Anime Reviews (The '80s, 90s, 2000s): Patlabor: The Mobile Police Complete Collection (a J!-ENT Blu-ray Disc Review) (1988-2002)

The classic mecha anime series “Patlabor: The Mobile Police”, all classic TV, OVA and films (both TV and Movie timelines) are once again ag receives its first video release on HD and it’s the definitive version to own! Highly recommended!

TITLE: Patlabor: The Mobile Police Complete Collection

ANIME RELEASE DATE: Patlabor: The TV Series (1989-1990), Patlabor: Early Days (1988-1989), Patlabor: The New Files (1990-1992), Patlabor the Movie (1989), Patlabor 2: The Movie (1993), WXIIII (Patlabor the Movie 3) (2002)

DURATION: 2161 minutes. Features Patlabor: The TV Series (Episodes 1-47), Patlabor: Early Days (OVA Episodes 1-7), Patlabor: The New Files (OVA Episodes 1-16), Patlabor the Movie (98 Minutes), Patlabor 2: The Movie (113 Minutes), WXIIII (Patlabor the Movie 3) (94 Minutes)

BLU-RAY INFORMATION: 1080p High Definition (1:33:1), Japanese and English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 and 5.1, English subtitles

COMPANY: Maiden Japan

RATING: 14+

Release Date: July 21, 2020

Originally Created by Masami Yuuki

Directed by Naoyuki Yoshinaga

Screenplay by Hiroyuki Hoshiyama, Kazunori Ito, Mamoru Oshii, Michiko Yokote, Naoto Kimura, Tetsuo Takashi, Hibari Arisu

Music by Kenji Kawai

Character Design by Akemi Takada

Mechanical Design by Yoshinori Sayama, Yutaka Izubuchi

Produced by Taro Maki

Anime Production by Bandai Visual, Sunrise, Tohokushinsha Film Corporation

Featuring the following voice talent:

Miina Tominaga/Elisa Wain as Noa Izumi

Michihiro Ikemizu/James Wolfe as Isao Ota

Osamu Saka as Seitaro Sakaki

Ryunosuke Ohbayashi/Michael Schwartz as Kiichi Goto

Tomomichi Nishimura as Detective Matsui

Toshio Furukawa/Dan Green as Asuma Shinohara

Yoshiko Sakakibara/Adriana as Shinobu Nagumo

You Inoue/Angora Deb as Kanuka Clancy

Building the city of the future is a tough job, but the development of Labors… giant robots specifically designed for construction and other heavy duty tasks… is transforming the world. Unfortunately, when someone puts that much power in a machine, the one thing that’s certain is that someone somewhere will find a way to use it to commit crimes. That’s why Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department has its massive Ingram Patrol Labors and the brave men and women of Special Vehicle Section 2, Division 2… including the teams most recent recruit, the mecha obsessed Noa Azumi. Get ready for some of the wildest, most incredible adventures ever as Noa and her new comrades in arms hit the street in the ultimate collection of one of anime’s most legendary creations – Mobile Police Patlabor!

When it comes to mecha anime series of the late ’80s and early ’90s, “Patlabor: The Mobile Police” was one of the series that many American fans of early anime fandom were very aware of and many earlier anime fans gravitated to in terms of police action and mecha (this was a very popular type of anime series back in the late ’80s and early ’90s that would entertain many anime fans overseas).

An anime and manga franchise created by Headgear, a group consisting of director Oshii Mamoru, writer Ito Kazunori, mech designer Izubuchi Yutaka, character designer Takada Akemi and manga artist Yuki Masami.

What began with a 22-volume manga series and a 7-episode OVA “Patlabor: The Early Years” series from 1988-1989, it was followed by a 47-episode TV series from 1989-1990, 7 OVA’s for “Patlabor: The New Files” released in 1990-1992, three animated films, three super deformed OVA’s titled “MiniPato” and a live action series titled “The Next Generation: Patlabor” which was a 14-episode series airing from 2014-2015.

The popularity of the manga and anime series would lead to light novels, more animated films and video games.

While “Patlabor” was released in by Maiden Japan as stand alone products, in 2020, they are now releasing all “Patlabor” titles (with the exception of “Minipato” and the new live-action series) as “Patlabor: The Mobile Police Complete Collection” on Blu-ray (same as the 2018 Ultimate Collection, different packaging but available in limited quantities).

