Kidou Keisatsu Patlabor 2 the Movie

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 ... some hardcore fans of the genre, the majority of people enjoyed the more mature stance taken by the film.

Patlabor 2 is set in 2002, three years after the first movie. The members of Section 2's Special Vehicles 2nd Division have matured during this time, with several of them leaving to pursue careers in different departments or in the public sector. All is peaceful until the day a missile destroys the Yokohama Bay Bridge, at which point the JGSDF (Japanese Ground Self Defense Force), declares martial law in the beief that the attack was commited by the JASDF (Japanese Air Self Defense Force).

Captain Gotoh Kiichi however, suspects that there is more at play than a simple military coup, and secretly brings together the old members of SV2 to find out what is at play, and more importantly, what is at stake.

In a departure from the standard mecha format of guts winning the day, Ito Kazunori opted for something far more subtle and mature when developing the plot for this movie. There are those who believe that any show involving mechs must follow certain rules, however Headgear has chosen to, once again, blow those beliefs out of the water. Patlabor 2 is anything but a typical mecha anime, and while the action is still present in the movie, at times it's more of an afterthought to the drama that has gone before.

In terms of writing though, this movie is head and shoulders above many others of the time, and many today as well. The plot, with it's heavy focus on political machinations and philosophical justification, can seem to drag at certain times (Gotoh's conversation with Arakawa on the boat is one example of this), however these moments are worth hearing if one remembers the politics that are at play. The machinations of the JGSDF, the Government, the JASDF, and all other involved parties is wonderful to behold, with nothing that occurs being as simple or straightforward as people might think. The complexity of the plot can, at times, be a little bewildering, however this movie isn't simply designed to be enjoyed, but also to make one reflect.

One of the most noticeable things about this movie, especially in comparison to the first one, is how much more mature the characters look. Takada Akemi has really paid attention to what she was doing as, while the majority of characters are the same as the first movie, they look a little different because the effort has been made to give them some physical growth. Given the penchant for characters in mecha anime to remain unchanged and unchangeable in terms of their physical appearance from one season to the next, the fact that the characters are presented as older in Patlabor 2 makes this a rarity in the genre.

As for the other visuals, the backgrounds and settings are very, very good. The detailed scenery adds and air of realism to the movie, which is understandable when one considers the fact that much of the city and it's environs is based on that of the first movie, which in turn was based on photos of Tokyo. This realistic approach is also prevalent in both the character design, hence the physical aging, and also the mecha designs, which follow the utilitarian principles of the franchise.

In terms of animation Patlabor 2 is actually better than the original movie. There are some extremely well choregraphed action sequences, however given the fact that much of the movie is free of combat, the difference in quality is more difficult to recognise unless one pays attention to the movements of the characters themselves. There's also a small amount of CG incorporated into the movie, however this is difficult to spot as pains have been taken to mesh the CG seamlessly into the standard animation.

One of my gripes with Patlabor 2 is the music. The movie has little music in it, but what is there is very techno based. While this is well choreographed for the most part, the music just isn't really to my tastes. That's not to say that the choice of tracks is bad, no, it's simply a personal preference. That said, there are some tracks which fit extremely well with the on screen action, and there are some pieces that, while being electronic, are more orchestral, and rather atmospheric.

The area where this movie does shine though, is in the voice acting. The cast from the first movie have been reprised once more, and in a rare occurence, this is true for not only the Japanese dub, but also for both English dubs as well. One of the benefits of this is that in all three dubs the characters seem far more self-assured and composed (for the most part), something which enhances the viewers recognition of them being older and more mature. Also, unlike the Bandai dub of the first movie, the acting in Patlabor 2 is far more competent, and many consider it to be better than the release by Manga Entertainment.

As for the effects, well, as with the first movie the quality of the aural sensation is very good indeed, which should be no surprise given that the production teams behind this film are, for the most part, the same as before.

Unlike the first movie, which was very much a character driven piece, Patlabor 2 is far more of a political drama, with a healthy dose of philosophical justification. That's not to say that the characters don't get any development though, as they do in certain ways. However it should be noted that this movie isn't really about developing the characters, hence the reason why there is such comprehensive characterisation at work. That said, this format works extremely well for the movie as, while the effects of the attacks and martial law do have consequences for the characters, the audience knows that this is simply a chapter in their lives.

As with any chapter in anyone's life, growth isn't always immediate, or apparent.

In all honesty I found this movie intruiging and rewarding. The emphasis on politics and philosophy, especially as this is supposed to be a mecha show, made for a refreshingly different story. The fact that the movie isn't afraid to use big words and concepts was also unusual in that Oshii and the rest of the crew seem to be trusting in the intelligence of the viewer rather than feeling the need to explain every tiny detail. Granted there are other mech shows that also use big words and concepts, but a good number of those have a penchant for over-explaining, which can often come off as patronizing.

Like the first movie, Patlabor 2 is aimed at a more mature audience, however unlike the first movie this is far more relevant to the time it was made. At the time of it's production and release there was a great deal of tension in Japan, much of it focused on the status of the JSDF within the UN Peacekeeping forces. The movie's premise of internal conflict, political byplay, terrorist activity, and civil unrest, made very clear comparisons to real life, and the fact that a number of real life events were either cited in the film, or used as a reference for the plot, meant that the story had an air of plausibilty about it that made it difficult for people to ignore. In addition to this, the fact that the movie is essentially a mystery thriller (something of a rarity in those days), rather than a no brain action flick meant that audiences, especially fans of political thrillers, could more easily relate to the story, something which meant that the movie appealed to the public in general rather than to the average anime fan.

If you liked the first movie, or Ghost in the Shell, then this is definitely one to watch. The fact that Patlabor 2, like the first movie, doesn't place an emphasis on the mechs may dissuade some diehard fans of the genre from giving the franchise a chance, however this is very short sighted given the content and quality of both movies. In truth, while the first movie was a tad naive in certain areas, Patlabor 2 more than makes up for this, and I believe it to be at least on par with GitS in terms of plausibility and conceptualisation. Viewers shouldn't be put off by the fact that this movie is also a little more "wordy" than the first one either, as it's the dialogue in Patlabor 2 that really separates it from the pack.

All in all, this is an excellent political thriller (that just happens to include mechs), one that, even now, holds a degree of relevance given the current state of the world.

Overview:

Patlabor 2 the movie is an anime that nearly half of my MAL friends have watched in the last year. Every person I've talked to has said this film is one of the greatest anime films ever made and an indisputable masterpiece. Obviously I went in to this with VERY high expectations. However, my overall feelings towards the film are a little complicated.

