Oct 30, 2023
I would first and foremost like to thank CynicalRuins for countless hours of work scanlating the later volumes of Patlabor, enabling me to write this review in the first place. The end-of-chapter drawings were also very cute!
Having absolutely devoured my way through Patlabor as a franchise over the past year, I eventually reached the manga adaptation. Clocking in at a hefty 22 volumes, it has surprisingly few narrative arcs, with each one burning very slowly and bleeding gradually into the next. The tone starts off lighthearted like the show, but gradually gets weightier until it's grappling with some really serious situations. Unfortunately, this makes the
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manga feel more akin a generic cop story as it goes on, and that's just not what I come to Patlabor for.
Every version of Patlabor has a different set of priorities within the same general premise, and the manga chooses to focus on the battle between SV2 and the shadowy corporation Schaft. This is fine, but it's not nearly as potent as the moody atmosphere of the movies or constant messing around at the base that the TV show offers. The Griffon is a properly scary villain mecha, and Bud is great, but it's harder to care about most of the men at Schaft. They're pretty one-dimensional, and their constant cat-and-mouse games take away from the far more endearing main cast. Noa Izumi gets as much page time as she deserves (a lot!) but the rest of SV2 is forced to the sidelines to make room for Schaft. There's not really an equivalent to the show's one-off episodes that focus in on a specific supporting character, and the manga really could have used something like that, perhaps as a buffer between the major story arcs.
Speaking of the cast, if you're a Kanuka liker such as myself, you're going to be disappointed. She only shows up near the end, and it's pretty clear that the mangaka doesn't think too fondly of her. She's cast in a very serious role that doesn't properly display her swagger and skills. On the other hand, Kumagami comes off much better than in the show, getting to serve as SV2's serious support woman for the whole duration of the manga, providing her with real character development.
The character art is suitable, but it's the mechanical artwork that really shines - Ingram and all of the other Labors are drawn with real love. You can feel all the gloss on the Griffon, for example. Mecha is a difficult genre to work with in manga form - you lose out on the dynamism and fluid animation that makes shows so impressive. That being said, Masami Yuuki did an admirable job keeping quality high, especially considering the duration of the manga.
Even if it's all main plot for a series that's at its best telling random side stories, this is still Patlabor. It's got a great setting and a real down-to-earth approach to mecha, which the manga falls on the more technical end of. This definitely isn't the best work of the franchise, but it's also extremely unlikely to be the first that someone tries. If you've finished the TV show and movies and OVAs and are still hungry for more, then the Patlabor manga is absolutely worth a shot.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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