Hacker Cinema
Patlabor: The Movie
機動警察パトレイバー 劇場版
1989 · Film · 100 min
Part of Patlabor Collection
Directed by Mamoru Oshii
ActionAnimationScience FictionMystery
A mysterious suicide and a series of unmanned robot run-aways sparks off a Police investigation into the suspicious software on-board thousands of industrial robots around Tokyo.
4 positive3 neutralfrom 7 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
7 comments on Hacker News
if for some reason you, random reader of this comment, decide to start watching Patlabor, be aware that there are two continuities:
1. Patlabor The Early Days (88-89, 7 OVA) -> Patlabor (89, Movie) -> Patlabor 2 (93, movie)
2. Patlabor The TV Series (89-90, 47 eps) -> Patlabor The New Files (90-92, 16 eps) -> Patlabor EZY (26-27, 3 movies)
Patlabor: The Movie is pretty good but (IMO) nothing special. The OVAs/TV shows are very slice-of-life and have a much slower tempo than the movie. (From the article: "One memorable episode of the TV series was about the tribulations involved in getting a Chinese restaurant to deliver to the base.") The second movie is much darker and more cerebral, a la Ghost in the Shell (same director), and was previously discussed on HN at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37916306. Overall though the whole franchise is very enjoyable
> In the first Patlabor movie E. Hoba, the author of the Labor virus, graduated from MIT, and one or two mentions were made of efforts by people at MIT to eradicate the virus.
Reminds me of the time I wrote RMS an email telling him he should watch that, as a parable on the importance of using free software in public-works infrastructure. He said it looked really good but that he'd have to try to find a copy on VHS.
In the movies category, it's a total 180 from Patlabor, but I highly recommend Wolf Children by Mamoru Hosoda. It's a masterpiece.
The ones that come to mind first are Akira, Serial Experiments Lain, Patlabor (particularly the first movie), and Paprika.
The other night I watched the 1989 movie [Patlabor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patlabor:_The_Movie) directed by Mamoru Oshii who went on to direct Ghost in the Shell in 1995. The plot is simple and there isn't too much grand philosophy, but the movies was prescient on issues of proprietary software, Internet of Things, urban waste, and Corporate/Government complicity/inaction.
The movie doesn't read as a gritty cyberpunk or even as super cyber/futuristic. It's visually light and the public is optimistic and satisfied with the present. It resembles our present to a certain extent which makes it all the more interesting. Its main divergences from our reality is with the mechs which can be seen as bit of fun or be read as metaphor for technology that is starting to seem divine/magic to all expect for the few technically savvy enough to understand whats going on. I haven't watched the other movies or anime yet, but look forward to checking them out.
[Spoilers] The general plot is.. A genius hacker creates a proprietary operating software(HOS) for a floundering robot/mech company. The company is able to not match competitors in creating robots, but is able to corner the robot OS market. The movie opens with genius hacker committing suicide. Shortly thereafter some robots/mechs sporadically go haywire. You follow from the perspective of a police unit who try to uncover why the robots are acting up and the mystery/motivation of the hacker. A small/funny scene..the police officers are concerned about their mechs own OS fearing that they also run HOS and have been compromised, but their chief engineer reveals that he lied to the higher-ups about installing HOS and chose not to install it because he couldn't see the code inside of it.
Edit: HOS not BOS
It's not just that - both Patlabor and Evangelion often would take a slow, languid tone to observe the city. Evangelion spends a lot of time on Shinji grappling with his depression - scenes of him just sitting on a train back and forth listening to a mix-tape on an endless loop.
Patlabor The Movie, similarly, is about Hoba taking them on a tour of the city with their investigation. Half the movie is a travelogue of futuristic Tokyo.
I think both in general were representative to of the change from the faster-paced action shows of the '70s and '80s to the languid artsy style we see in 90s anime.