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 Labor: The common name for robots designed for heavy industrial use. The rise of labors sparked a revolution in construction and civil engineering, but labor-related crime skyrocketed as well. To combat this new threat, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police created a patrol labor unit, the Special Vehicles Unit Second Section. This was the origin of Patlabor. In the Criminal Justice System, Humongous Mecha-based offenses are considered especially heinous. In Tokyo, the dedicated officers who deal with these vicious felonies are an elite squad known as the Special Vehicles Unit. These are their stories.Set in the not-so-far-off future of 1998, this late-80s/early-90s anime, Mobile Police Patlabor, is the story of police officers fighting crime with giant robots. The SVU's (no, not THAT one) Division 1 are a corps of competent, hard-working police who always get their man — but Patlabor isn't about them. No, it's Division 2 that gets the spotlight, that scruffy, rag-tag band of half-competent cops with a propensity towards massive property damage.Quite possibly the quintessential Twenty Minutes into the Future giant robot anime, Patlabor is notable for treating its mecha not as insanely powerful miracle machines, but actual vehicles with clear limitations that require constant maintenance. In fact, although there's action aplenty, most of the series focuses on the daily life of the police officers who pilot the mecha, and big robot smash-ups often take up only a minute or two, if that. It is, truth be told, a slice of life series disguised as a Humongous Mecha show.Patlabor was created in 1988 by "Headgear" — a group of creators including Mamoru Oshii of Ghost in the Shell fame. Patlabor was planned from the start as both a manga and OVA, and a theatrical movie and ongoing TV series followed not long after. By turns a Cop Show, Police Procedural, slice of life comedy, political thriller, and of course, a Mecha Show, Patlabor had no trouble switching between genres from one episode to the next. (For the most part, though, the TV series and OVAs tended more towards comedy and light drama, whereas the movies were much more adult and sophisticated.)Patlabor was unique for its time in that it examined the impact that giant robots might have on society. Not war machines but glorified forklifts, hijacked labors (hence the name) provided a new avenue for crime and terror, thus the need for a police organization trained to deal with them. Otherwise, the Japan seen in the series was virtually identical to the Japan of today, just with slightly more advanced tech. On the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism, it fell somewhere in the middle — it wasn't some wonderful new age of technological miracles, yet the tone was still generally hopeful and optimistic. (However, the tone of the movies, most notable in the third and final film is decidedly more cynical and pessimistic, almost a denouncement of original premise)Most of the narrative focuses on Officer Noa Izumi, an eager, fresh-faced, tomboyish young woman who's just graduated from cadet training. Noa's a mecha otaku — the only reason she applied for the job was so she could ride around all day in her own personal robot (nicknamed "Alphonse"). One of the main themes of the series is Noa learning to take her job as an enforcer of the law more seriously.Other main characters include:
This show provides examples of:
This page is about a work of fiction... but in ten years, who knows?
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alternative title(s): Patlabour; Patlabor
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