nitially, the development of mobile armored suits capable of greatly increasing a human's capacity to lift and move heavy objects was meant as a boost for the construction industry. But the labor-aiding devices--known colloquially as "Labors"--were soon being put to unpleasant uses by terrorists and street brawlers alike. The rise in Labor crimes prompted the need for a Labor-armed police force: the Patrol Labor division of Tokyo Metropolitan P.D.
As this TV series begins, Special Vehicles Division 2 is recruiting new pilots and receiving a new Labor on the same day. But the new Labor is hijacked, and a determined would-be recruit--a diminutive, single-minded redheaded girl named Noa Izumi--takes off after it in whatever vehicles she can commandeer. She quickly finds herself a permanent place in Division 2, which has garnered a terrible reputation for excessive violence and general incompetence (unlike Division 1, which remains a seldom-seen ghostly presence throughout the series). Oddly, they exhibit neither during the course of these 10 episodes, as they deal with everything from a rogue military weapon to marauding demons to a wandering, vaguely vengeful drunk.
These episodes weren't the first releases in the unwieldy and extensive Patlabor continuum, which actually began with a series of original video animations and then flowered into a mini-industry of videos and feature movies as well as these TV installments. But these tapes do stand easily on their own, and they're as good a place as any to start.
Don't just stand there, do something
The Patlabor franchise has gotten high marks from fans simply because the series wastes little time on its eponymous, ubiquitous mecha. The Labors do have a sharply detailed, high-tech design similar to the work of famed artist/director Masumune Shirow (whose Dominion OVA run, featuring very similar themes and characters in a more stylized, cyberpunky setting, began the same year as the first Patlabor OVA series). But the machines spend relatively little time in combat throughout these tapes, as Division 2 farms, fishes, chatters about baffling cases and often only rolls into battle at the end of an episode, if at all.
As a result, Patlabor comes off more as a good-natured cop comedy than an action series. It moves at a placid, even pace compared to Dominion or You're Under Arrest or any of anime's other similarly hyperkinetic personality-intensive police shows. There are a few standouts--especially power-mad Ota and supercilious NYPD visitor Kanuka--but most of Patlabor's characters seem as subdued as the flat blue-and-brown color palette that constrains much of the animation. Even the most energetic scenes don't seem particularly lively.
This paves the way for some pleasantly thoughtful material, especially in episode 10's cliffhanger, devoted in part to an old woman's search for "the Christmas of 50 years ago." The mild pace will doubtless appeal to fans of slow-burning, people-intensive series like Armored Trooper VOTOMS. But adventure fans may find themselves wandering off for popcorn in the hopes that by the time they come back, the characters will have stopped talking and started moving.
