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For me, Patlabor 1 and 2 are thrillers who happen to have mechas in them. Despite the name and the prominent role of the Labor Patrol department the movie is ab

For me, Patlabor 1 and 2 are thrillers who happen to have mechas in them. Despite the name and the prominent role of the Labor Patrol department the movie is about the police work done by the Patlabor police force or the counter-terror unit in part 2. As a thriller you know who the baddie is from early on. The conclusion is not therefore not the unveiling of the culprit as it would be in a crime movie, but the neutralization of the well-known culprit, quite often by force (why is that?) Here you see mechas battling it out against a fortress, but it could just as well be a SWAT team storming an appartment block and it would be entertaining all the same. I would place it under "color" and I agree, it can make all the difference ;)

PaulHoule 3y ago
Right, Patlabor is strong even without the mechas. Something I find amusing about the series is almost half the time they are dealing with ghosts instead of criminals. (Thus Patlabor is much about the uncompleted legacy of the past as it is about the problem of the near future.) Ghosts and ghost stories are huge theme in anime that you might miss because the portrayal of ghosts in anime and western culture are very similar qualitatively, but quantitatively I think they turn up a lot more. It's much like the way religious professionals turn up more in anime than they do in comparable western media. (e.g. "Cherry" the Priest is a major character in Urusei Yatsura in fact he and his niece Sakura were developed before Lum and Ataru were)