Like the OVA, the TV series starts with a terrorist incident on Special Vehicles Division 2's first day of work. Labor-loving traffic cop Noa Izumi has gotten approval to join the unit, and arrives shortly after their last Labor was wrecked. The unit is awaiting the delivery of the new AV-98 Ingrams, only for the Labor carrier delivering one of them to be hijacked. Noa goes in hot pursuit, and the rest is history.
Patlabor: The TV Series ran for 47 episodes from 11 October 1989 to 29 September 1990. It was followed by the OVA series Patlabor The New Files, which began release on 22 November 1990.
The English distribution rights for the series are currently held by Sentai Filmworks and it is currently available for streaming on HiDive.
This anime contains examples of the following tropes:
- Aesop Amnesia: Episode 29 centers around virtually all of the SVU getting crippled by issues with their usual lunch place, first because Ohta offends the owner and gets them blacklisted from delivery for half the episode, followed by their order being contaminated by a disgruntled delivery driver and causing them all to get food poisoning once they're back in the restaurant's good graces. Takeo notes that they can't allow themselves to be too dependent on a single source of food again. Then Noa comes by to pick up the day's lunch orders, from the same restaurant, and Takeo makes her order without thinking. Of course, it should be noted that the reason they always buy from that one restaurant is because they have no choice - their base is so far out of town that nobody else will deliver there, and that one restaurant likely makes an exception for them because the entire base orders lunch from them every day.
- And You Were There: Shige's bizarre dream visit to New York is mostly populated with blonde American versions of SV2 personnel, down to the old maintenance chief threatening to chuck people into the Hudson.
- Batman Gambit: Nagumo gets rid of the SRX-70, and more importantly, the corporate maintenance crew trying to steal its operational data for use in weapons development, by telling the chief that she'll only accept it as a permanent piece of equipment if the trigger-happy Ohta is transferred to Division 1 and made its pilot. The chief returns the Labor rather than risk what might happen if Ohta gets his hands on the SRX-70's 42mm autocannon.
- Beach Episode: The TV series, episode 40. Although it's the last scene of the episode that treats the viewer with a view of the team enjoying beach games and suntanning.
- Chance Meeting Between Antagonists: Asuma and Noa go to an arcade center on their day off and end up running into Richard Wong and Bado, who would later become the SVU's main antagonists during the Griffon arc.
- Continuity Reboot: This TV series operates in its own Alternate Continuity completely unconnected to either the preceding OVA or the then-ongoing Mobile Police Patlabor manga.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Schaft Enterprises is a ruthless corporation that produces military mecha, among other things, and uses highly illegal means to test their vehicles. An odd case, in that it remains a monolithic entity with no Big Bad in charge of it, though their agents Kurosaki and Richard Wong/Utsumi give it a human face. Schaft even has its own private army of mercenaries that operates in a great part of Southeast Asia.
- Detachment Combat: The Griffon sacrifices its hydrojet pontoons to draw Noah's fire while the rest of it climbs out of the water to ambush her.
- Disqualification-Induced Victory: Kanuka Clancy cleanly beats Isao Ohta during Division 2's Labor qualifications, consisting of hand-to-hand combat between Labors. Ohta is still selected to pilot Unit 2 despite his loss (not to mention being a blindly aggressive dumbass), because Labors use machine learning to adjust to their pilots' patterns in order to become more capable machines. Clancy is only going to be with them for six months (she's an NYPD officer practicing with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police in order to head up the NYPD's nascent Labor crimes squad), and it would be cost-prohibitive to train a Labor on her and then have to reset it and train it all over again for a new pilot when she leaves.
- Energy Weapons: Only one Labor type ever uses one, and it's quickly abandoned by the corporation building them because they're too expensive and not as effective against cannons and good old-fashioned pummeling as they thought. It was likely deemed Awesome, but Impractical, as we only see it fighting the AV-98s.
- Eye Beams: The Phantom, the Labor that uses the aforementioned Energy Weapons, has a creepy, skull-like face & fires the beams out of the skull's "eyes", but the main camera is actually located in the "mouth".
- Hero of Another Story: Division 1, which is constantly depicted as The Ace when it appears in full force (but rarely does). The final episode of the TV series even has Division 2 getting Overshadowed by Awesome within a couple of minutes when the other Division arrives with brand-new upgraded Patlabors.
- High-Speed Hijack: The pilot episode sees Noa climb aboard a stolen Labor carrier from another vehicle to rescue the AV-98 aboard—which will become her favored machine, Alphonse.
- Kaiju: The fourth and 19th episodes of the TV series feature different monsters. The first is a mammal of some sort, a genetic experiment that escaped, and the audience only catches a brief sight of it — it's an animation cameo of Dirty Pair's Mughi. In episode 19, the monster is an underground-adapted Dragon, which Noa insists on calling it a real Kaiju, while Kanuka insists on calling it a surviving Dragon descended from the ones in the middle ages.
- Lower-Deck Episode: A few eps revolving around the mechanic team rather than the Labor pilots. (Shige insists that this was supposed to be the Upper Deck, in one of the Mini-Pato shorts...)
