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Review : Patlabor The Movie 1
I realized that I have not reviewed the nerdiest movie in my DVD collection. Now what do you ask is the most nerdiest DVD in my collection? Mind you I do have the anniversary special edition of TRON. The DVD of which I type is Patlabor The Movie 1.
Patlabor is an animated theatrical movie based on a popular TV animated show from Japan in the 80s. This movie is a detective story about a Tokyo police devision that specializes in giant robots that are mostly used in construction. These giant robots are piloted and called "Labors". Despite how far out that and cliched that sounds the labors are pretty realistically depicted.. well for giant robots.
But the nerdiest thing ever about this movie is what the villain is. The bad guy in this movie is an evil robot computer operating system that will crash and send the labors into and uncontrolled destructive rampage. The programmer of this OS is dead and our heroes have to find a way to save Tokyo from being destroyed by the evil operating system. I think I will stop right there and allow you to make your own Microsoft joke. However the OS looks like either a UNIX or DOS system.
The TV series had some comedic elements and there is some comedy in this movie but it is slightly misplaced. A really good thing about the story is that it is possibly to watch the movie and not know anything about the TV show without being totally confused.
The director of this movie is the ever creative and strange Mamoru Oshii and it featured all of his recurring elements. He puts biblical quotes, fish eye lenses, and basset hounds in all of his movies. He later went on to make the ground breaking movie Ghost in the Shell.
This movie was made in the 80s and was set in the first years of the twenty first century. That is right about now if you think about it. The 80s were a golden age of Japanese animation. Patlabor was one of the better ones but there was so much good work coming out of Japan then. Like most Anime DVDs the English soundtrack is plagued by lame acting and the original Japanese dialog with subtitles is much more palletable.
I will say it one last time. This movie has an evil giant robot operating system the bad guy. You just do not see that everyday.
Jake at April 1, 2004 
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Comments
Is this the one where the girl jumps out of the robot to reload the gun with huge shells?
Posted by: Roland at April 15, 2004 1:56 PM
Yes.
Posted by: Jake of 8bitjoystick.com at April 15, 2004 2:08 PM
