by OL » Sun Feb 26, 2017 9:40 pm
Just finished the original 7-episode OVA of Patlabor. All this time, and I'd never seen anything from this franchise, but I think I'm really gonna enjoy checking out the rest of it. The OVA is just a drop in the bucket (compared to the sum of three movies, a 47-episode tv series, and a series of live-action episodes which look amazing) but it's enough to get the gist, and I like it a lot.
It's weirdly a lot less mecha-focused than I thought it would be. You go into a mecha anime, you tend to expect a lot of giant robot fighting. But Patlabor has a much, much bigger focus on its characters and their individual quirks. More of a slice-of-life police comedy that just happens to feature a few robots every now and then. First few episodes are all very self-contained and let you get to know the characters, before having a slightly grander two-parter with episodes 5 and 6, which goes a little further into politics and military stuff, as you would more normally expect out of Mamoru Oshii. It's a good dynamic that felt like it lacked cohesion at first, but makes total sense once you hit the end of episode 6.
Episode 7 is kind of out of left-field though. It doesn't follow up on the events of the previous two-parter, nor does it really set anything up for the future. If nothing else, it's easily the most action-packed episode (a little more in-line with what I was initially expecting), and totally feels like a precursor to the second episode of Stand Alone Complex, which would come out over a decade later. It's definitely a good'un, I'm just a bit confused by its placement within the OVA.
Already ordered the first two movies, and I'll probably start buying the tv series pretty soon. Loving the hell out of this. I need to watch a lot more 80s and 90s anime. There's just something about them that gets me all warm and fuzzy inside.
EDIT: Just a note about something else entirely. I guess I'm glad I didn't preorder the bluray versions of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Reviews on Amazon are tearing the releases apart, and for good reason. Apparently there are no proper subtitles, only dubtitles; meaning, the optional subs are just a transcription of the English voice track, rather than a legitimate translation of the Japanese, as any normal anime release does. Huuuuuuge no-no. And to make it worse, apparently the subs are also of the "for the hearing-impaired" variety, including descriptions of the sound effects and whatnot. And every episode is apparently presented as a single chapter, with no breaks between openings, endings, or commercial breaks.
What the fuck?
You'd think people would understand how to properly put together an anime release by now, in 20-fucking-17, after almost two decades of this stuff being released on disc. The old Stand Alone Complex DVDs got this stuff right, so why the fuck not the blurays? How does this even happen?
Furthermore, apparently there's an audio glitch that switches between English and Japanese at certain parts.
Major disappointment. I was looking forward to getting this, one of my top-five anime series of all time, in a sort of "ultimate," up-to-date version. Guess I have to keep waiting.