Mobile Police Patlabor: The Early Days (also titled Patlabor: The Mobile Police) was the animated component of the Patlabor Real Robot media mix. It was a seven-episode Original Video Animation written by Headgear and produced by Sunrise, which originally released on VHS and LaserDisc from 25 April 1988 to 25 June 1989.
As the series opens, the newly assembled Ragtag Bunch of Misfits that is Special Vehicles Division 2 is on standby, awaiting the delivery of their AV-98 Ingram Patrol Labors... which are stuck in traffic. With little else to do, the team starts weeding the yard of their base, until they're scrambled by their commanders and are forced to pick up their Labors en route to deal with a terrorist incident.
The OVA debuted one month after the Mobile Police Patlabor manga, and was followed up by the better-known animated film trilogy beginning with Patlabor: The Movie on 15 July 1989. It is an Alternate Continuity to Patlabor: The TV Series, which began its run in October 1989.
Originally dubbed in English by the defunct Central Park Media, the American distribution rights to the series are currently held by Sentai Filmworks and it was formerly available for streaming on HiDive.
Mobile Police Patlabor: The Early Days contains examples of the following tropes:
- Chance Meeting Between Antagonists: About midway through "The SVU's Longest Day part 1", Asuma happens to meet Kai, while he's eating at a ramen noodle stall. He'd later learn, from Gotoh, that Kai was the leader of the rebel army that was laying siege to Tokyo.
- Failed Future Forecast: The last episode of the original OVA, "Go North, SV 2!", premiered less than five months before the Berlin Wall fell, so in 1998, there is still a Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall still exists (with West German "Brocken" labors standing guard). Judging by the 2nd movie, it has ended, so it either ended later than in Real Life or it was a Retcon.
- Gatling Good: Ohta is unsurprisingly a big believer in this, and Clancy hooks him up with what looks like a GAU-8 Avenger towards the end of the first OVA series. Somehow.
- I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: Conversed in a Ghost Story told in "The Tragedy of L", where a civilian bystander is said to now haunt the Labor training camp after being killed by an errant shot from a Patlabor's revolver cannon during an exercise; the pilot was said to have been Driven to Suicide. Gotoh made the whole thing up as part of a "Scooby-Doo" Hoax meant to get Ohta to shape up.
- Kaiju: Used in "The 450-Million-Year-Old Trap", where the monster walks off into the sea immediately after it appears. It has an appearance similar to Gaira from War of the Gargantuas ...and Hiromi Yamizaki.
- Military Coup: "The SV2's's Longest Day (Part 1)" consists of rogue soldiers from the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Forces (JGSDF) leading a revolt against the civilian government.
- "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: "The Tragedy of L". After yet another PR incident caused by Ohta being trigger-happy, Commander Gotoh sends SV2 to a training camp where they hear a Ghost Story about a civilian being killed in a negligent discharge of a Patlabor's cannon; the shooter then walked the Labor into the lake and drowned himself. There are then several haunting incidents around the camp, including sightings of both the ghost of the dead civilian and an apparently pilotless Labor covered in mud and weeds. Kanuka exposes the hoax: the undead civilian is actually Gotoh's very-much-alive niece and the whole thing was orchestrated by Gotoh in an attempt to Scare 'Em Straight.
- Shotguns Are Just Better: SV2's most powerful weapon is a riot shotgun scaled up for use by an Ingram. Thanks to the fact that shotguns are not precision weapons, and the collateral damage from a shotgun pellet that big would be huge, it only gets used once against the Kaiju.
- Strictly Professional Relationship: Noa and Asuma are very close, although until the later films they're just friends and coworkers.
- Whole-Plot Reference: "The 450-Million-Year-Old Trap" is a hilarious Gojira send-up, down to the one-eyed Mad Scientist and the "Oxygen Destroyer" (actually a bit of dry ice in a plastic tube).
