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Patlabor The Movie

• Directed by Oshii Mamoru
• Written by Ito Kazunori
• Released in the US by Bandai Visual/Honneamise

The first Patlabor movie has always had a special place in my heart, as my first inkling that there might be more to these Japanese cartoons than the beautiful and vapid Akira, or the ugly and vapid Fist of the North Star. Coincidentally, Bandai Visual's spiffy new release of that movie comes almost exactly a decade after I took that first fateful step toward full-blown Japanophilia/phobia.

Happily, it holds up extremely well for a seventeen-year-old movie; in fact, it's basically the prototype for Ghost in the Shell: Stand-Alone Complex (more on that in a minute). The animation quality is good... it's not as amazing as Akira, but shows off its theatrical budget well, and the rich color palette stands out even more in this age of digital animation. The movie is actually a decent place to jump into the series-- it concludes the long-simmering Babylon Project subplot, but the main story is firmly self-contained, the exposition is in all the right places, and the characters are sketched broadly enough to be accessible to first-timers.

The premise is brilliantly simple; given a future where robots are widely used for construction and other heavy labor, inevitably robots will be involved in crimes. Hence Special Vehicles police units that PATrol in LABORs. The premise is also brilliantly silly; Patlabor movies are much more sober than the often comedic TV and OVA episodes, but Oshii still makes time for dry sight gags like a Labor's giant revolver being hand-loaded with equally huge bullets. In this outing, a rash of Labor malfunctions connects to the mysterious suicide of a key figure in a giant public works project, and eventually to the impending destruction of the city. And in best anime fashion, only a scrappy, ragtag band of underdogs can stop it.

(Now that I think about it, the bureaucracy and corporate collusion paralyzing everyone but SV section 2 is probably the seed of the second movie, but let's take this one film at a time)

I didn't realize just how influential this movie was until I rewatched it; as I mentioned earlier, the acclaimed Ghost in the Shell TV series stays surprisingly close to Patlabor 1's structure. While it's no surprise that an Oshii movie spinoff would be indebted to his style, the "Law & Order" police procedural approach that defines GitS TV is basically ripped straight out of this film (for that matter, Oshii's subsequent movies haven't strayed far from this path, particularly the brooding feel and moody cityscape montages he so loves). While Stand-Alone Complex obviously has its roots in the original GitS manga, Section 9's anime exploits are a lot closer to SV2's movie outings than Shirow's guns-blazing paramilitary action.

Computer crime is another strong link between SAC and Patlabor 1, but the messiah-complex aspect also finds its way into Serial Experiments Lain. The rogue hacker part of Patlabor 1's plot has dated well (the archaically large bank of computers is amusing now, but the movie also features the still-rare sight of prototype technology that isn't magically free of all bugs or defect), but then the movie's "future" of 1999 isn't all that different from what eventually rolled around, nor was it all that different from the 1989 in which it was made. Therein lies wisdom.

Patlabor is also notable for being a mecha show that isn't really about the robots; while certainly not the first "real robot" series to put the emphasis on the people inside the suits, it is perhaps the only one that really keeps the tech toys at arm's length. In the series, the Ingrams are often used as the butt of a joke, and in the movie, they pretty much gather dust between an early fight against a glorified tractor and the smash-em-up finale.

On the whole, this movie's just as entertaining as I remembered, which is a nice change from all the times I've given a second chance to something that turned out to be even worse (remind me to tell you the story of Shin Getter Robo sometime). I'd say it's essential viewing for anyone who likes Stand-Alone Complex, which is pretty much all right-thinking people. Some have a problem with the moody-broody tone bearing no real resemblance to the happy-go-lucky TV and OVA series it sprang from, but taken on its own merits it's a good movie. Joe Bob says check it out.