{"id":51060,"date":"2023-11-25T02:29:26","date_gmt":"2023-11-25T02:29:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.alltheanime.com\/?p=28545"},"modified":"2023-11-25T02:29:26","modified_gmt":"2023-11-25T02:29:26","slug":"patlabor-the-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/2023\/11\/25\/patlabor-the-movie\/","title":{"rendered":"Patlabor the Movie"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Andrew Osmond.<\/p>\n

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Mamoru Oshii, the director of Patlabor the Movie<\/a><\/em>, once described his 1989 film as pop entertainment. Any fan of Oshii, best known for Ghost in the Shell<\/em>, knows that\u2019s a huge undersell for what is an extremely complex, thoughtful film. But perhaps Oshii was referring to how Patlabor the Movie<\/em> ticks a great many boxes at once.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a comedy-drama featuring one of the most loveable character ensembles created in anime \u2013 not teen students, but a very unorthodox police team who spend their time off duty raising chickens and growing their own food. Patlabor the Movie<\/em> is also a mystery film, twisty to the point of postmodernism, whose conclusion is a sardonic comment on the state of post-war Japan. But the film\u2019s references are far from exclusively Japanese. For instance, the climax includes a massive<\/em> homage to an Alfred Hitchcock classic that\u2019s both funny and sinister.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also a most unusual mecha anime. A decade before, Gundam<\/em> had popularised the idea of the \u201creal robot\u201d anime, treating giant human-shaped big robots as real machines in believable contexts. Patlabor<\/em> pushes that to its logical end, placing the big robots and their operators in what\u2019s effectively present-day Tokyo, though the film\u2019s dateline is 1999, a decade in the future when Patlabor<\/em> opened.<\/p>\n

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In Patlabor<\/em>\u2019s world, \u201cLabor\u201d robots are used in many fields; most importantly in the film, they\u2019re used for giant construction projects. They\u2019re also used by the police, though a quirk of both Oshii\u2019s Patlabor <\/em>films is we won\u2019t see much of that till the films\u2019 respective last acts. Up until then, the characters work as old-fashioned investigators. They dig through data, pound the streets, and bump heads with their superiors for asking awkward questions.<\/p>\n

The first film highlights two youngsters in \u201cSV2\u201d \u2013 part of Tokyo\u2019s Special Vehicles unit. One of these youngsters is Shinohara, a highly motivated officer. A detail that\u2019s important in the film is that he\u2019s the estranged son of the founder of Japan\u2019s main Labor manufacturer; the company shares his family name, Shinohara. Then there\u2019s Noa, an ing\u00e9nue cute enough to be an anime mascot and<\/em> a gifted Labor pilot. She relates to her own Labor, Alphonse, as if it\u2019s a living creature.<\/p>\n

Behind them is Goto, their deceptively languid, amiable, soft-spoken captain, with a mind of Sherlockian sharpness. One of the film\u2019s running jokes is how Goto seems absurdly laid back, when he\u2019s really ten steps ahead of everyone else and manipulating them to do whatever he needs. He has an ally in the regular police, Detective Matsui, who does the gumshoe work. Matsui\u2019s mostly kept apart from the main team, barring an important scene where he discusses his findings with Goto, the men\u2019s mutual respect clear.<\/p>\n

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Other figures include the overtly comedic Ota, a shouty hair-trigger gun nut, and Yamazaki, a gentle giant archetype who grows food for the team. Two more characters show up later: Shiba, an engineer responsible for the Labors\u2019 upkeep, and Clancy, a New York cop who\u2019s worked with the Patlabor team in the past.<\/p>\n

Most of these details are easy to pick up while you\u2019re watching, though Clancy\u2019s sudden arrival may confuse some viewers, especially as she has the tersest of introductions. At a Tokyo airport, she\u2019s asked why she\u2019s come to Japan: \u201cBusiness or Pleasure?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCombat,\u201d she replies.<\/p>\n

