#noa kumagami nagumo and clancy should... well...

[doedipus]

we finished patlabor on tv recently and honestly like 30+ years later it still feels pretty unique in the niche that it fills

like there's obviously a ton of real robot series, but I don't think there's too many other shows in that style that are *as* devoted to like, near future speculative sci-fi in the same way. like there's a lot of shows filling the role of a star trek or alien, but it feels like there's not as many mecha anime doing stuff along the lines of contact or district nine or whatever, where they're using a setting grounded in relatively realistic contemporary political and cultural contexts, and machines that are meant to feel plausible. I feel like the closest thing I can think of that I've seen is gundam 08th ms team.

but at the same time, it's regularly pretty goofy. in the tv show and ova, the oshii type proto-gits plotlines are often spaced out between lots of episodic plots about kaiju, incompetent minor criminals, or light cop show incidents reminiscent of you're under arrest, that are sort of at odds with the dead serious tone I tend to expect from a real robot series.

in this sense it really does feel like a star trek series- the characters and setting are plastic enough to easily switch back and forth between self serious metal gear in the shell plots and the lighter you're under arrest style cop show sitcom plots at will, without breaking immersion all that much... although I think the ova and TV series might push the envelope more often with wildly silly episodes and directly referential gags than something like ds9 does.

my introduction to the series was the first movie and I still think that's kind of the quintessential patlabor thing in a lot of ways. the overarching cyber-noir plotline features interesting and prescient critiques of the late 80s economic bubble, there's lots of fun with various mecha concepts and designs, and it also spends a decent amount of time fleshing out the routines and personalities of the main cast. part of me is kind of annoyed that most of the rest of the series doesn't balance things out as well as that.

but I think a close second was the episode of the tv anime where they keep trying to get lunch delivered to the sv2 outpost but it never shows up, so they get increasingly desperate until the entire crew drives out and immediately gets food poisoning, and probably a full third of the episode is noa running around trying to keep everyone's orders straight. it hits a really good sweet spot of developing the day to day stuff while also being really fucking funny