Firstly, I want to say that Patlabor 2 is in fact an excellent film. The animation is jaw dropping. It does a masterful job instilling mood and atmosphere. It has some excellent character moments and I love to watch Goto and Shinobu's relationship ... whenever they share the screen together. It makes an admirable effort to explore complex and controversial political theories on the nature of war and peace. It directly references Japan's decision to participate in UN peacekeeping in 1993. Oshii took a strong political stance against what he saw as the loosening of Article 9 of Japan's pacifist constitution and creeping militarization. Oshii's stance was of course bashed as unpatriotic by Japanese conservatives, but he stood his ground and showed he has some balls. The fact that Oshii like Hayao Miyazaki is so unwavering in his principles adds a layer of ethos to an already emotionally powerful and visually stunning film.

My key issue with Patlabor 2 is that it simply isn't a Patlabor movie. This movie seriously exists because Oshii was drinking with his old buddy Hayao Miyazaki in some bar in 1993. A news article came on the TV saying that Japan was deploying a few soldiers to assist the UN in Cambodia, so of course these 2 old lefties just freaked the fuck out. I'm 100% certain that the movie Oshii wanted to make got rejected, so he pitched this story he wrote as a Patlabor sequel and shoehorned in the Patlabor characters at the last minute. Patlabor 2 is a Patlabor film like Mario 2 is a Mario game. Outside of a 30 second training sequence, it seriously takes over an hour for the titular Patlabors to even appear in this film. That appearance btw is just some empty Patlabors getting blown up by a helicopter. What do we get instead? We get about 7 solid minutes of characters talking about how Japan's post WW2 peace and prosperity is rotten because the prosperity of the wealthy nations is built on the suffering and exploitation of the poor nations. Japan's wealth is gained by trading with the United States, who endlessly engages in wars of capitalist imperialism and resource exploitation. By fully embracing capitalism and foreign trade, Japan has bloodied its hands by fueling these wars of imperialism that cause suffering in the Middle East, Africa, and Central America. Oshii brings the film to a screeching halt so we can get the Cliffs Notes on the famous Leftist essay "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism".

Mr. Oshii, we need to talk. I love you man, but this needs to be said. In case you forgot....THIS IS A FUCKING PATLABOR MOVIE! This is a goofy franchise that you originally started to ripoff Dominion Tank Police! It's a story about cops using construction robots with adorable little batons to fight crooks using construction robots to rob banks! If you wanted to make a dead serious, anti-imperialism, anti-war film to protest Japan's policies then save up your money and make THAT film. When you cram this shit into a franchise like Patlabor it becomes ridiculous! Imagine some guy was supposed to write and direct a Spider-Man movie. However, that guy just read some essays on Marxist thought and it really blew his mind. He ends up making a film in which Peter Parker just sits around a bar, drinks whiskey, and tries to convince the bartender that the workers need to seize the means of production. Would that be a good Spider-Man story? NOO! It would be fucking stupid! To a degree, that's exactly what Patlabor 2 feels like to me.

Lastly, we need to talk about the Japanese peacekeeping effort of 1993 and how Oshii essentially made Mt. Everest out of a mole hill. The main antagonist of this film is a grizzled veteran who returned home a shell of his former self after his nightmarish tour of duty. He had to watch dozens of his best friends die and now leads a rogue faction of the Japanese military. They want revenge on the government War Pigs for callously sending thousands of young Japanese men to their deaths in a pointless war. In reality, zero Japanese actually died in that conflict. In fact, only 70 people died in total. It was an EXTREMELY minor affair. However, this film portrays the Japanese deployment to Cambodia exactly like its the US in Vietnam or the Soviets in Afghanistan. I understand why Oshii was so opposed to this deployment given Japan's past and how sensitive a topic that is. However, when the film in dead seriousness acts like Japan's minor UN deployment was like fucking Nam, it once again veers into silliness.

Overall:

Despite my rambling, I actually do like this film. I will happily add it to my extended list of favorite anime films. However, this film has some irksome features that prevent me from shouting its name to the heavens like so many others. I always see it get praise for finally bringing seriousness and intelligence to the Patlabor franchise. However, it was never a question of COULD Oshii make Patlabor more serious? Oshii is a really smart guy and obviously can write WAY more complex than he did in the Patlabor OVA, first movie, and TV series. It was a question of SHOULD Oshii have made Patlabor so serious? I honestly don't think so. I really think this should have been an independent, standalone story. I will definitely recommend this film to my offline friends, but not without adding some caveats.

In 1999 a UN peacekeeping in Cambodia goes terribly wrong. A unit led by Lieutenant Colonel Yukihito Tsuge using Labor Units are ambushed by guerrillas and he has orders not to fire back. So he's forced to watch as his men are killed, and left alone in the Cambodia jungle. Skip to 2002 and 3 years after the first movie. Many people who worked for section 2 have been reassigned Noa and Shinohara are still there now working for Shinohara Heavy Industries. Ota has been reassigned as a instructor. Shinshi as been reassigned to Tokyo Metropolitan Police General ... Affairs. Section 2 has gotten new labor pilots as well. Things certainly have changed. Things heat up when the Yokohama Bay Bridge is destroyed when a missile from a fighter hits it. From there things spiral out of control.

This is perhaps the best if not one of the best anime movies ever. The story is top notch, with it's relevance to today. Political intrigue, crossed loyalties, terrorist attacks, threat of war, and marshal law. It's hard to surpass the first Patlabor movie, but this one does. The characters thar are back, are just great. The relationship between Noa and Shinohara grows, and yet becomes more complicated. The ending is just superb. The animation now 14 years old is still good and match many anime coming out now. The music is top notch, and adds to the feel of the anime. I enjoyed it from start to finish 10 times now.

Overall a classic anime movie I think everyone who loves anime needs to see.

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.

I’ve been a longtime fan of the Patlabor TV Series. I caught a bunch of random episodes on Comcast’s Anime Selects on demand channel back in the day. Then I purchased a few random volumes of the DVD release. Eventually I purchased the entire TV series, and then the rest franchise (sans the original OVA series and the last part of the New File OVAs). But this this is something in an entirely different league then the TV series (which I loved). Now I know why old school fans speak so highly of this film. I do hope I don’t spoil too much, while ... trying to explain why this film is brilliant.


