It’s typhoon season, and for fans of a certain anime film, reports of powerful cyclones heading for Tokyo have an extra layer of meaning. That film is “Patlabor: The Movie,” and it’s now back in theaters across Japan in celebration of its 35th anniversary.
The “Patlabor” franchise, which launched in 1988 as a manga and series of straight-to-video anime episodes, takes place in a near-future Tokyo where manned robots called Labors are used in construction. Inevitably, some folks misuse these Labors, so the police department has created a section to deal with Labor crime equipped with its own Patrol Labors.
Unlike most robot-centric series where heroes and villains fight epic battles in their armored machines, “Patlabor” took a decidedly quotidian view. The cops of Special Vehicle Section 2 Division 2, the franchise’s protagonists, are eccentric but well-meaning public servants who spend more time whiling away the hours at their base on a reclaimed island in Tokyo Bay than they do on assignment. One memorable episode of the TV series was about the tribulations involved in getting a Chinese restaurant to deliver to the base.
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