Patlabor: The Mobile Police

 Time for a true classic, with the 7 OVA episode series Patlabor.

 

 

Known in the western world as Mobile Police Patlabor, this tells all there is to know: the cops have mecha's now!

 

As humanity evolves, so does it's technology, and Labors are mecha to aid in everyday workings.  But of course, criminal minds see ways to use these for their own nefarious ends, so the Patrol Labors, or Patlabor unit, is called into being to stop this menace.  

 

Izumi is a young police officer who wants to help people where she can by preventing and solving criminal acts, together with her collegues Oota and Shinohara.  While their first deployment doesn't go that smoothly, causing damage to the Labors, they did get the job done.

 

 

As the mayor of New York comes to Tokyo, they are tasked with his protection.  They figure out a bombing is planned related to Project Babylon, a wall to keep the rising sealevels under control.  Finding the bombing truck, it needs the Patlabor to disarm it.   They succeed in preventing the attack, but the Babylon Project is still threatened, as a sea monster, which turned out to be genetically modified, attacks one of the construction sites.

The Patlabor squad is deployed to stop this beast, but they free it from it's bindings, and it returns peacefully to the depths of the ocean.  After resolving a hostage situation rather unconventionally, they are send on a vacation in a training camp.  But soon mysterious things start to happen, making the place look seemingly haunted.  But it is all a set-up part of the training.

When visiting a consturction factory, Asuma comes across a huge labor that is being developped for military use.  But the labor is stolen, as mysterious men are observing the police unit's labor hangar.  The police chief gets a hunch, and takes one of their labors out to the streets.  But then a coup takes place, and Asuna and Noa make way back to Tokyo and the potential warzone there.  The unit is instructed to break through the siege and regroup, in order to try and locate a stolen nuclear missile from a US base in Japan.

 

 

Noa and Asumi are to use the newly developped paratrooper labor from the factory, as the unit agents race to the barricades and try to break through in their machines.   The unit manages to avert the crisis before a civil war can break out.  Life returns to more normal police work after this, like the theft of a truck.   The truck carries a military grade labor, and the police must stop it from being taken away.

So this is an okay series, and while I can easily enjoy something in the older drawn fashion, sadly this series didn't age as well as others.  It's fun and light-hearted at times, while tackling deeper issues like insecurity born from inexperience, yet somehow it doesn't warrant for me the venerable status it has acquired over the years though.