Patlabor 2: The Movie was helmed by Headgear, with Mamoru Oshii directing. This is a film that requires you to be familiar with the cast of Patlabor. I’d say checking out some of the episodes of the TV series and watching the first movie would suffice*. I understand that is a lot to ask, but doing so allows you to fully understand this movie, and thus is hugely rewarding. Patlabor takes place in the not-so-distant future where “labors” (robots) have taken the lead in industry, construction, and mechanics . Patlabors (potrol + labor) are police labors used to deal with incidents involving labors, or used in situations where a robot would come in handy for the police force of Tokyo. At any rate this film takes place a few years after the first one left off. Many of the stars of the series have moved on to bigger and better things, having been promoted to higher ranks, gone back to their homes overseas, or retired from the police force all together. What we are left with is essentially Goto, Nagumo, Noa, and Asuma. Although you can bet a few of the old characters will pop up to become the supporting cast. However the film wisely focuses in on Goto and Nagumo, as this is their story, and they are easily the most interesting characters in the franchise so it’s great to see them get their own story. It would have been tempting to again focus on the younger characters, but this bold move really pays off. Goto is a middle aged captain of the Patlabor units, a brilliant strategist, with chess master-like forethought. He is a manipulate, brilliant man, who is always one step ahead of everyone around him. But he is perhaps too smart for his own good, being exiled to an unimportant area of Tokyo (a common tactic used in Japanese government to get rid of people those with power have no use for). Captain Nagumo shares power with Goto in this film, due to reasons I won’t get into. Nagumo is a more by-the books boss, she’s intelligent and usually cold emotionally, but easily angered when others do not see things her way.

The film starts off with a battle involving U.N. Peacekeeping Forces (using labors) in Southeast Asia (yah! the U.N. rules !) in which only one man survives, and then cuts to the familiar characters in Tokyo. It is not entirely clear how this battle is relevant until much later in the film. In Tokyo a terroristic attack on a major bridge has the public confused and shocked. Much of the blame seems to be being put on the Japanese Self Defense Force (JSDF) from the media. Things escalate quite fast, and right when it seems like it has to have been the JSDF eager to begin a coup d’état, a high ranking JSDF officer, Shigeki Arakawa shows up asking to see “the captain” of Section 2 (the Patlabor division), unsure if he means Goto or Nagumo the police let him meet with both of them. Shigeki Arakawa quickly gets to the point, that this is not some type of coup d’état, but just clear terrorist attacks being orchestrated by a band of followers of the man who survived the U.N. Peacekeeping mission in Southeast Asia. And so Goto, Nagumo, and Arakawa begin an investigation to try and get to the bottom of all this, all while relations between the Tokyo police and JSDF sour.

Patlabor 2: The Movie is one part political thriller, one part police procedural/mystery, one part character drama, with a dash of mecha added, because hey this is Patlabor after all! The comedic elements so prevalent in the TV series takes a backseat in this movie, but it does spring up from time to time. The film is frequently poetic, often taking it’s time to let you think about what is going on, and what the film’s themes are. It’s slow sure, but the pace picks up bit by bit, and becomes a tad suspenseful. It is a complex film, dialogue heavy (but never wasted) and feels like an Oshii flick. One of the best parts of the film is some heavy philosophizing by Goto and Arakawa. They discuss how Japan’s apparent and relative peace (and economic development) is based somewhat on foreign wars. The Japanese remove themselves from these wars, feelingit has nothing to do with them, or perhaps they are only lying to themselves. Maybe everyone knows the truth. Additionally the concept of a just war verses an unjust peace comes up. Not to mention the film asks the very pressing questions: what is the purpose of the JSDF? What is the true job of the Tokyo Police? What are these organizations supposed to do? What are they there to defend? This film came out during, and reflects, an important time in Japanese foreign affairs where the nation was finally becoming more willing to engage overseas by using the Japanese Self-Defense Forces (in peacekeeping missions for the United Nations). After so many years of refraining from using the military in anyway overseas, what would be next for Japan? Although Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution renounces war and the threat of force as a means to settle disputes, Japanese soldiers are still somehow deployed overseas and engaged in combat. In fact some even died. The JSDF was created to be a purely defensive force, but how far can those definitions be stretched and how leniently can they keep interpreting Article 9? Since this film has been made a contingent of the JSDF have been deployed in Mozambique, Iraq, Nepal, and the Golan Heights. While supposedly only there for humanitarian, peace keeping, reconstruction, or assistance, it really stretches the limits of Article 9. Oshii’s concerns were very valid.

The art is in a style I’ve come to love, traditional Production I.G. looks, with realistic character designs, wonderful backgrounds, and a subdued but beautiful color-tone. The animation while really great, will not completely blow you away. There are some interesting “camera angels” used, like extensive use of the fisheye lens. The music was done by Kenji Kawai whose soundtrack is almost spiritual. Bandai Visual’s Los Angeles dub sounds bored and uninspired. The actors are all uninterested and seem like they could have used better direction or something. This is a professional sounding dub, just not a very good one. Manga Video’s London Dub was directed by Michael Bakewell, one of the best and most interesting ADR Directors, and it boggles the mind why this dub is excluded from Bandai Visual’s release. Why did they even re-dub it at all but not dub other films they released that had no dubs? Manga Video’s dub stars one of my favorite actors, Peter Marinker as Goto, and he yet again delivers a performance that blew me away. Not to mention the script is a thousand times better and this dub just flows more naturally. The L.A. dub is a bit stilted and makes the film harder to comprehend then it should be. Bandai Visuals DVD case looks amazing, with two wonderfully detailed booklets and tons of extra features. But the lack of the better dub is hugely disappointing and frankly a stupid decision.

If I can find a problem in this film, it is that Oshii obviously wants to tell a very political story, but seems to have been forced yet again to revisit the same old franchise, one it appears he has already moved on from. But he handles this well enough. While Oshii wants to tell a political film, he only has police officers to work with here, so there are a few contrivances you will have to overlook. And the Patlabors are, for most of the film, not even used. But these are easily forgiven as the rest of the script is excellently written. The film is a mature, political, and thoughtful work that only older audiences will fully understand. This is a classic in every meaning of the word.

* I am well aware this movie takes place in a different continuity then the TV series, and actually follows the OVA series. But until that is re-released by Maiden Japan, it is difficult to come by legally.