Patlabor the Movie<\/em> is spun off from an existing franchise, Patlabor<\/em>, which established everything that\u2019s outlined above. It was avowedly a team effort, made by a collective called \u201cHeadgear.\u201d Apart from Oshii, the team included writer Kazunoi Ito (who would later script Oshii\u2019s Ghost in the Shell<\/em>), character designer Akemi Takada (who was married to Ito for a time), mecha designer Yutaka Izubuchi and manga artist Masami Yuki. It was Yuki who came up with the seed idea for Patlabor<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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However, when the first film opened in Japanese in July 1989, there wasn\u2019t much other Patlabor <\/em>around. The film predated the Patlabor<\/em> TV anime, which would begin in October that year. The franchise had begun in 1988, as a manga by Yuki and as a seven-part video series \u2013 the latter directed mostly by Oshii and sometimes called Patlabor: The Early Days<\/em>. The video episodes cover the spectrum, from straight action to preposterous farce.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s likely, though, that many Japanese viewers who saw the film in 1989 were coming to Patlabor<\/em>\u2019sworld afresh \u2013 it\u2019s still far easier to navigate than the film of Akira<\/em>. True, Patlabor the Movie<\/em> gives the impression<\/em> of being distilled from a series, just because of its diverse parts. When I wrote about the film for Sight & Sound<\/em> twenty years ago, I commented: \u201cThe abrupt shifts between police procedural, high-tech action, character business and Oshii\u2019s philosophising make it feel like a blend of different television episodes.\u201d And yet these parts fit together so well.<\/p>\n

In the story, the characters are striving to uncover a master plan set in motion by the film\u2019s antagonist. In an expectation-breaking twist right off, he\u2019s already dead. We see him in the opening moments, stepping smiling off the top of a metal \u201cisland\u201d in the middle of Tokyo Bay, and plunging into the waters below. It\u2019s a clear foreshadow of the opening of Ghost in the Shell<\/em> six years later, with its cyborg heroine plunging off a skyscraper.<\/p>\n

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In the wake of his death, Labors start going out of control, acting autonomously and even switching themselves back on when their operators don\u2019t want them to. The Patlabor <\/em>characters realise there\u2019s a computer virus in the Labors\u2019 new operating system\u2026 but that\u2019s only the beginning of their adversary\u2019s scheme, planned out far in advance with a diabolical end game. This adversary is a programmer called Eiichi Hoba \u2013 \u201cE. Hoba,\u201d nicknamed \u201cJehovah,\u201d and his name is for more than play.<\/p>\n

The underlying subject of the film is the infrastructure of post-war Japan. In 1974, Roman Polanski made the film Chinatown<\/em>, whose plot revolved around the supply of water through aqueducts to the parched city of Los Angeles. The Patlabor<\/em> franchise is also all about water. It revolves around Japan\u2019s projects to reclaim land from the sea, which go back centuries, especially in the Tokyo area. The development of Tokyo Bay was especially topical when Patlabor<\/em> began in the late 1980s.<\/p>\n

In An Armchair Traveller\u2019s History of Tokyo<\/em>, Jonathan Clements described how at that time, \u201cThe Tokyo government had poured money into its harbour district, announcing a huge docklands renewal initiative\u2026 The portside development of the artificial island Odaiba was expected to be a fantastic opportunity for business real estate.\u201d British readers may think of the development of London\u2019s Docklands not long before; it was the backdrop for another classic crime film, The Long Good Friday<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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Patlabor the Movie<\/em> does indeed show the business interests involved in such development. Midway through the film, young Shinohara is maddened to learn the scandal he\u2019s found is being carefully covered up by the authorities. This leads to an outburst that explodes the film\u2019s style, with Shinohara\u2019s screaming face in \u201cfish eye lens\u201d close-up and giant-sized police emblems shaking with rage. It\u2019s a familiar conspiracy-thriller scene, ramped up to hilarious cartoon extremes.<\/p>\n

But Oshii\u2019s interest in the situation runs far deeper. He\u2019s concerned about the spiritual<\/em> consequences of these building projects, the implications of reshaping Japan as an end in itself, what it means for Japan\u2019s heritage and memory. This strand is unspooled in the multiple languid scenes of Detective Matsui, investigating Hoba\u2019s background for Goto. Matsui explores through endless beautifully-drawn scenes of a \u201clost\u201d Tokyo that\u2019s scheduled for imminent demolition. There are dried-up canals, empty cavernous storehouses and mountains of junk.<\/p>\n

