Kidou Keisatsu Patlabor 2 the Movie

Three years after the Babylon Project conspiracy is resolved, the members of Kiichi Gotou's Patlabor unit have gone their separate ways. Gotou remains with the Patlabor team, accompanied by Shinobu Nagumo, his romantic crush and comrade.

Playing into the public's skepticism toward the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force, a terrorist organization begins to work from within the military to cause destruction and mass civil unrest throughout Japan. Nagumo learns that the mastermind behind the growing terrorist plot is none other than Yukihito Tsuge, her former mentor and lover.

Gotou reassembles his former Patlabor team, spearheaded by pilot Noa Izumi. Leading the team into a mission to arrest Tsuge, Nagumo must come to terms with her complicated past relationships in order to save Japan.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

The film won the 1993 Mainichi Film Award for animation and a 4DX renewal was shown in Japanese theaters on February 11, 2021.

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Related Anime

Prequel:	Kidou Keisatsu Patlabor the Movie
Sequel:	WXIII Kidou Keisatsu Patlabor
Other:	Kidou Keisatsu Patlabor: Reboot

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Characters & Voice Actors

Gotou, Kiichi

Main

Oobayashi, Ryuusuke
Japanese

Nagumo, Shinobu

Main

Sakakibara, Yoshiko
Japanese

Izumi, Noa

Supporting

Tominaga, Miina
Japanese

Shinohara, Asuma

Supporting

Furukawa, Toshio
Japanese

Oota, Isao

Supporting

Ikemizu, Michihiro
Japanese

Yamazaki, Hiromi

Supporting

Gouri, Daisuke
Japanese

Sakaki, Seitarou

Supporting

Saka, Osamu
Japanese

Tsuge, Yukihito

Supporting

Nezu, Jinpachi
Japanese

Shiba, Shigeo

Supporting

Chiba, Shigeru
Japanese

Arakawa, Shigeki

Supporting

Takenaka, Naoto
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Ishikawa, Mitsuhisa

Producer

Oosawa, Nobuhiro

Assistant Producer

Oshii, Mamoru

Director, Storyboard

Nishikubo, Mizuho

Episode Director

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Ending Theme

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Reviews

Jan 1, 2010

Archaeon

Recommended

If you ask the average anime fan for an intelligent, well crafted movie directed by Oshii Mamoru that has politics and philosophy mixed into a complex plot that featured high tech shenanigans, and that had great animation, sound and characterisation, then the chances are that the answer will be Ghost in the Shell.

Or, they'll tell you about Patlabor 2.

Released in 1993, four years after the first Patlabor movie, the sequel once again united the talents of Headgear, in particular those of scriptwriter Ito Kazunori and Oshii himself. The movie received widespread critical acclaim, and although it's emphasis on taut drama rather than mecha action alienated ...

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Aug 28, 2016

FAKEANIMEGIRL

Mixed Feelings

From the moment I learned about the Patlabor franchise, all of my watching it was for the purpose of reaching this movie. It's widely regarded as the peak of Patlabor and one of Mamoru Oshii's greatest films. Being a major landmark in anime movies, the mecha genre, and allegedly one of Oshii's best political thrillers made it an essential point for several reasons. Oddly, approaching this movie chronologically almost makes it seem out of place. The Patlabor Early Days OVA was a character personality-driven mix of comedic slice of life police adventures with a dystopian undercurrent, and in my review for the first Patlabor movie ... I noted how it went in a logical direction by continuing the more serious tone reached by the end of the OVA. I also expressed some disappointment how large the stride was, with the cast largely being pushed to the background to stage pure expositionary plot and that I thought it was getting away from the things that made Patlabor stand out. It doesn't necessarily benefit it to become a convoluted political procedural, but Patlabor 2 brings it in that direction even further. Literally for both better and worse.

A significant improvement of Patlabor 2 over its predecessor is that while it remains a dense political drama it pushes its thematic weight to the forefront and deals with more ambiguous and more personal themes than the first movie's which were quite buried (fairly acceptably, since it fell into the set-up of that dark underbelly mentioned in the OVA). The most difficult aspect of Patlabor 2 is that personal business: it's a movie made by Japan, specifically about Japan, and is understandably not too concerned with bridging the viewer's understanding of the deepest mechanisms of contemporary Japan's political status. Allusions are made in passing to previous real-life Japanese political turmoil in comparison with the movie's events with the assumption that the meaning is all implicit. Heaps of expository dialogue are thrown at the viewer and are always outpacing itself, rapidly establishing the political context of the movie's situation without spending the time to explain it because the setting wasn't built up to a suitable extent by previous Patlabor works in order to house the movie's plot and statements.

This leads into what feels so odd about Patlabor 2 when having come to it chronologically. It feels exactly like Mamoru Oshii, or perhaps the writers, wanted to make a political story expressing their thoughts on Japan and used Patlabor as a vehicle, it being an existing franchise presumably making it easier to get financial backers and talent on board. What made Patlabor "Patlabor" is pushed to the backdrop for these philosophical diatribes. The comedy is almost completely gone, the mecha barely used, and the previous cast is nearly non-existent as the movie is forced to revolve around Gotou and Nagumo, the most serious characters. After attachment has been built up for the others, it's disappointing that they're only forcibly brought to the head at the movie's climax as some sort of quota but without closure. The climax of the movie is also the only place it truly becomes action-oriented, and I'd never begrudge the movie for wanting to focus more on drama, so I only bring up this up for the fact that the previous movie had a similar structure but its final set-piece was much larger in scope and with a more complex strategy dictating the events.