(review originally posted at: http://predederva.wordpress.com/2013/02/09/patlabor-2-the-movie/ )

"In Patlabor 2, I wanted to describe the Cold War for Japan. It was a war, but a silent war. When the Cold War existed between the U.S. and Russia, the "stance" of Japan was not to be directly involved. Even though Japan was involved, it kept insisting for fifty years that it wasn't. I wanted to describe that fake peace." - Mamoru Oshii

Patlabor 2 opens on UN peacekeeping mission in which a labor unit led by Lieutenant Colonel Yukihito Tsuge is ambushed but has has strict orders not to fire back, leading him to watch as his unit is killed while he can ... do nothing.

Tsuge, the main villain of this film, aims to awaken the Japanese people to this complicit peace, which is enforced though war. Tsuge attempts to achieve this by breaking the hollow peace Japan has fetishised. Through the use of domestic terrorism Tsuge disrupts this hollow peace while the Japanese government bureaucratically sweeps it under the rug. While putting the city under martial law. This is followed by scenes of the JSDF weaving them selves into to everyday life. Showing that they don't have a plan except looking like they have a plan to fight this string of domestic terrorism. This shows the absolute terror the Japanese people have of war and to what extent they will go to protect this false peace.

It is in this chaos that patlabor 2 delivers its most powerful scene, where in Arakawa and Gotou discuss the current situation and if that that the current peace, achieved by force, is better than a just war and if that fighting to protect peace is hypocritical.

When Nagumo confronts Tsuge she says "even if it is an illusion there are those who accept it as reality and live in it". Mamoru Oshii has expressed on multiple times that he identifies with Tsuge's beliefs but not his methods. At the end of the film it asks is their something inherently wrong with this ignorant peace and is this unjust peace worth fighting for?

Even after over 20 years since the film was first made the message still hasn't aged a day and this film's philosophical message will still be relevant for years to come.

A very good sequel of the 1st movie and NEARLY an masterpiece itself, ok it was 1993 but that meant more innovating designs and animation techniques. the Only reason i give this a 9 and not a 10 its because the story development is SOOO SLOW i taught it would more like a detective movie, but still, Very good fightscenes, interesting plotline and NOT the average standard charach. that everyone is known with plus more ppl are involved here, so what can i say= an oldskool anime goldmine

Everyone knows that I’m fully against direct adaptations. More often that not, I want to see the director’s vision of what he sees the source material as and bring us something you can’t get through reading. Of course, that’s only true provided he has a reason for doing so. Because whilst I’m sure that the source material is a load of shit by itself, I fail to see why Shin Oonuma is adding Jojo references to Nourin when there’s no context for why that particular anime is being referenced in a show about farming other than “it looks cool”. Yes, I know there’s farming in ... the first few episodes of Jojo too, but that connection is so loose that you’d have better luck trying to find similarities between the sport of Nascar and a safari ranger.

Patlabor 2: The Movie is one such adaptation. It was the final installment of the Patlabor franchise – minus Patlabor 3, but nobody cares about Patlabor 3 – to come out after everything else from either the movie or the TV timeline and just like the first film, it’s directed by Mamoru Oshii, king of the philosophical adaptations that either get me excited or give me a 104-degree headache. With this installment, he basically went the same path as the second Urusei Yatsura movie in that he decided to fuck canon and put his own spin on the thing. This time, with his tackling of the Japanese government and how he basically critiques the prosperity and turmoil it’s gone over ever since we tried to kill them in the 40s.

Don’t go into this expecting a revisit to an old franchise favorite or anything. In fact, you could jump into this film with as much knowledge about the franchise as men know about women and you’d still be just as lost or intrigued or whatever. Three years after the first movie, the Labor team have split apart and moved on to bigger and better things and life is all moody for them in that “I wish we could go back to the good old days, but we have to move on” mode. However, when a bunch of terrorist attacks occur and a military takeover is imminent, pardon my bluntness, but “shit bigger than anything the characters have ever faced before happens and now they’ve got to do something about it”.

The movie is centered on Captain Goto and Nagumo, the more serious members of the Patlabor cast, with the mecha and the other characters from the previous installments having less screenplay and importance than Tom and Jerry had in their own movie. This is most likely because a mecha otaku like Noa would be miscast in a story that attempts to take on something as serious as war and whether the peace brought from it is worth it. It’d be like making Larry the Cable Guy, the protagonist of a film that tackled the evils of the oil industry…oh wait. But it’s also effective because they’re the two characters who have had a lot of potential for fleshing out in the past, and yet they never got it before now. Although keep in mind, I didn’t see the TV series, so they might have gotten it in that.

Not that the movie really fleshes them out beyond what’s required for the plot or anything. Goto is mostly just there to move the plot along whilst Nagumo’s story for the movie is less about her and more about her relationship with the main bad guy, a dude who holds a grudge against Japan after an operation in Cambodia went south mostly because Schniezel Vi Britannia wasn’t in the country at the time to have his genius tactics in government and war exploited. Still the increased importance on them allows us to see sides of them that we haven’t seen before, and that’s a hell of a lot more characterization than most other anime partake in these days.

As you probably guessed from a Mamoru Oshii anime with a political agenda, it’s less character-focused and more story-focused. A ton of the movie is basically exposition that whilst interesting because it covers serious issues cleverly and is supported by really beautiful atmospheric shots, it requires you to not be drunk in order to understand what’s going on. It’s intermixed of course with missiles being dropped, guns being fired, and the robots being utilized at times, but even those scenes are heavy with political strife. You guys know I’m not all that big into politics and shit beyond the basics as is, so when I have to sit through what’s basically a five-minute long car scene of nothing but talking heads, followed by gunfights against terrorists with a mission on their mind, you can bet that I’d need a really open mind to digest that “war has casualties in more ways than one”.

You might have figured out by now that whilst I like the movie, I’m in no way as big a fan of it as other people are because of personal biases, and as such don’t feel qualified to analyze its themes more clearly like some hardcore fans do. If anything, I probably respect the film more for what it represents than what it actually is. But in terms of 1993 movies, I’d probably watch either Iron Monkey or Batman: Mask of the Phantasm over this.

That of course doesn’t change the fact that I’d recommend Patlabor 2 if asked. In addition to the fact that most of my readers are probably more politically inclined than I am, the visuals are great, the action is cool, the characters are engaging, the government issues – whilst not exactly subtle - are cleverly weaved into the narrative and still relevant as of today. However, my biggest compliment to the film is that it stands on its own as a complete story, Patlabor-connection or not. And really, that’s the best kind of film adaptation, anime or otherwise. If only the K-On! Movie went a similar path. Oh well!

When people ask for "realistic/mature" shows, recommend them this.