These scenes showcase Oshii\u2019s love for strange, quiet, melancholically beautiful spaces. Think of the dark stone city in Angel\u2019s Egg<\/em> or the giant flooded arena and abandoned museum that host duels in Ghost in the Shell<\/em>. In Patlabor the Movie<\/em>, the \u201clost Tokyo\u201d storyboards and backgrounds were based on photos taken by Haruhiko Higami. Later, Higami would scout a Hong Kong enclave called Kowloon Walled City; these photos were the basis for the \u201cold city\u201d scenes in Oshii\u2019s Ghost<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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Interviewed by the website 032c<\/em>, Stefan Riekeles, the curator of the \u201cAnime Architecture\u201d museum exhibition, explained what lay behind the scenery in Patlabor: The Movie<\/em>. \u201cTokyo was once a lagoon city with many canals surrounding the Imperial Palace. Most of the channels, dating back to the Edo period, were filled in the 1960s. As local research, Oshii and his team criss-crossed Tokyo by boat through remaining old channels to find new, unusual perspectives and hidden views.\u201d<\/p>\n

Far more than background colour, these hidden landscapes are a key part of Hoba\u2019s design in the story. Hoba wants the police to see<\/em> them, in the same way as conventional film villains force the police to see their gory handiwork. Hoba\u2019s plan is far more elegant than butchery. It emerges that he\u2019s aiming to teach the investigators a lesson about what happens when a society forgets its history. It\u2019s a lesson like that in Alex Kerr\u2019s book Dogs and Demons: The Fall of Modern Japan<\/em>; this is a furious polemic about Japan trashing its heritage, its pointlessly monumental building projects, the damming of its waters.<\/p>\n

This is not just a concern in Patlabor<\/em>; it also resonates in other popular anime. \u201cWe are inhabitants of an ancient island nation\u2026 Our place is the past and in history. People who have no sense of history, or ethnic groups that have forgotten their past, are destined to disappear like the short-lived mayfly.\u201d So declared Hayao Miyazaki in his original project proposal for Spirited Away<\/em>, a film that\u2019s all about Japan\u2019s hidden heritage, abjected by modernity. More recently, Makoto Shinkai\u2019s Weathering with You<\/em> ends with Tokyo\u2019s blockbuster reclamation projects \u2013 the island of Odaiba, the Rainbow Bridge \u2013 sunken underwater again, while an old woman reflects that\u2019s how Tokyo used to be.<\/p>\n

In Patlabor<\/em>, one of the best jokes in the film is also the most acid, as we find out how Hoba has managed to turn Tokyo\u2019s high-rise skyline<\/em> into an apocalyptic weapon \u2013 a brilliant attack on modern architecture. As in the sequel Patlabor 2<\/em>, you come out of the film with the strong sense that Oshii sides with the \u201cvillain\u201d all the time. There\u2019s a lovely moment when a female police captain Shinobu listens to Goto lay out the brilliance of Hoba\u2019s scheme. Then she remarks that Goto looks positively giddy talking about it.<\/p>\n

Indeed, for all the twists that are revealed in the story, there\u2019s one twist that might occur to you at the end. Just suppose\u2026 What if Hoba was just an ordinary guy who met a tragic end, and who never created the film\u2019s masterplan at all? Suppose he was just set up as a scapegoat by the real<\/em> mastermind, like many of the heavies in Oshii\u2019s Ghost in the Shell<\/em>? After all, we can see there\u2019s someone in Patlabor <\/em>who\u2019s clever enough to have orchestrated it all.<\/p>\n

But while it\u2019s funny to wonder if Goto might be the film\u2019s real <\/em>villain, playing both sides of the chess board, the figure of Hoba fits with Oshii\u2019s other anime. He\u2019s one of the director\u2019s infuriatingly elusive adversaries, in line with Tsuge in Patlabor 2<\/em>, Teacher in The Sky Crawlers<\/em> and the completely impersonal Locus Solus company in Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence<\/em>. Most of all, Hoba foreshadows the Puppet Master in the first Ghost<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Like the Puppet Master, Hoba seemingly sees his humanity as a disposable fa\u00e7ade. His real<\/em> existence in the film is as a Trojan Horse computer virus, multiplying merrily through the material world. And if you think this virus is only metaphorically alive, remember that not everyone sees life the same way. Noa, for one, certainly sees her mecha Alphonse as alive. Hoba and Oshii love Old Testament stories and quotes, but the film mixes them with an implied pantheism that any Japanese viewer would recognise.<\/p>\n