It’s important to note that if you want to enjoy the series, there are three different timelines. The original TV series and the “Patlabor: The Mobile Police New Files” represents one timeline, while “Patlabor: The Early Years” and the three animated films represent another timeline. The live action series which is not included on this set, but “The Next Generation: Patlabor” continues from the storyline of both the TV series and the second animated film. So, the timeline is different.

“Patlabor: The Mobile Police” takes place in the future in which mechanical robots known as “labors” are used for construction work.

Japan, specifically Tokyo has had two major disasters, an earthquake in 1995 and with the world’s polar ice caps melting due to global warming, there is threat to coastal cities. So barriers were constructed to prevent the sea from flooding nearby coastal lands. This project is known as the “Babylon Project”.

Years prior, an “Advanced Robot” project was developed and because of the earthquake in 1995, this led to massive construction work and to help with the construction effort, labors were created in mass production.

Unfortunately, there are those using labors for criminal activity and criminal activity such as theft, robbery, drunkeness involving the use of labors have increased.

In response to the growing crime, Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department (TMPD) have created a patrol labor unit (Patlabor) with Division 1 being their elite division comprising of SWAT team members from TMPD and Division 2 (aka 2nd Special Vehicles Section (SV2)) consisting of regular police officers.

“Patlabor” features the following characters:

Captain Goto Kiichi – Captain of Tokyo Metropolitan Police Division 2. Laid back but very good at his job as the leader of Division 2. A solid strategist.
Izumi Noa– The main protagonist who is part of Division 2, Team 1. From Hokkaido, she has a love for labors and she has developed a connection with her labor and named it “Alphonse”. She shows great promise as a pilot.
Shinohara Asuma – Part of Division 2, Team 1, Asuma is the son of the head of Shinohara Heavy Industries which develops the labors in the world. He doesn’t get along with his father and so he wanted to be a civil servant and assigned to the labor units. Smart and often assisting Noa.
Yamazaki Hiromi – Part of Division 2, Team 1. Known for his tall height. Very soft spoken and kind. But unfortunately, too tall to fit in a labor cockpit.
Ohta Isao – Part of Division 2, Team 1 and is gung-ho and impulsive. Tends to think he’s a great pilot but he’s all talk and often over obnoxious and gun-happy.
Clancy Kanuka – A temporary member of Divison 2, Team 1 from New York City sent to Japan to observe a labor unit. An excellent labor pilot but is doing backup duty since she is only serving six months in Japan.
Shinshi Mikiyasu – A member of Division 2, Team 2 and the lone member who is married. He is devoted to his obnoxious wife and while quite and good natured, he can show his anger when someone makes fun of him or his wife.
Captain Nagumo Shinobu – The captain of Division 1 and goes by the book. She and Captain Goto share an office and despite being great at her job, she tends to talk back to her supervisors and is kept at Section 2.

VIDEO:

With this special edition set, one has to remember that many of the anime featured are from the late ’80s and ’90s. Production varies depending on release and format, ie. televsion vs. film.

All Patlabor TV episodes, OVA and film are presented with a new 1080p transfer. Having watched this TV series back in the early ’90s, I’m very pleased about how clean and vibrant the picture quality of this older anime series looks in HD.

I have been very pleased to see how these older series are looking on Blu-ray and this is the best I have ever saw of “Patlabor” and I think fans that grew up watching this anime series would be very please to see how the clarity, the colors and the overall look of the series looks on Blu-ray!

AUDIO & SUBTITLES:

“Patlabor: Mobile Police” is presented in Japanese and English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0. I grew up watching the original Japanese soundtrack and felt the acting especially by voice actress Tominaga Miina, was able to capture the emotion of the character of Izumi Noa.

The original English dub is also included. While not a big fan of the oldschool English dub, it is included and now provided ala 2.0 lossless.

According to Maiden Japan, “In order to provide the most satisfactory viewing experience for both old and new fans of “Mobile Police Patlabor TV”, Maiden Japan’s production team has secured both the very latest Japanese high-definition video remaster of this iconic series, as well as the original audio masters produced for the classic English language dubbed edition.

However, when the time came to marry the two versions together, it became clear that attempting to sync all of the language options to the same video stream would have required making significant compromises in the quality of at least one of the two versions. Therefore, to preserve the best possible quality and presentation for each version, Maiden Japan’s DVD and Blu-ray releases of “Mobile Police Patlabor TV” include the Japanese and English language editions as separate entities.

Although you will only see each episode listed once on the menu of your disc, your player will be directed to the correct version of each episode based on your current language of your choice as you will be unable to do so via your remote.”