Mobile Police Patlabor is one of the OG mecha seires. The original OVA has a movie trilogy and its second instalment shines the brightest. It's ambitious, it's well written, it's sublime.

Patlabor Movie 2 is more densed dialogue and political drama centric neatly crafted story about betrayal, terrorism with philosophy and a pinch of Mecha action. Mamoru Oshii's direction was phenomenal.

The movie shows how politics, power and manipulation works from the ground level to the upper echelon. How much effect it has on the country and its people.

They put so much care and attention even to the slightest ... of details. They laid bare the thematics of the army and police forces, the govt agencies. How they operate, the battle field scenarios. The threats of war. Even the terrorist attack was so well written.

On to the characters. Among the main Patlabor crew this movie chose to focus on the big dogs. Gotou, Shinobu and also Shinobu's former lover Tsuge. The rest of the crew gets less attention here but the whole team joins in the final action.

The philosophical aspect of the film was intriguing. "Just war and Unjust Peace".
The conversation between Gotou and Arakawa on the boat was excellent. The movie is pretty dialogue heavy and it keeps it that way till the end.
Also, near the end the moment of Shinobu and Tsuge was nicely executed where they had conversation and Shinobu was in conflict with her personal feelings and her line of duty.

Animation and character design was much more refined and the fact that the whole crew have matured and gotten older was present in the character design. Solid cinematography. Soundtrack was amazing too.

This is as real as it gets. Intelligent storytelling.
9/10
I'll just stop here. You go and watch this movie (but do watch the OVA and movie 1 before this) ^.^

Patlabor 2 is an odd movie to rate truth be told. Between stunning art direction and sound design to complex political grandstanding and short yet powerful action. Despite all this something just feels off when placing it in the universe of Patlabor.

I enjoy this movie as a standalone, but as a Patlabor movie I think it slightly misses the mark. Its a great political commentary on the nature of the world when it was released and the world as it stands today. But in pursuing that goal it distances itself from the heart and soul of that of the patlabor franchise. One of ... hopeful optimism, of "guts and bravery" where the good guys win by punching the bad guys really really hard. It feels like this should be a story in Ghost in the Shell rather than Patlabor.

By no means is this tonal shift bad. But depending on how you have come to know these characters it can be jarring to see them in this mood and light.

Anyways I won't keep you here any longer than necessary. If you're looking for the definitive political mecha anime you found it. Be ready for a ride. Target, lock on!

I can easily consider this movie to be the best of the Patlabor franchise and that is saying quite a bit for me. This movie ditches the carefree and comical moments you would find in earlier iterations of the franchise and creates a mature political thriller featuring the former members of the Special Vehicles Division reuniting to deal with a string of terrorist attacks that have the political and military sectors of Japanese society on edge. Kiichi Goto gets prominent focus in this movie as he learns that the organizer of these terrorist attacks may be connected to someone that fellow officer, Shinobu Nagumo, may ... have known from her past and tries to piece together the whereabouts of these conspirators and their goals. With this movie offering perhaps the most mature and serious story developments you can expect of the Patlabor franchise, fans of the older titles of the franchise may not warm up to this movie too well if you enjoyed the light-hearted and comical interactions of the characters, especially as there is minimal focus on other members of SV2 outside of Goto and Shinobu.

The movie mostly serves as a philosophical message delving into the costs of war and peace. The ongoing terrorist attacks that occur in the movie lead Japan to take on a state of martial law as they try figuring out who is responsible for triggering the attacks and fear the possibility of American military intervention if things aren't quickly resolved. The attacks lead civilians, politicians and the military within Japan into a state of fear and disillusionment as they are unsure of whom to trust and whether or not each side has any sort of involvement in the attacks. There are occasional philosophical exchanges which, while sometimes dragging things a bit, delve into the seemingly neverending cycle of periods of war and peace for humanity. The anime is also notable for being a rare instance, for its time, at delving into relevant social issues of the early 90s in Japan where there were tensions between civilians and the country's Self-Defense Force and exploring apparent unrest with Japan's military power being restricted following the country's loss in World War II. For the most part, Mamoru Oshii does an excellent job at delivering his commentary and philosophizing on aspects of the human condition and Japanese society to fit into the world of Patlabor.

Visually, Patlabor II is the best-looking title I've seen in the franchise thus far. Scenery and character designs are drawn with realistic details as characters looked almost life-like in their drawn features and scenery shots of the city landscape of Tokyo looked like you were seeing them for real through an actual video camera. The movie mixes use of CG and hand-drawn animation in showing off scenes such as different camera shots of the Tokyo city landscape, computer layouts and different mecha in action. While action isn't the main focus of Patlabor II, the movie still showed off a nice diversity of action sequences with plenty of fluid movement such as crowds of police officers gathering together, terrorist helicopters attacking areas of Tokyo and the Labors of Section 2 taking part in the action. The soundtrack for the movie is minimally used, but mostly consists of tense and energetic tracks to accompany the differing dramatic moments that occur throughout Patlabor 2.

Overall, Patlabor 2 offers a significantly different setup for the franchise's memorable characters having more serious story developments and emphasis on philosophizing on elements of the human condition and Japanese society. While I personally enjoyed this film for its unique and more serious spin on the Patlabor franchise and find it to be the best within it, the film may not be for those who enjoy the franchise's more light-hearted and comedic offerings from its older titles.

This movie is crafted in such a way that it will be forever standing still even after 10 years from now, the way how they put the great philosophy on war, political agenda and world. And how the characters in it truly live on the screen. The cerebral aspect of the movie from the emotions to the way how Japan's history and the way of their living, this movie is full of that.

The art is something extraordinary that one will never forget in their lifetime, first movie plot was more of a sci-fi than this, but every little detail such as a car lights, reflections ... the expressions and the best of it, Kenji Kawai's score just hits you right in your heart and mind. And Oshii's signature story telling at a grander scale with excellent characters returning from the first masterpiece.

A perfect movie for mature audience, I wish the anime was still like this, everything hand drawn with passion, love and respect.

