hree years after the events of Patlabor 1: The Movie, the Tokyo Police
Department's special Labor force has been scattered and reassigned. Noa and
Azuma are helping to test a new generation of Labor pilot interfaces. Ota's
training new Labor pilots in the fine arts of fanatical devotion and
unnecessary destruction. Captain Shinobu has been promoted, and while she
and Captain Goto continue to head Special Vehicles Division Branches 1 and
2, they and their mechanics seem to be the last remnants of the old team
from the Patlabor TV series. Labor-related crime has diversified and
spread out across the country, as have Labor construction projects, and new
Patlabor police divisions are being established throughout Japan. And Noa's
beloved mecha Alphonse has been retired. The world is gradually and
inevitably changing, as people and society move on.
The rate of change is suddenly and sharply accelerated, however, when
the Yokohama Bay Bridge is bombed in an apparent terrorist attack. Home-movie footage taken by a tourist shows the silhouette of a Japanese Special
Defense Force jet above the bridge, which sparks a cover-up and an
escalating wave of distrust between Japan's military, its civil government
and the general populace. Further incidents intensify the conflict until
Japan is poised on the brink of civil war, with the military and the
government each accusing the other of incompetence and inability to deal
with the conflict. Soon the military is seeding the streets with tanks,
U.S. troops are threatening to intervene, and a coup d'état seems
imminent.
In the center of this maelstrom, Goto and Shinobu quietly deal with a
government operative covertly working to expose the secret cabal of
military strategists and industrialists who are undermining confidence in
Japan's internal peace and its military readiness. His evidence suggests
that the SDF jet footage taken at the Yokohama Bridge was doctored to help
create a panic. He also suggests that the mastermind behind the cabal is a
fanatical pioneer who helped create Japan's civil and military Labor forces--a man who was once Shinobu's mentor, and apparently her lover as well.
Concepts 2, Humans 0
The second Patlabor movie follows almost exactly the same pattern
as the first--an oblique beginning, revealing a moment of epiphany on the
part of a maverick genius who goes on to cause chaos in Japan for his own
lofty, anarchistic ends; a tense, quiet plot progression in which the
characters unravel a series of mysteries; an early climax as the truth is
revealed; a massive mecha battle that seems anticlimactic by comparison; a
personal confrontation in a tower full of birds; and an incredibly abrupt
and somewhat unsatisfying ending. Déjà vu sets in early on, but that
doesn't keep the talents of director Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the
Shell) from showing
through. Despite the familiarity, Patlabor 2 is still a strongly
evocative piece, beautiful in an detached, intellectual way.
Patlabor 2 shares many other things with its predecessor -- a
dubbed audio track that's more informative and detailed than the trim,
spare subtitles, the usual limited Patlabor color palette,
painstakingly detailed mecha and cityscapes, a philosophical, melancholy
tone, a beautiful score that underlies a number of otherwise silent
scene-setting montages and a focus on ideas rather than people. Apart from
the usual small jokes involving Ota's rabid fervor, the characters are once
again philosophical vehicles rather than individuals.
Oshii's interests, like those of his complex "villain" here and
in Patlabor 1, are in lofty abstractions that eclipse the actual
human lives caught up in the developing story. Once again, he's attempting
a grand thought experiment--transforming a radical and insupportable
viewpoint into a bitterly comprehensible one--rather than developing
characters or following conflicts.
The real problem with Patlabor 2 is that while the radical
viewpoint in question is interesting to explore, its direct results aren't
particularly believable. In particular, Japan's rapid progression from a
peaceful democracy to an unstable nation poised on the brink of war is
both rushed and underdeveloped. Like its firstborn sibling, Patlabor 2 is well worth
seeing, but it's still the weaker member of the family.