- Midseason Upgrade: Almost inverted in the TV series where there are plans to downgrade from the Ingram to the cheaper Economy Model Ingram mk. I, but its performance is simply too poor. Played straight for SV 1, who trade in the obsolete Pythons for AV-0 Peacemakers, a massproduction version of the Psycho Prototype "Zero" from the first movie (which was in a different continuity, but whatever). The Griffon also gets one in The New Files, replacing its wings, which broke off after it crashed into a mountain, with a pair of back-mounted hydrojets.
- Motion-Capture Mecha: The Ingrams have a pair of retractable arm harnesses inside the cockpit to allow the pilot to control the mech's arms directly for precise movements like opening doors, though these are optional and most of the finer details of its actions are handled by the on-board computer. One notable scene features Noah practicing with the mo-cap harnesses by tying a piece of steel cable into a butterfly knot.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Nagumo's decision to reject the SRX-70 Saturn because she knew the manufacturer would use its data for military purposes leads indirectly to the disastrous events of the Gryphon Arc.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Richard Wong/Mr. Utsumi, the cold and calculating agent of Schaft Enterprises, hides behind a happy-go-lucky facade. (Mind, he actually is that happy-go-lucky under most circumstances — he just stays that way as he calmly orchestrates a calamity.)
- Our Ghosts Are Different: Episode 27 of the TV series features a pretty standard group of ghosts and poltergeists with unfinished business, the only thing being that they're made up of former inhabitants of every era all the way back to Sengoku...
- Paranormal Episode: The anime is, at its heart, a Slice of Life, Cop Show/Police Procedural, with Humongous Mecha. But, during the 27th episode of the TV series, the SVU2 encounter ghosts, while holding indoor training execrcises in an abandoned building. It turns out that the ghosts were the spirits of earthquake victims, who once lived there. Their spirits couldn't rest because of an undiscovered burial site, which contained the remains of slain samurai, directly beneath the building SVU2 was training in. The spirits were lain to rest, once it was discovered, and rites were performed on the site.
- Put on a Bus: As in the OVA, Kanuka Clancy returns home to New York when her assignment ends partway through the TV series, and is replaced on the team by Takeo Kumagami.
- Robot Soldier: The Phantom is described as a military Labor, but appears to be unmanned, having an electronic warfare suite inside its torso instead of a cockpit.
- Serious Business: The two Maintenance Division centric episodes end up with most of Division 2 going mysteriously missing one by one, and a small civil war among the unit including beatings, nazi-esque "security squads," kidnappings and (non-lethal) hangings, respectively. The culprits? Some spoiled food and the confiscation of a sizable porn stash.
- Sewer Gator: "Underground Mystery Tour": The team learns of sewer-like tunnels beneath the reclaimed land while investigating a series of thefts at the station. Inhabitants include a horde of rats, numerous feral cats, the homeless culprit, and a giant alligator that chases everyone for the last third of the episode.
- Simple Solution Won't Work: "Elusive Green" deals with a highway construction project stymied by on-site trouble, rumored to be a result of local oni being displeased with the plan to cut down a sacred tree. Both Asuma and a local man suggest diverting the highway further south, but the general contractor complains that if he could do that, he already would have (it's implied the higher-ups won't budge on the route, consequences be damned).
- Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: In "Target, Chief Goto", Captain Goto starts getting death threats and pranks, which turn out to all be caused by a disgruntled ex-Labor mechanic whom he had gotten fired for incompetence. Goto ends up embarrassing the guy so badly he has a Villainous Breakdown and admits it was all his own damn fault.
- Sliding Scale of Realistic vs. Fantastic: The TV show is mostly realistic in its portrayal of labor crime until the main story arc kicks in, and the SV2 battles Schaft and their super-robot prototypes... and monsters, dragons and ghosts too.
- Strictly Professional Relationship: Captains Gotoh and Shinobu, with Gotoh nursing unrequited feelings for Shinobu, who strictly enforces a professional relationship between them.
- Stupid Crooks: A lot of the criminals SV2 go up against are really dumb, but the cake goes to the villains in "Save the Terrorists" who are a pair of bombers so inept that the reason that they are independent is because no serious eco-terrorist organization would take them. They end up setting off their own bomb prematurely and in the wrong place by accident and have to be rescued by the police.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: The series touches upon a significant aspect of public bureaucracy in the fact that the SVU2 is seen as a huge liability and a waste of taxpayer's money. In one episode of the series, Ohta is put under insurance review following some property damage he produced during an operation, recounting the events and how everything happen. The insurance reviewer approves the claim in favor of the SVU, as she deems that it would be nigh impossible to prevent property damage, and that Ohta acted on good faith and protecting the public order, justifying the damage.
- Ultraman Copy: The series has a dream episode where Noa homages Ultraman and transforms into a giant hero with a similar color scheme, to fight a Zetton-like monster as a recreation of the famous final episode of the original series.
- Villain Team-Up: Episode 42 of the TV series, titled appropriately enough "The Men Who Returned" features 3 previous villains teaming up—and forming a Terrible Trio.