Far from the workplace comedy of the TV series and the mecha action of the first film, Patlabor 2 the Movie is a slow-paced, atmospheric thriller imbued with a pervasive sense of dread. It focuses on the cast's older members, their checkered pasts, and their misgivings. They meet in sickly, green-lit rooms, looking gaunt and tired. The story unfolds in a snow-covered Tokyo with frosty ambient and techno for the soundtrack. The few action scenes carry a real sense of menace, as if warning the audience that not even the main cast might make it out alive this time. It questions whether we should ever ... put our confidence in bureaucrats, and posits that--in our post-industrial society--"peace" is nothing more than "outsourced war". There is no certainty or closure at the end of this movie, just the knowledge that the gears of conflict continue turning in other, distant lands. Patlabor 2 the Movie is a dark cloud over the economic and foreign-policy optimism of the nineties, reminding us--without being sanctimonious--that everything comes at a price, even if you're not the one who has to pay it.

It is a nice feeling when you watch a film from a very beloved mech series that is mostly known for its action and comedy that decided to tone down those aspects in order to tell a really compelling story that fixates on politics and character development.

This is the case for Patlabor 2: The Movie.

To truly appreciate this movie you need to understand the relationship of the members of Special Vehicle Division Section 2. They've been together for a very long time and they've all moved on to bigger and better things in their lives. One of the things that makes this movie ... really enjoyable is you get to see a new dynamic of the team where they are put in a difficult position and all of them are faced with difficult decisions because of the environment they are put in.

This movie would be more classified as a political thriller then your typical mech action anime because it really looks at some tough questions about war and how its sometimes necessary in order to bring prosperity to an area but the question that is constantly asked throughout the anime is that what is better for society as a whole, A just war or an unjust peace.

The movie centers around a atmosphere of tension and paranoia especially when a specific terrorist attack puts the entire country on edge and the setting of the film is literally a chess game between the government and specific military forces. Who's in the right and who's in the wrong is a concept constantly challenged throughout this film and unfortunately everybody is pulled into the crossfire especially when they eventually discover that the leader of the terrorist activities is a former lover and mentor of what I feel is the main character in this film.

One of the things that I do love about this film is that it really a builds a sense of excitement throughout the entire thing. When the terrorist attack happens and more strife happens between the military and government it is really giving you this feeling that something major is going to happen because everybody is on edge with the constant breakdown between the government and military and even though it never really lives up to a big action spectacle that a lot of people would like to see , it still does an effective job of building the tension throughout this entire film.

The sound and animation is absolutely gorgeous. With regards to its music it mixes in beautiful ambient tracks with tense ambitious tracks that were mostly used for the action set pieces in this anime even though the action set pieces in this anime are very few and far between. One thing I do love about this film is the animation. The animation is absolutely gorgeous especially when it comes to scenery and environments in this film. The film is not really colourful per se, but it uses a lot of grays, black, and white colouring schemes to an exhausting extent to give this film a feeling of justified bleakness because of the concept it wants to tackle and how it wants the story to unfold. There are some beautiful scenes of the cityscape halfway through the movie as the snow begins to fall and the military is deployed all over the city to prepare for a worse case scenario. The amount of work and detail put into the labors themselves was painstakingly breathtaking. I also really want to praise the film for how the characters were animated. They did such an incredible job of making them look slightly older and in a way a little more experienced with everything that they've had to go through together.

Even though many people will accuse this movie of being incredibly slow paced which in a way I will kind of agree, the third act mostly makes up for it. The final climatic battle in the tunnel is pure work of art with a lot of work being put towards good police tactics and being smart with regards to the situation your in. Nobody comes out of this unscathed. Labors have a ton of battle damage, characters are put in tough situations, and they're really put to the test in order to resolve this conflict.

It's not a perfect film by any stretch of the animation. It really does take a long time to ramp up the story and the face of the patlabor series and one of my favorite anime characters of all time Noa Izumi isn't utilized in this patlabor story a lot much to my disappointment. Overall it doesn't hamper what this movie aims to do. I think my biggest gripe with the film is that it had a really perfect opportunity for an excellent animated action set piece which unfortunately didn't happen. I was kind of hoping for an awesome well animated urban warfare battle involving the patlabors especially regarding the tense relationships between the military and the government but despite the film using any opportunity to build up towards something like that it eventually did not happen.

Overall, its a great departure towards what the patlabor is mostly known for and it really shows you that beyond the beautiful mech designs of the patlabors and the action they perform there is always the potential for a great story to be told and the characters and the setting they're put in proudly display that.

Favorite Character: Noa Izumi
Least Favorite Character: There are none.

8/10 (I highly recommend it.)

I also recommend that if you want a better appreciation of this film then your better off watching the first patlabor film and the other patlabor series and ova's first.

Mobile Police Patlabor 2 is the second sequel movie to the Patlabor OVA. It was produced by Production I.G, and directed by Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell). Satoshi Kon (Perfect Blue) was also involved in this project as he worked on storyboards and layouts for the movie.

This movie takes place after the events of movie 1. The year is now 2002, and the destruction of a United Nations Labor team in South East Asia works as the build up to a terrorist attack that sends shockwaves through Japan and it's military. With signs of corruption and an impending military takeover, the scattered memebers of ... the Special Vehicle Division have to get back together to defend the city from the threat of Tsuge, who was Nagumo's former lover.

The main cast is still the same, though this movie mostly follows Kiichi Gotou and leader of division 1 Shinobu Nagamo. For more background on the characters read my Early Days review.

The animation in this movie was really good. The attention to detail was really impressive and where I felt like it was generally good looking before, I thought this movie was way better visually and in terms of animation than any of the previous installments.

The music for this movie was superb. Kenji Kawai did a great job on the music, like one would expect from him. But not only was the music really good, when and if it was used was also really clever. A lot of scenes were made all that more serious and dramatic due to the lack of any background music and only things you could hear other than talking was the ambience in the background. And when the music was brought out, it really enhanced the scenes.

I'm sure this movie would split the Patlabor fanbase a bit. The reason is that, while being more Patlabor, it's also quite different. The first installments were more comedic in tone. Not too much so that it was annoying, but it didn't want to go all out on being dramatic or comedic. It managed to find a nice middleground that worked well. However, this movie is a lot darker in tone. Not a surprise concidering that this movie focuses more on terrorism and military takeovers. Not exactly a laughing matter, so the comedy is very sparse and really take a backseat. That said though, I thought this movie was fantastic. Oshii really shows us what a great director and storyteller he is, because this movie was everything I wanted and expected from a Oshii movie. Only complaint I have is that the beginning was a bit strange and made parts of the setup seem a bit weird, but once it fills in the gaps it's just gold. This is my favorite installation of the Patlabor franchize, and I highly recommend watching the Early Days OVA and movie 1 so that you can experience this movie.

Once again Oshii brings us Special Vehicle Unit 2 in this sequel adaptation. And boy does it get deep this time.

