#238: Patlabor 2 – The Movie (1993)

 

Studio: Production I.G.

Director: Mamoru Oshii

Screenplay: Kazunori Itō

Voice Cast: Jinpachi Nezu as Yukihito Tsuge; Ryunosuke Ohbayashi as Kiichi Gotoh; Yoshiko Sakakibara as Shinobu Nagumo; Daisuke Gouri as Hiromi Yamazaki; Issei Futamata as Mikiyasu Shinshi; Michihiro Ikemizu as Isao Ohta; Miina Tominaga as Noa Izumi; Naoto Takenaka as Shigeki Arakawa; Osamu Saka as Seitaro Sakaki; Shigeru Chiba as Shigeo Shiba; Tomomichi Nishimura as Detective Matsui; Toshio Furukawa as Asuma Shinohara

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Moving on from the first 1989 Patlabor film, a great deal changed even in terms of character designs, the original character designs of Akemi Takada from the first film (with Masami Yūki contributing here) moving to a notably more realistic tone alongside the mood of this sequel. That is not to say all has changed – humour is still here, as this franchise follows Tokyo Metropolitan Police Special Vehicle Section 2, Division 2, consisting of a large lovable nitwits kept together by Kiichi Gotoh.

This film’s story however feels like a proper start to director Mamoru Oshii’s serious era as a director, in mind to the likes of Angel’s Egg (1985) in-between his comedies beforehand, with a huge emphasis needed to for how screenwriter Kazunori Itō is an integral part to the film’s virtues and deserves his credit greatly. The tonal shift is noticeable though, in mind that over the three films for this franchise, let alone the OVA series and the other entries, the Patlabor project created by Headgear - a group consisting of manga artist Masami Yūki, director Mamoru Oshii, screenwriter Kazunori Itō, mecha designer Yutaka Izubuchi, and character designer Akemi Takada - the franchise has juggled multiple tones over the multi-media formats it has been adapted into. There has been an emphasis on different characters in Division 2 over these different tiles. Noa Izumi, the plucky female member who loves her Patlabor manga, was central to other entries, whilst over the three films you have Asuma Shinohara central to the first 1989 film's action mystery, and WXIII: Patlabor the Movie 3 (2001) focusing on police detectives Kusumi and Hata in what becomes a monster film. Patlabor 2 follows Kiichi Gotoh himself with Shinobu Nagumo, the female captain of Division 1, as the central leads in a political thriller.

A cerebral political thriller, which just exists in a future 2002, this begins in a prologue set in South America for a military skirmish, where a man named Yukihito Tsuge as the last survivor of his squad who intends his revenge a long time later on his homeland of Japan. This revenge is a terror campaign on Tokyo which, in its many stages, exploits all the flaws in the bureaucracy. How this is show is startling and where the themes come in, dealing with a post World War II Japan which has lived in peace, Goto representing this and Tsuge becoming a figure who wishes to bring the terror of war to the Japanese public. Tsuge's plan uses something as seemingly simplistic as exploding a car on a bridge, without casualties, to start the domino effect where everything starts to collapse to his advantage. There is a heightened piece of melodrama as, disgracing her early in her career and undercutting her ability to progress, Nagumo had a romantic affair Tsuge when he was married and teaching her in the early stages of her career, causing a drama in how she will have to be the one to catch Tsuge when possible, the emotions hanging over her head.

The Japanese Self-Defense Force is a target of the film, the film created in the aftermath, in 1992, when the National Diet, the legislative branch of Japan’s government, passed the U.N. Peacekeeping Cooperation Law that permits the JSDF to participate in U.N. operations under strictly limited conditions, which led to the JSDF participating in U.N. peacekeeping and monitoring operations in Cambodia and Mozambique¹. Oshii and Kazunori Itō's film clearly viewed this in a very negative light, as the prologue is set in such a peacekeeping operation where, not allowed to directly attack the enemy, former JSDF member Yukihito Tsuge as a captain found his entire squad wiped out, and his revenge involves using the resulting power struggle he creates between the Tokyo Metropolitan PD and the JSDF to his advantage. This story, and how it becomes part of the discussions on war as a concept against peace in Patlabor 2, is more meaningful when one is aware of this history footnote.

How the plan Tsuge has goes is fascinating, including the film still tapping into salient details of how organizations can make huge mistakes, all timeless in spite of this film being set into the 2000s. Hubris and a terrorist group able to exploit this come into mind here, such as deliberately bringing suspicions to the military for the car explosion, or having the police and military at each other’s throats in a misguided power flex from the police’s leaders. Other tactics, like blowing up bridges or finding a way to take out military vehicles with ease, i.e. causing martial law to have to be brought into place so they are on the streets like sitting ducks, are uncomfortable realistic as tactics if there were enough resources for someone to use. Even more overtly tropes from action films, like blimps which fake out mock chemical gas attacks when shot down, come with the theme in this of Tsuge to cause terror on a public who have never seen conflict. This is obvious but prescient in mind to how, when in a war back in the 30s and 40s, Japan was utterly destroyed and required to be rebuilt from the ground up decades, leaving lasting scars anime like this have tackled as a theme decades later.

It is an Oshii film as an auteur, his focus on contemplative scenes and dialogue exchanges fully here. Even the one playful touch of including a Bassett hound in a cameo throughout his career at this point onwards, a breed of dog he is obsessed with, appears here near the end. This is however a team effort and screenwriter Kazunori Itō just with this film would have won currency from fans of the medium for how well done this is. Production I.G. is on top form here, and whilst there is a noticeable change in the character designs, it is not as drastic as presumed. The characters are far more realistic in appearance, but it is credit to the film, alongside some of the intricate mechanical animation here, that it feels not as abrupt a change between two films. Again as well, there were three films, and the third film, not involving Mamoru Oshii nor Itō, looks just as different as a film into the 2000s where the switch to digitally animation techniques is noticeable on productions, so the franchise has always had an edge of letting each of the stories, least for these films, be different. The music by Kenji Kawai, as with the first film, shows as well why he was as integral to the image of Mamoru Oshii films, or more aptly also how they sound, adding an additional depth to what has gained significance as one of the best anime films from the nineties with considerable reason.

This is more so as, in another team’s hands, it would be still a good film if done well, an action anime which could still tell this story but in a more overtly comedic and over-the-top fashion. This could work as a more pulpy narrative, and still could have been a great anime, and it says a lot that when the humour is here, such as the sudden mission to buy everything edible in a store from Division 2 members, it still matches Patlabor 1 because the characters were established as a team of miscreants who just happened to be a police force. The decision, even with these characters, to take this cerebral tone which Oshii himself would run with from Ghost in the Shell (1995), the lengthy contemplative visual scenes, the extended philosophical discussions between characters, and match it with action scenes, when they happen, which was distinct and effective at its best. Together both films are admirable in their virtues, and it is not a surprise as well how greatly regarded the sequel is just by itself.  

 

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1) Patlabor: The Movie 2 (1993) Movie Review, written by Erick Kown for Beyond Hollywood, published on October 11th 2004.