It’s important to note that Maiden Japan has a message that the episodes had to be kept separate because the audio would not sync correctly, so if you want the Japanese lossless soundtrack, you must select it via the main menu (you can not switch it via remote).

Subtitles are in English.

“Patlabor” was probably my first exposure to a mecha anime series. I actually watched “Patlabor” before “Gundam” as it was the first anime series which my anime club at the time was showcasing.

Back in 1993, attending an anime convention looking for artwork created by Takada Akemi (“Kimagure Orange Road”), I was surprised to see artwork created by Takada for “Patlabor”.

I have certainly never heard of “Patlabor” nor have I watched a mecha series but I ended up purchasing Takada Patlabor artwork and also a CD soundtrack for “Patlabor”, which was the first anime soundtrack I purchased.

What I enjoyed about the series back then was that it wasn’t a deep anime series. It was full of humor, had action, it featured characters that were had their faults but yet they worked as a team in trying to help people. But also taking the police storyline in a different direction by including these mecha labor units that these police officers would pilot and having to take on criminals or solve problems involving labors.

Watching this series nearly 20-years later, I noticed a lot of anime series from the ’80s and ’90s now receiving the HD transfer and some having restoration work done and literally being cleaned up.

But as I watched the TV series and the original OVA series, both should be considered two separate timelines. It’s not as clearcut like Gundam where they easily distinguish whether or not it’s Universal Century and After Colony and you can tell they are different, as it features different political settings, different characters and different mecha.

For Patlabor, they use the same characters, same mecha but it’s a similar but yet different storylines. You have the TV timeline and the second known as the Move timeline.

One can say the TV series is lighthearted, a police comedy action show that is meant to showcase the characters, the differences between Divisons 1 and 2. Also, the TV series features Division 2 taking on Schaft Enterprises labor known as Type J9 Griffon, a stealthier, more silent and powerful mecha vs. the police used Ingrams (Episodes 28-35 are must watch episodes, the OVA series “Patlabor: The New Files” features the conclusion of the Griffin story arc).

Growing up, the Ingram and the Type J9 Griffon was a very popular mecha that you often saw people purchasing mecha models of the two.

Another key difference is the inclusion of certain characters. Character Kumagami Takeo becomes the new backup for Ota Isao, very serious person and only appears in the Patlabor TV/OVA timeline.

The movie timeline is more serious in tone versus the TV timeline. The OVA series for the movie timeline are comedy until you reach OVA episodes 5-6 which become more serious in tone and the 7th, was created as a promotion for the first animated film.

As for the movie timeline, you have the seven OVA episode “Mobile Police Patlabor: The Early Days” featuring the origins of the Tokyo MPD Division2 or 2nd Special Vehicles Section (SV2) but also what happens to the group during WXIII.

“Patlabor: The Movie” features random labor incidents increasing in Tokyo, but who is responsible?

“Patlabor 2: The Movie” feature a group of terrorists who are causing problems (note: This takes place years later in 2001-2002, with Section 2 having been reassigned to other duties). It’s important to note that this is somewhat of a remake of OVA episodes 5-6 and is quite complex in storyline. If you are familiar with Oshii Mamoru’s “Ghost of the Shell”, he really made this second film much more complex and even more political than the OVA episodes.

“WXIII: Patlabor the Movie 3” is a side story featuring two MPD detectives (Hata Shinchiro and Kusumi Takeshi) who investigate the case of missing scientists working on a genetic engineering project.. SV2 is shown from time to time but the film is primarily focused on the detectives. Also, this side story takes place two years before the events of the second Patlabor film. It’s more of a mad scientist type of storyline.

Overall, at this time, this is the definitive “Patlabor” set to own. You get the TV and Movie timeline episodes and films in one collection for under $75. That is awesome! Especially considering that in 2013, you had to purchase each of these separately.

Back in 2018, Maiden Japan released “Patlabor the Mobile Police: Ultimate Collection” featuring all episodes and films. This is the same set (although different packaging) but a second chance for those who missed out on the 2018 Ultimate Set which sold out and became hard to get. This is the same situation for 2020 and only a limited amount have been produced, so get it while you can!

Overall, if you want to experience the classic anime series “Patlabor”, “Patlabor: The Mobile Police Complete Collection” is highly recommended! But it’s only available for a limited time! Check it out now!

Anime Reviews (The ’80s, 90s, 2000s): Patlabor: The Mobile Police Complete Collection (a J!-ENT Blu-ray Disc Review) (1988-2002)

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