Patlabor 2 offers more political allegory than the first's extremist environmental story, as we see Japan pulled to the brink of war. The darker tone in the dead of winter means a darker art style that's very bleak and ominous. The humor is still there but now it's a mere taste to keep us from losing our cool.

The films are very much standalones from the series as a whole meaning you can bring in the uninitiated and show them a ... good movie. Mount up and mobilize!

So many other reviews said it better than me, but I'll give some of my thoughts on this film. At first, it teetered between an 8 and 9. The animation is beautiful, the somber mood and buildup is excellent. As well as the shift of main characters, and overall art style taking a shift.

However, one thing this movie has that pretty much the old OVAs and first movie had (haven't seen the rest of the series to see whether this is a common there, too) is the pauses that seem to carry on far too long. Not to say that this movie is any worse, ... because it's not, but not only did that bring my score down some.... but upon further reflection of this movie, it started to feel less like a Patlabor movie and more like something "else". I have mixed feelings about this, because some of the things that make this somber film so iconic also made it feel like dragged on and was slightly tedious to watch as it went on. And even though the slow pace felt perfect for some sections, it felt too non-eventful in others, and having watched part of the series up to this point, this movie felt like it was the big "it's finally come to this" moment that would finally take all the "and we managed to resolve it before things got too out of hand" and finally bring us action.

Don't come into this film wanting action, especially if you're not new to Patlabor and watched some of the series prior.

Despite that, I did really enjoy how one bombing led to such chaos. The uncertainty of whether or not there'd be war as the philosophical discussion between two characters loomed over men and women in uniform trying to reassure the public while quietly seeming to reflect, themselves, was excellent. The quiet, dragged out moments here were the best in the film.. However, like the prior entries I mentioned, the ending ended in a major "non-conflict" where the plot kept building and building, only for the "oh thank heavens it managed to get resolved before it got worse" washed over. And hey! I'm not saying it'd have been better if war actually broke out, but with as much building as this series does, and that's to say, this movie does that as well with plenty of other dragged out moments that are somewhat boring... I wanted to see at least one major battle, for the terrorist group to give a final stand or at least have one last explosion that actually caused death that we could SEE. I wanted to SEE the horrific impact in a moment that went beyond "what ifs" and "quiet reflection", see the horror on the faces of people so that the danger felt a step up from where it actually left off. I feel like the statement behind that would've been massive, but it left me feeling disappointed as yet again, the police were able to get their guys with minimal casualties, ones we don't even get to see or even know personally, and were practically glossed by.

And by this point on the series, despite it feeling like it could be fitting as it's a message for humanity and a criticism about how war and profit of war go hand in hand, and how there's a line hard to define which side is right when it comes to justified war and a rotten peace... it feels..... like if it's not the peak of the Patlabor series where beyond this point, things start to finally get chaotic, then I'll go mad. Maybe on that front, it's better watched as a stand-alone or if you're starting with the movies first, but I have a hard time judging it outside what I've seen of the series thus far, and I've had spoilers of similar "ending before too major of a battle" being common even beyond this point. I hope I'm wrong.

I guess where some of my disappointment lies is that this series can sometimes feel "too realistic", but at the same time, ironically, feel like it doesn't have the brass to take it a step further so opts out for the idealistic resolution. On one hand, part of the charm is how real the patlabors and the police force feel, and it's also why I feel so torn and why my review for this movie is all over the place and "wishy-washy". All I know is that it's not a terrible film, but as I watched it, I felt something, that despite it being most likely a better executed film compared to the first movie, especially story and art-wise, I liked the tone and overall execution from start to finish slightly more in the first.

There's no way to give partial scores on MAL, but if I could, I'd say the first movie would only be a .5 more than this.

I don't know if this review will help anyone as again, there's far better reviews than mine, but if after watching a bit of Patlabor, you feel the need for more of the conflicts to have battles that live up to their high stakes, then you, too, may feel like this movie drags some. But still, I would definitely recommend it to Patlabor and non-Patlabor fans due to the portions of the film that still feel top tier on its discussions of war

Really nails the sombre, pessimistic atmosphere, and I don't think anyone can deny that it's central diagnosis of the de-facto continuum between peace and war in the post cold-war global political situation, the fact that the first pole simultaneously denies and profits from the second, stabilising the core at the cost of the periphery, is pretty much simply just correct. This general outlook and mood feels very pre-emptive of the later Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade (despite that work not having been directed by Oshii). The comparison does though highlight what is probably this films key weakness. For whatever reason, Patlabor 2 feels the need to ... wrap things up uncharacteristically neatly, and the simple resolution, concluding on an uneasy optimism, feels a bit out of place. I can imagine some people think that the even slower pace that Jin-Roh goes for is boring, and that the unflinching gut punch with which it ends is cheap, but I think the comparison with Patlabor 2 demonstrates that that is exactly the direction to take a film like this, one concerned morbid with criticism, and leaving hope to other projects. The alternative, if one does not take that path, is unsatisfying if left unexamined, and laughable if not — for what is the 'hope' that we can gleam from this film, if we are to take it seriously, and not discount these formal issues as mere cowardly conformity to commercial movie structure? To put blind faith in a few good cops, and similarly benevolent actors within the government? That suggestion is clearly ridiculous now, and I can't imagine that Oshii and Ito felt much reassured by the idea back in the 90's either.

“Now is the winter of our discontent”

Patlabor 2, in a stark departure from the previous film, is understated, sullen, and cold, both in setting and character. Quiet snowfall drapes Japan in a melancholic blanket of stagnation: precisely where our likable cast of characters of the previous film find themselves – stagnant in their positions, relegated to busywork, disillusioned with the government they serve and searching for their own purpose as the powers that be continue to look weaker and more dysfunctional. Patlabor 2’s subject matter is informed by the real-life post-occupation period of Japan following WWII, and uses its near-future setting to eerily comment ... on our own relationship with war and peace, and military and government incompetence.

Discontent with the top brass has been baked into the 2nd unit’s story since day one. They are the odd ones out, a cast of wild and offbeat disappointments relegated to the strangest and most bizarre cases, never given the respect or acknowledgement they truly deserve. The 2nd unit’s captains Kiichi Goto and Shinobu Nagumo, know this better than anyone, always playing to the strengths of their crew and against all odds doing what even the highest-ranking units in the JGSDF can’t. Whether they operate outside of the top brass’ purview or not, the 2nd unit does what’s right, and doesn’t operate based on profit, glory, or anything else other than what would be the best for Tokyo. As Detective Matsui in the first film puts it, they’re less cops and more “allies of justice”.