Andrew Osmond is the author of 100 Animated Feature Films<\/a>.<\/a><\/em><\/strong> Patlabor the Movie<\/em> will be released by Anime Limited. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n

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By Andrew Osmond. Mamoru Oshii, the director of Patlabor the Movie, once described his 1989 film as pop entertainment. Any fan of Oshii, best known for Ghost in the Shell, knows that\u2019s a huge undersell for what is an extremely complex, thoughtful film. But perhaps Oshii was referring to how Patlabor the Movie ticks a [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-container-style":"default","site-container-layout":"default","site-sidebar-layout":"default","disable-article-header":"default","disable-site-header":"default","disable-site-footer":"default","disable-content-area-spacing":"default","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[61,122,127,129,124,128,125,132,131,133,126,130,123,66,94,88,97,56,64,65,60,112,40,75,95,104,33,120,105,101,98,115,30,29,41,86,70,69,68,72,71,26,118,108,87,46,55,48,52,54,51,50,83,62,58,57,109,35,59,63,85,79,82,96,80,27,81,114,44,42,43,45,38,39,110,117,100,111,116,73,89,90,92,91,93,84,78,37,102,34,36,77,67,74,99,113,119,28,121,32,47,49,53,103,31,76],"class_list":["post-51060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anime","tag-airpods","tag-anime","tag-anime-characters","tag-anime-cosplay","tag-anime-edits","tag-anime-merchandise","tag-anime-movies","tag-anime-news","tag-anime-recommendations","tag-anime-reviews","tag-anime-series","tag-anime-streaming","tag-animes","tag-app-store","tag-app-store-samsung","tag-appgallery","tag-appgallery-oneplus","tag-apple","tag-apple-music","tag-apple-tv","tag-apple-watch","tag-bbc-sport","tag-best-mobile-games","tag-bixby","tag-bixby-xiaomi","tag-champions-league","tag-cyberpunk","tag-cyberpunk-2077","tag-fantasy-football","tag-fifa","tag-football","tag-formula-1","tag-fortnite","tag-free-fire","tag-free-mobile-games","tag-freebuds-pro","tag-galaxy-a52","tag-galaxy-note-20","tag-galaxy-s21","tag-galaxy-watch-4","tag-galaxy-z-fold-3","tag-game","tag-games","tag-golf","tag-harmonyos","tag-how-to-backup-iphone","tag-how-to-factory-reset-iphone","tag-how-to-reset-iphone","tag-how-to-restore-iphone","tag-how-to-unlock-iphone","tag-how-to-unlock-iphone-5","tag-how-to-unlock-iphone-6","tag-huawei","tag-ios","tag-ipad","tag-iphone","tag-live-soccer","tag-lol","tag-macbook","tag-macos","tag-mate-40-pro","tag-mi-11-lite","tag-mi-home-security-camera-basic-1080p","tag-mi-home-security-camera-basic-1080p-huawei","tag-mi-smart-band-6","tag-minecraft","tag-miui","tag-mlb-scores","tag-mobile-game-design","tag-mobile-game-development","tag-mobile-game-marketing","tag-mobile-game-monetization","tag-mobile-games","tag-mobile-gaming","tag-nba-scores","tag-nba-standings","tag-nfl","tag-nfl-scores","tag-nhl-scores","tag-one-ui","tag-oneplus","tag-oneplus-9-pro","tag-oneplus-buds-pro","tag-oneplus-nord-ce-5g","tag-oxygenos","tag-p40-pro-plus","tag-poco-x3-pro","tag-pokemon","tag-premier-league","tag-pubg","tag-pubg-mobile","tag-redmi-note-10-pro","tag-samsung","tag-samsung-pay","tag-soccer","tag-sports","tag-steam","tag-steeam","tag-top-10-anime","tag-valorant","tag-when-do-the-iphone-7-come-out","tag-when-does-the-iphone-7-come-out","tag-when-is-the-iphone-7-coming-out","tag-world-cup","tag-xbox-series-x","tag-xiaomi"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51060"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51061,"href":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51060\/revisions\/51061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}