Patlabor 2 is centered around civil unrest that begins when a bridge bombing sets up suspicion among Japan's numerous political bureaucracies. The country enters a cold war-like state with the police, ground forces, and air force all biding their time waiting for one branch to slip up so they can wrestle more political control out of the situation. This scheme is masterminded by Nagumo's former captain and ex-lover, who was previously unmentioned. This brings the opportunity to develop the implied romantic tension between her and Gotou, but although they are the most prominently featured characters in the movie no development is made on this front despite the movie concluding this Patlabor timeline. This demonstration seems to be done to criticize Japan's distancing from global conflict for the sake of peace while simultaneously assisting said conflict by still trying to profit from it under the table economically and by allying themselves with those fighting the actual wars. This brings up the topic of a just war and unjust peace, with the idea that Japan has avoided war to be an illusion. It's an interesting idea that bodes a lot of ambiguity about how to ethically handle Japan's new position on the worldwide political spectrum, and it's a theme that has increasing relevance for countries across the globe as indirect involvement in war keeps the public distanced and satisfied while the country still profits. It's a tenuous peace at best with no true allies but with moral grandstanding.

The least surprising thing about Patlabor 2 is Mamoru Oshii's direction. My favorite thing about the movie was its cinematography, with numerous shots of the cold, grey cities of Japan stuck in an empty stasis. Backgrounds are densely detailed with a nearly endless trading off of packed stills of zoomed out city-scapes. This glacially austere tone is assisted by Kenji Kawai's icy electronic new age score that glides by and only briefly shows signs of life with cooed vocals. Strong background stills are this movie's aesthetic backbone and it's light on movement overall, but I recall liking several shots. One is how a sniper is concerned about shooting down birds that obstruct his target, but then is ordered to fire anyway and shoots them down, symbolic of how Tsuge is risking the public's safety by luring them out of their illusion. The handcuff scene towards the end where Nagumo caresses Tsuge's hand before cuffing it is a great trade-off between her attachment to her job's responsibility replacing her attachment to the past.

When all's said and done, Patlabor 2 is one of Oshii's most literary works. The emphasis on its political drama and themes pushes the individual stories to the background which makes the former more of a success than say the unbalanced Jin-Roh, but it bears the unfortunate decision of attaching itself to the Patlabor name without really earning it. It's an extremely wordy demonstrative political drama, a political thriller without much in the way of thrills because of its sterile handling of the human emotions underneath it. It's in one sense the most interesting part of the Patlabor franchise for its thematic diversity, and yet another sense it's the least interesting by being the most ordinary and straightforward. There was nothing quite like Patlabor among its genre, yet Patlabor 2 feels like a straight-shooting political statement with the framework of something that had more personality. If Japan's political issues don't hold much relevance to you, this movie's implied emotional undercurrent gained by association will barely expose itself.

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Feb 26, 2024

Sloth_Cafe

Not Recommended

Patlabor is a really cool idea for an anime, in theory. One of the worst things a movie or show can do is have "tell don't show" story telling for most of what it tries to convey to the audience. Patlabor in general has this problem, but this movie is rampant with dull moments of characters just rambling on instead of actually doing anything interesting. A lot of exposition dumping where the scene is not dynamic in anyway with either people just sitting in a room or shifting between stale backgrounds. This movie's story is more philosophical strain of thought than anything interesting. Which is ... rambling is definitely something Oshii does occasionally. This movie was around 110 minutes, and it easily could have been 80-90. Just a lot of slow scenes that could have been better organized, or flat out cut. Almost as if they needed to make the movie a certain length.

The story here is framed as a political drama, but the way it is told is just so dull with too much being left vague to the audience. It is hard to care about what is going on when we never even see the human element of how this is affecting normal people in Tokyo. The OVAs and first movie rely heavy on the main cast of characters, and a fair bit of comedy to keep it fun. Here most of the main cast is barely even in the movie. Noa is on screen for maybe 5 minutes. Clancy is not in the movie at all, and she is probably the most fun character. Which that highlights the biggest issue with this movie compared to what came before it. This just is not fun. That includes the barely built up villain who is just a repeat of a story line from the OVA. Except it was probably better in the OVA. The ending is also super anti-climactic, but let me move on.

I have not watched the main show yet, and I wonder if it somehow explains better how we ended up here. Because this movie feels 5-10 years after the first movie. Visually it has it's moments for sure, but I feel like the colors are washed out or something compared to the earlier works. Maybe something was up with my version though. Visually it was not good enough to make up for it's shortcomings. There is a change in art style and character design in this movie that I think is a downgrade to how the series has looked before.

Once again we have Patlabor which is a mech anime with very little mech action. Except this time it is really low for how long the movie was. It is very strange to me that this is the highest rated Patlabor thing on MAL that people seem to claim is the best from the franchise. This movie does not even feel like a Patlabor story, and probably would have been better off not using the characters or this world. It easily could have just been any futuristic Japan setting while still being almost the exact same movie.

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Kidou Keisatsu Patlabor 2 the Movie

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Gotou, Kiichi

Nagumo, Shinobu

Izumi, Noa

Shinohara, Asuma

Oota, Isao

Yamazaki, Hiromi

Sakaki, Seitarou

Tsuge, Yukihito

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Kidou Keisatsu Patlabor 2 the Movie

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Information

Statistics

Available At

Resources

Streaming Platforms

Synopsis

Background

Visit MALxJapan MALxJapan -More than just anime-

Related Anime

Characters & Voice Actors

Staff

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Ending Theme

Reviews

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