 
About as out there that Patlabor ever gets is the 3rd movie. If you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about.

Also, Patlabor is the only creation from the forming of Headgear. A bit of a shame if you ask me.
 
I have the first movie, was pretty entertaining and engaging. Good deal of comedy and characters did catch my interest too. I'd definitely say these are more realistic mechas.....given they aren't fighting huge double lasers and shit.

I need to get into the rest of the series.
 
Episode 2:

So that's how a Labor would look if this was more like Gundam. I bet it would even fly over small bridges...

Which is another thing that separates this from other 'real robot' shows.

We get some exposition during the briefing (how convenient!) and learns why there's a need for a police force specialised in Labor Crime. If only the government had listened to the environmentalists...

I feel oddly relaxed by watching this, even during the mandatory bomb disarming scene. The fact that they made it into a gag didn't hurt.

Taekwondoin said:
It's also completely different in atmosphere to how i though it would be, I saw Patlabor: The Movie when I was about 15, and that was quite a serious film, this is pretty comedic so far. As Hasse said, it's a humour that you tend not to see in anime too.
Click to expand...

I read that the movies are very different in tone from the OVA and TV series.
 
Episode 2

I actually enjoyed this one better than the first! I think i'm gonna like this anime.

The exposition during the briefing was well thought out, and it seems Patlabors exist because of a bunch of tree-huggin-hippies. We get introduced to Sgt Kanuka Clancy, she seemed like a decent character in the small amount of screen time she got, but I'm wondering if there's something shifty about her.

I now wish I wish I had the opportunity to be a frustrated blimp pilot
 
Episode 3:

I didn't like this as much as the previous two episodes.

Even though it was a Godzilla parody (the scientist with an eye patch gave it away). The (maybe not so) scientific explanation for his crazy experiments made my head hurt, but what the hell, it's just an anime. I'll try and leave any nitpicking to shitty shows.

The highlight of the episode was when the team proposed different plans for dealing with the fearsome seabeast. The chief calling out Shige for trying to make an oxygen bomb from dry ice was pretty good as well.
 
Episode 3

Hmmmmm

I pretty much agree with all of Hasse's points. For a show that is supposed to be one of the most realistic of the mech genre, a giant sea monster with a very quick evolution process enhanced by all of the waste that's dumped into Tokyo bay is just too out there. It doesn't seem to fit very well with all that I've seen so far. Also this ep was nowhere near as funny as the last 2. Hopefully No. 4 will bring it back on track.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top