Mobile Police Patlabor Episode 37 Discussion

hysterical_ said:
I am in love with this episode, especially how it mainly focused on the profession of the police by looking at both an individual and collective points of views. While most of the kind of mecha series tend to be a lot more over-the-top in exaggerate the scale of destruction as a mean to create tension or some sort of recurring gags through characterization. This series, however, have had painstakingly detailed in focusing on the difficulties of the police in keeping public control while avoiding causalities. At the same time, how it characterized the style of the characters' attributes in doing their part of the job in nabbing criminals. To understand this, the series developed numerous 'episodic monster of the week' formula in earlier episodes that focused on the interpersonal relationship between characters. Despite the amount of farce played out in a form of antics and randomness, this series capitalized the storytelling into a more than anything, a profound study of the work relationship, acceptance and chemistry between characters that ultimately lead to the restoration of peace and harmony in the society.

From another perspectives, the eyes of the insurance lady from the words she said touches many criticism of the cynical perception from our very society. Rather than a preachy exercise to illustrate it's themes, this episode played out like a seemingly laid-back tone, yet have place many stakes in creating a more claustrophobic situation whereby the characters were being confined by the expectation in order to persuade the insurance lady to cover up the damage from their perceptions of her character at first. In the report mean nothing more than a subjective biased on an individual than witnessing and understanding the situation and the degree of conviction of how humane the police officers are in order to restore peace and harmony in a society. Many times had the police been doing their jobs in keeping peace, yet was often overlooked as a result of destruction left behind. Rather than understanding the situation, people tend to be more judgemental. The series touched on many levels of depth in even exploring little things that are grounded to realism.

The insurance lady was a representation of a good Samaritan who cares not for the sake of interests but understanding others' painstakingly hard work in moving towards a bright future. To understanding this is to understanding the little details she said, from the Division 2 police officers not being able to finish their lunch in order to tackled the labor crime to how tough it was to move a giant labor trapped in-between obstacles. The animation was put quite in details, not just showing Ota's reaction when he accidentally crushed a boy's bike to causing traffic pile-up. It also emphasized the little details to make it looks like it is a real accident and not deliberately set-up in order to focused on the problem itself. To witness and look at it from a broader perspectives is the first step to understanding others than to be confined by the belief of one's thought is what I noticed from this episode. The insurance lady briefly mentioned about the stubbornness of her workers which further emphasized on my statement. Sadly, it is really rare to find someone who truly appreciate, care and understand the difficulties of civil servants in times of stability, yet expecting to be protected during the hard times.


Yeah, the moment when the characters became the mirror reflection of our perception was really neat. I found this episode to be among one of the best, a lot better than the main overarching plot going on in the background.


Rather than a simple insurance story, the amount of details in expanding it's scope to the study social problems parallel to our modern-day society; the expectation, the judgemental and the cynicism of others in protecting their interests served as a backdrop to the story so far. I really like that it does not attempts to distract what it was trying to do, while keeping the laid-back tone at the same time.

eski514 said:
Utter foolishness letting cars and people circulate around the feet of the Ingrams as they were still finishing up the pursuit and checking the contents of the trailer.