Mobile Police Patlabor (Series / OVAS / Movies)

AN Shows
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Patlabor OVA 1988 / Mobile Police Patlabor

Genres: action, comedy, science fiction
Themes: mecha, police, real robot
Objectionable content: Mild
Plot Summary: In the future, rapidly advancing technology gives birth to giant robots known as “Labors”, so named for their usefulness in heavy industry. However, this also gives rise to “Labor crimes”, resulting the the need for a new branch of law enforcement equiped with and dedicated to the policing of Labors. When Izumi Noa, a female police officer, becomes the newest recruit of Special Vechicals Devision 2, she and her top of the line “Patrol Labor” (or “Patlabor”) Alphonse are swept into a series of adventures featuring crazed construction workers, eco-terrorists, and sea monsters.
Number of episodes: 7
Vintage: 1988-04-25 to 1989-06-25

ANN Info Page

Patlabor The Mobile Police: The New Files / Kidō Keisatsu Patlabor (OAV 2/1990)

Genres: action, comedy, science fiction
Themes: mecha, police, real robot
Objectionable content: Mild
Plot Summary: Special Vehicles Division 2 is back on duty, along with their Ingram Patrol Labor (Patlabor) robots. Using their courage as well as the Ingrams, Captain Goto’s motley crew of officers battle crime in Tokyo city. They also deal with their personal lives, as well as the supernatural.
Number of episodes: 16
Vintage: 1990-11-22 to 1992-04-23

ANN Info Page

Mobile Police Patlabor / Kidō Keisatsu Patlabor (TV Series)

Genres: action, comedy, science fiction
Themes: mecha, police, real robot
Objectionable content: Mild
Plot Summary: In the future, advanced robotics has created heavy robots (“labors”) for use in a variety of functions: construction, fire-fighting, military, and more. However, though the robots are only machines, their operators are also only human—and humans sometimes turn to crime. Since a heavy labor unit can be a dangerous weapon, the police of the future are set to fight fire with fire, using advanced patrol labor units, “patlabors”. This is the story of the Second Special Vehicles Division, a motley crew of patlabor policemen and -women doing their best to fight crime and live a normal life.
Number of episodes: 47
Vintage: 1989-10-11 to 1990-09-26

ANN Info Page

Maiden Japan Press Release

Patlabor: The Movie Vintage: 1989-07-15
Patlabor 2: The Movie Vintage: 1993-08-07
Patlabor WXIII (movie 3) Vintage: 2001-12-10
Mini Pato (movie) Vintage: 2002
Patlabor EZY (movie) - Vintage: 2026

Maiden Japan Press Release: OVAs

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I am glad to see Maiden Japan getting into the vintage game, between this and Cobra from Right Stuf today is a pretty good day.

Maybe I should bother Maiden Japan about license rescuing Black Magic M-66.

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Maybe someday some part of the sentai “conglomerate” will bring us the Patlabor ova series which continues the tv series, with all eps dubbed (since the original dubbers couldn’t complete the series).

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Starts throwing money at the screen. :woohoo:

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OVA Series Collection Cover/Disc Art

DVD

1456×1280 407 KB

906×1280 372 KB

Blu-ray

1742×1280 373 KB

993×1280 380 KB

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Looking at the back covers, it looks like Maiden Japan might have the 3 movies, TV Series, and The New Files as well.

-cropped from the cover-

Movie Timeline

  • Original OVA Series, Patlabor The Movie, WXIII: Patlabor 3, Patlabor 2

Television Timeline

  • The Television Series, The New Files

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I’m somewhat surprised that they were able to use that Law & Order logo that looks strikingly like the famous one.

I also don’t understand the tagline: I’ve seen almost everything in the Patlabor continuum and the only part that I could liken to Law & Order is the third movie, and that’s not on this release…and is disavowed by true fans of the franchise. :wink:

If they really do have the rest of the continuum then I really hope that they dub the post-TV-series OVA; going from dub to sub after ep 7 is very jarring. Besides, if they were to redub that entire OVA they could make it into gold. Patlabor isn’t a series known for retaining dub casts, that’s for sure.

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There’s a lot of typos on the covers. I’m sadden that this wasn’t re-dubbed. The CPM dub for the series was terrible.

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OH MAI GOD. That DVD artwork is spectacular. I am blown away by how good that looks. insta bought. I’ve been slowly slugging through Patlabor TV. I’ve seen so much of this franchise over the years, but still can’t manage to finish off the tv show. The one thing I never saw now was these OVAs.

Anyway in a perfect world sentai would license rescue and re-dub everything. I think I might have a heart attack if they did that though. CPM went with Matlin Recording for this show, and Matlin Recording managed to come up with plenty so-so dubs over the years but no spectacular ones. Sadly this is one of their worst. Still it is watchable, it’s not one of Kip Kaplan’s evil entities. But it’s not a good dub by any stretch of the imagination. It’s watchable but that’s it really. Matlin Recording’s dub on Maze tv was probably their best dub. Dan Green does alright in the Patlabor tv dub, because he’s an excellent actor. Elisa Wain is a love it or leave it kinda voice, I liked her in **Maze **so I tolerate her here too. Michael Schwartz who was excellent as Astor in **Maze ** does a meh job as the best character, Goto! While he was the right voice quality all the subtlety is gone! I like his voice with Goto, but damn he needed better direction or something. Well he’s a better Goto then whoever bandai visual got to do it in L.A. anyway. But the one true Goto is of course Peter Marinker in the EXCELLENT and BRILLIANT Manga Video dub. Not to mention Michael Bakewell is a much better director then the others and for the love of god them brits can write good scripts while L.A. and Matlin Recording have bleh scripts or worse, unnecessarily confusing /complicated and wordy at times.

