Let me say this right up front: if the new Limited Collector’s Edition of Mamoru Oshii’s Patlabor is any indication of what is to come from new anime label Honneamise then expect great things. Better than great, in fact. This is a superb release, beautifully packaged with a remarkable wealth of bonus materials and featuring a magnificent restored edition of Oshii’s first true landmark film.
At this stage of the game, seventeen years after its original release, people should be well familiar with the plot of the film. Created in 1989 and set in what was then the near future – now the recent past – Patlabor posits a Tokyo in rapid expansion mode, the explosive growth made possible by the development of Labors, massive human piloted construction robots employed in heavy, large scale building projects. With the advent of the Labors, however, came the birth of a new form of crime – Labor assisted crime – and the need for a new type of police force to contain it, the Labor-equipped Special Vehicles Section. Historically the SV Sections have dealt with dominantly mundane matters, runaway robots and the occasional hijacking, but they have seen a massive upsurge in incidents recently, with Labors in increasing numbers seemingly acting of their own will and leaving paths of destruction behind. Could the new operating system being widely adopted thanks to its performance improvements be to blame, or is there something darker at work.
Based on a low budget but hugely successful OVA series – six of the original seven episodes also directed by Oshii – the Patlabor movie bears some of the marks of the show in its character designs but is thoroughly cinematic in all other respects. With animation services provided by the fledgling Production IG the cityscapes, background animation and battle sequences are simply stunning and it leaves no doubt as to why IG has risen to be one of the world’s most respected animation houses.
But focusing purely on the animation is to miss what makes Patlabor both beloved and important. Though the film is considerably more action based than the OVAs the Patlabor franchise has always been far more overwhelmed with its characters than with its technology. This is a world populated with a host of distinctive characters played both for humor and realism, and it is the interplay of these individuals that has hooked audiences world wide. And that focus on character is also a key to understanding the film’s lasting resonance and the mind set of its creator.
While director Oshii is a noted techno-fetishist, particularly when it comes to military technology, he is also notably fearful of technology’s effects on society. With Patlabor we see the first seeds of many themes that would come to full fruition with the Ghost in the Shell films, particularly Oshii’s overwhelming concern with the dehumanizing influence of technology. He is far more concerned with the ongoing influence of technology on his characters than he is with the technology itself. So many themes that would define Oshii’s later work make themselves felt here: the possibility and consequences of machine intelligence and by extension the location and nature of the soul, the Biblical references, the flight motifs … they’re all here albeit presented with a much lighter touch with greater attention paid here to entertainment value than would be the case in his more philosophical later work. It’s as though after having taken a commercial beating with his highly abstract feature Angel’s Egg Oshii tried to make a pure popcorn film but the underlying issues run so deep and so loud for him that they couldn’t help but bubble up throughout.
And now on to the Collector’s Edition itself. The first thing you notice is the packaging. The set comes in a large, very heavy gauge, foil wrapped box / slip case. It’s a beautiful container and heavy duty enough to take a pounding. In the box comes the DVD set and two books. The first book is the Patlabor Archives, a 182 page softcover book with all of the information you could ever hope to have about the Patlabor phenomenon. It contains interviews, histories, design sketches, complete histories of the different incarnations including episode guides for the early OVAs, and pretty much everything else you could ever hope to know about the film and its creators. The second book, with a very nice heavy gauge, embossed foil cover, contains the complete story boards for the film drawn by Oshii himself. And then there are the DVDs. It is a two disc set, feature on the first and special features on the second. The feature disc, truthfully, is rather sparse containing only a half hour making of doc. The feature itself has been lovingly restored both in terms of audio and video and comes with 5.1 sound mixes in both Japanese and English. Subtitles are very clear and easy to read and also do a very good job of capturing the tone of each character. The video restoration is excellent, the image sharp and clean, contrast and color levels very good. For an interesting point of comparison the movie footage in the making of is from the old transfer and the contrast is dramatic, the resolution and sharpness on the restored version being an obvious and dramatic improvement. There are a couple of visible specks here and there but on the whole this restoration is such high quality that the film likely looks better now than it did while being projected.
Patlabor occupies an important space in anime history. It is a key film in the development of its director and came at a period when the industry was in flux, new techniques coming into play and much of the technology of these sci-fi shows on the cusp of becoming reality. It is also a remarkably prescient film, the technology and related issues presented within it appearing every bit as plausible now as it would have on initial release, a remarkable feat considering how much technology has changed over the past seventeen years. That it can accomplish all of this while remaining so thoroughly entertaining makes Patlabor a truly special film, one that every anime fan needs to see and this is, without question, the version to get.