Discontent with not only the top positions in the military and the government, but also disillusionment with the people he’s protecting, our antagonist Yukihito Tsuge is radicalized by his years in the force and the hell he’s witnessed, all to protect a seemingly uncaring and unknowing public. Tsuge and his cohorts’ displeasure with their position decide to show Japan, and the world, just how fragile their peace really is, and how easy it is for everything to be thrown away when the people quelling unrest are more incompetent and dysfunctional than the public knows.

Standing in their way of course are the captains from the previous film Kiichi Goto and Shinobu Nagumo, having lost their subordinates to other positions and left to banter with one another exclusively. Goto and Shinobu are perfect leads to face off against our antagonist as they also are people in positions of power – overseeing officers who receive orders from them and even align with them idealistically. Whereas Tsuge uses his connections and his deep-set anger to make a statement by disturbing Japan’s peace, Goto and Shinobu use their connections with the previous members of the 2nd unit to mobilize their own rag-tag hero squad to protect Japan from the acts of terrorism Tsuge would commit. Interestingly though, Goto and Shinobu don’t disagree with Tsuge – they know that the peace they protect is, at least in some ways, a false one – obtained by the higher-ups ordering their underlings to do the dirty work while those at the top don’t truly internalize just what their methods do to those they protect and protect against. As Goto puts it though, even if it’s a false peace, it is one that he must protect. Goto isn’t an idealist, he’s a realist – he can see the unjust peace we live in and the just war that Tsuge plans to start, but will take the unjust peace every time, and isn’t afraid to do whatever he can - even if it costs him his own position – to protect it.

One of the most integral scenes in conveying this theme of peace being obtained through unsavory methods is when all the military divisions of the JGSDF mobilize throughout Japan in order to be ready for whatever the next terrorist attack could be. The terror this sudden and massive mobilization of tanks and armed soldiers instills in the populace is palpable, with the masses terrified by the news bulletin announcing it and the subsequent immediate occupation of all major cities. Several shots with empty, sparse sound design and military equipment in just the wrong place, all sorts of residential areas and roads overrun by tanks, troops, and military labors. There is no attempt by the higher-ups to handle Tsuge’s terrorist acts subtly, utilizing their connections and informants to find another way to get a message across, and instead immediately attempt a counterstatement, showing how seriously they take this situation with no care for the terror and unrest this instills.

The themes of the film inform every aspect of production, especially the visuals. Just like the first film, perhaps even moreso, Patlabor 2 is a feast for the eyes. The color palette, informed by the film’s moral dilemmas, is flush with subdued, muted colors, and utilizes long, contemplative shots dwelling on the various settings and vistas with empty, eerie composition adding even more dread under the surface of an already somber visual landscape. You also can’t talk about a Patlabor project without mentioning the sublime direction and filmmaking found in the action sequences. Little details like the 5 pistons correlating to the 5 fingers on the prototype labor, to the cockpit opening, guns firing, gatling cylinders cooling down, the wobble of the missiles as their tear through the air, all look great and are accented with chunky, accurate sound design. All technical aspects feed into one another to build the setting believably and dramatically, while also giving it a distinctly sullen feel indicative of the headier themes the movie chooses to tackle.

Patlabor 2: The Movie is an absolutely superb animated work helmed by some of the medium’s best and delivers a mature, nuanced, and emotional story rife with political intrigue and takes our characters from the first film in new directions. This is a sublime artistic achievement with no fat to be trimmed, where every technical aspect is painstakingly realized and every story, character, and narrative beat is paced and timed to perfection. This kind of uncompromised perfection across a 2-film saga is an absolute rarity. Now more than ever, with how increasingly commercialized anime productions are becoming, works of art such as these that go in with a compelling, contemporary thematic framework that surrounds a sublime story made by some of the finest craftsmen in the medium is such a treat to behold. Patlabor 1 and 2 are Mecha and anime staples that absolutely no one should miss, and the subject matter contained in each film only grows more and more relevant as our relationship with technology continues to develop and mature.

Thank you dearly for reading.

The second Patlabor movie is a direct sequel to the first movie, being famous for its mechanical animation and the participation of the legendary Satoshi Kon as a layout artist. And, unlike its prequel, the plot and character development is nearly at the same level than the incredible visual direction and cinematography.

Due to sudden logistical changes brought by the completion of the Babylon Project, the Second Division practically undergoes restructuring and most of the characters start going their own ways. We encounter a slightly somber Izumi Noa, giving surprising hints of maturity stating her loss of enthusiasm for piloting Patlabors again. The current situation of ... the Second Unit, its members and the state of events in the police force is properly introduced, providing necessary setting for the events to occur. The two senior members of the Second Unit Gotoh and Nagumo take the spotlight in Patlabor 2, teaming up once again to unravel a conspiracy deep within the layers of the police, government and army and even their own unit. The themes presented in Patlabor 2 are fairly evident, commentary on the nature of war and peace, the military complex and their manipulation of governmental institutions and media and other concepts clearly inspired by Japan´s political situation after World War II and the geopolitical stage at the time are frequently discussed.

The plot, although very similar to the one presented on two episodes of the prequel OVA , is intriguing enough to keep the viewer at the edge of their seat and encourages thinking alongside the characters. After roughly two thirds of the the movie spent on investigations and occasional commentary, the final act brings the Second Unit back to action, showcasing thrilling action sequences and a tense final confrontation. Since the movie has a tense tone from the beginning, the brazen antics and personalities of the other characters of the Second Unit slightly meddle with the atmosphere during this final act. Even so, said characters do receive much needed character development during this movie and show it through their actions and dialogues.

On the visual department, Patlabor 2 is practically flawless. The incredibly detailed mechanical animation is a feast for the eyes of mecha fans, the clever usage of muted color palettes juxtaposed with beautifully drawn rich backgrounds makes the movie worth a watch just for its cinematography. The Japanese VA performances and the usage of the atmospheric soundtrack compliments the visual perfectly. Another highlight of this movie being the incredible performance given by the talented Yoshiko Sakakibara as Shinobu Nagumo, being one of the best of her VA career.

Patlabor 2 is a definite improve from its prequels, a wonderful movie made possible by a legendary staff ensemble that can certainly be regarded as a must watch for fans of anime as a medium. I would especially recommend this work to fans of political intrigue and mecha fans, it´s definitely worth the watch.