Patlabor The TV Series

I just picked up the 1989 Patlabor TV Series from a local chain that's unfortunately having a "going out of business" sale. I love the first two films and I am aware that the series is a lot more low-key as well as not directly connected to the films like the original OVA was but will I still enjoy this 47 episode run?

youtu.be/YOPCi7P2UWk

silly cops do silly things

Just don't watch OVA2 without TV.
TV is really low key and is more about SOL than any action.
I'd say about character development, but there is none.

what's the original OAV like by comparison to the series? I have yet to get around to tracking down a copy of that either.

TV is amazingly comfy SoL.

Be sure to check out OVA2 for some of the best episodes. They slot in between the cours thou so it's somewhat awkward to watch all at once.

The movies have 2 different dubs depending on whether it's an earlier Manga release or the later Bandai ones, is this also true for the series/OVA2?

Ten times better and packed with action too.

It might have had more action but it just felt like a less polished beta release of TV and Movie 2 to me.

>beta release of TV
Plz user, the TV is 95% water.
It was really hard to watch to me and I never finished it.

wells hit, maybe I should have gotten that instead. It would have been a lot less expensive too even taking the sale price I got the series into account.

oh, less polished in what way? I would assume it'd have higher animation quality being an OVA

The characters are a lot more archetypal and you don't explore them with as much depth due to the lower episode count.

Then there's the episode plots which are literally recycled but executed better in the later releases.

And Patlabor is better at SoL than action anyway.

The show is far better, Oshii is a hack.

Oshii is a pretentious fuck but he does good work.

He's a great director except that he sucks the life out of everything he touches. He sapped both Patlabor and GiTS of any character the source material had because he was so obsessed with his hard boiled Kerberos bullshit. Case in point, Jin-Roh was his best film.

I don't find the Patlabor films devoid of character idiosyncrasies, I would agree that about GitS but that somewhat works towards its advantage as an exploration of a cyborg wondering if she's really just entirely a robot.

It does work better for GiTS than it does for Patlabor for the reason you mentioned, she's a cyborg so it's sort of thematically fitting, but it also makes the characters boring on screen. Go rewatch that movie and you'll realize that almost nothing happens, and it's actually structured almost exactly like Patlabor 2. Both the plot and characters of GiTS '95 are incredibly thin, it coasts by being incredibly thematically strong and having immaculate visuals. It's an amazing accomplishment, but more entertaining as an abstract experience than as any sort of story.

The first Patlabor film was pretty damn good, the second had lost any levity that remained. Patlabor was always, always about wacky characters in giant robots. Sometimes shit got real, but at the end of the day it was all in good fun. In Patlabor 2 Oshii didn't just tone down the levity, he actually sidelined Noa entirely because she didn't fit his retarded vision of a political thriller, and had her only significant presence be about doubting the entire core of her character through the franchise before that point, something which he doesn't bother to even resolve. The message is basically "fuck Noa she's dumb, we're gonna follow Goto around for the whole movie because I can make him work in a political thriller." It's antithetical to Patlabor's entire nature.

>fuck Noa she's dumb, we're gonna follow Goto around for the whole movie
hahaha although I like Noa and it's a shame she and most of the others aren't featured more prominently in Patlabor 2 as I would consider her the main character of the series I always thought of it as a bit of an ensemble where focus could shift to the perspective of anyone in the 2nd Vehicle division. Besides, Noa is just a rip off of Leona from Dominion Tank Police.

wait this shows off their similarities even better

I certainly won't deny that Noa is probably very heavily modeled off of Leona just as in many ways Patlabor in general feels like a more nuanced and slightly less openly satirical version of Dominion Tank Police.

That being said, I can't take the choices Oshii made in Patlabor 2 as anything other than disdain for the light-hearted side of the franchise. Shit got heavy in the first OVA series, but the characters were still always allowed to be themselves. In PL2 Oshii strikes at the very heart of the show. He doesn't just remove any levity, he attempts to tear down Noa herself, the emotional core of the franchise. No character more represents the lighter side of Patlabor than Noa, and no aspect of Noa represents her nature as the genki tomboy comic relief character than her relationship with her labor, and her only real appearance in the movie is to cast doubt on only that exact element of who she is. If the movie ended with her changing her mind and coming back to loving her labor, then I'd be fine with it, but it's just left unresolved. Now that's just hanging out there.

It's difficult for me to watch PL2 without thinking that Oshii hated Noa and everything she represented. Either that or he didn't care enough about the franchise to not trample over its most core tenets.

I just figured she'd been assigned to pilot one of the new AV-0's and while she loved her 98 it had been mothballed and it was emotionally easier for her at that point to try not to be reminded of it.

>he watched the 2nd film

You watched the grimdark, realistic-depicted 2nd film first? You're way off the order. The TV series is closer to the first film in spirit.

But wait, the pure comedy episodes of TV and OVA 2 are written by Oshii himself.

>written
Adapted.

By the time PL2 came around he had enough clout to do whatever he wanted with it.

so the TV series more closely follows the original manga? Are the plots taken directly from that?

The show is a comfy buddy cops series.
Oshii went full otaku on the movies.

so far it's been dumb plots like "child prince who loves mecha joins the team for training and little kid in Hokkaido hates mecha now that one demolished his house in Tokyo *shrug*

It's okay. Watching Burn Up Excess and probably You are under arrest can patch up the Patlabor sized hole in you after

Not a Mad Bull 34 fan then?