The movie takes place in 1999 and it still focuses on the same cast of characters from Special Vehicle Division 2. All the Labors have had a new OS installed called HOS, but it seems like this is making the drivers lose controll of their Labors. When SV2 looks into this it all seems to tie into a mysterious man who have commited suicide on the massive Babylon Production construction site sets of a cascade of events that may signal the destruction of Tokyo.
The characters are the same as in the Early Days OVA. If you wanna know more about them I suggest watching the OVA or read my review of the OVA. This movie doesn't really focus much on the characters in any way.
The animation during the Labor fights are still as good as ever. They also liked to use a fisheye effect to add to the comedy during some scenes. Sadly though, I was expecting a bit more from the animation with this being a movie. It's not bad by any means, but there are times where it looked a bit wonky.
I was not super impressed by the music in the OVA, so when I learned that Kenji Kawai had done the music for it I was even more disappointed. However, Kenji Kawai really stepped up his game for this movie. The music was a lot better and it made the movie that much more enjoyable to watch.
Overall I thought this movie was good. The beginning of the movie was a bit slow, but come the middle point it starts to get a lot more interesting, and towards the end it got really exciting. The Patlabor franchize is good and I really recommend it for anyone who is on the fence about it. The mix between comedy and more serious police business is handled very well, and even if you're like me and not the biggest fan of mecha, I'd say that there is so much to enjoy here that you're not even gonna think about the fact that it's a mecha show.