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Goto is the best character? Hardly. He’s amusing, but he’s a total jerk (which is continually brought up). Those types of characters can be great, but not when they’re constantly keeping the superior characters down, as Goto always was. Goto claims that he knows what will happen in each incident, and yet he gives cryptic orders & withholds information that endangers his crew & leads to chaos, unnecessary destruction, and furthers the schism between Section 2 and the rest of the police force & general populace. It’s like he gets off on seeing his people suffer misfortune unnecessarily :frowning:

BTW, are you familiar with the manga series Vinland Saga?

I have an affinity for the dub of the full-fledged TV series as it made the character superior to what they were in the subbed version. It was like a Foster dub without Foster; it was Generator Gawl all over again.

The biggest problem with the TV show is that it doesn’t engage in an overarching plot until the very end, a plot that is continued in the OVAs, and those OVAs aren’t entirely dubbed, and the Japanese sub completely changes the tone of the show, rendering it largely unwatchable.

BTW, did you make it to the “American Patlabor Division” episode of the TV series? If not, you really should skip to it, and watch it dubbed. It’s the most hilarious depiction of America you’ll find this side of Golgo 13.

I’d say that they’re more grammatical errors & poorly structured sentences than typos, but my rather punctilious nature aside, that plot synopsis is painful to look upon after having grammar rules rather literally beaten into me. “Someone set us up the bomb” would not look out of place in this synopsis.

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Fixed.

And nope haven’t seen it. What episodes? DATFEEL when i own the entire franchise (almost)

Anyway Goto is the best character because he’s intelligent, has a chess master mind, and knows how to get his team to work (and work together). He’s shown over and over again to be a genius, just seems he was too smart for his own good and banished to the reclaimed land of Tokyo (a common tactic in Japanese government, hell in the government job in the US I had even). Goto has a really cool personality, yeh he’s cryptic and vague, but he’s like that because he knows being like that will get Asuma to act/investigate it/care, which he’ll in turn inspire Noa. Not to be outdown by Noa, gung ho Ota will try his best too. And not knowing exactly what/why they’re doing something Ota can’t run into something blindly and jeopardize everything. His personality is just cool. Besides how often do middle aged men get good roles in anime? As far as characters go Nagumo is really cool as well.

I didn’t like the overarching plot toward the end that the second OVA series (not these) deals with. It was too out of character for the show, and sort of corny. Although I never saw how it finished, and it does suck that they stopped dubbing it RIGHT THERE. They only had a couple episodes to go.

I’m still not seeing the typos or grammatical errors. But maybe this is why I’m a writer not a copyeditor.

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Not exactly. Goto doesn’t actively partake in the missions, except to hold back the team so that they incur massive damage to their labors, allow massive damage to be inflicted on the town, and waste time (unless you consider kicking back in the patrol car & taking a smoke break to be actively partaking lol). When he can be bothered to put down his cigarette and talk to his team he either gives cryptic advice that is as useful and as vague as a fortune cookie text or a Nostradamus prophecy, except when he issues an order that serves to directly “nerf” the team.

Goto’s only “master stroke” is to have the backup labor prepped & ready to go, making him appear brilliant, but the labors are only so thrashed to need replacement because of his inane orders.

The viewer is led to believe that Goto is brilliant because other characters in the show believe that he is brilliant, that he sees 50 moves ahead & has all the information. Yet he never explains his “foresight”, never shares his information, and that he has/does these things isn’t definitely proven. Occasionally the series will throw out a faux-intellecutal conversation/monologue for Goto,like the protracted scene in the movie where he takes a boring Ben Franklin quote and makes it more tedious, but those don’t serve to prove that he’s a brilliant tactician or, really, anything.

Could Goto secretly be screwing his team and everyone else over, destroying millions in public & private property indirectly just so that he can see how much he can get away with, perhaps in some quest for vengeance against the government, which other characters tell us wronged him? Maybe, but I think he’s just incompetent. Or he’s the victim of lazy (incompetent) plot construction, that the writers need Goto to be so cryptic & to sabotage the team so that the movies and TV episodes run their full length without the writers needing to think harder. :wink:

Though if you’re a manga fan, Vinland Saga does have a character who acts, and looks, disturbingly like Goto IMO. Only he’s shown to be competent beyond a doubt, unlike Goto.

Those aside, do you find that its “flow” is awkward and improper when you read the synopsis? I’m truly shocked that this is the official cover text.

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Hey, Prede–I’m Mike Schwartz, the excellent Aster and the meh Goto of whom you speak. (Yeah, I google myself sometimes.) I have fond memories of the V.O. work at Matlin, and you’ve made some interesting observations about it.

  1. Yes, I think Goto was a pretty cool character–never in a hurry to show how intelligent he really was, and sometimes a little cavalier with public safety and the safety of his team.

  2. Despite the fun I had with the directors and producers over at Matlin, I’ll admit there were times when I probably should have asked for another “take.” I have my limitations as a V.O. actor, obviously, but every now and then, at least, I think I knew that there were times when a nuance was off, and I regret not putting my two cents in.

Anyway, thanks for keeping Patlabor alive out there in the ether–I teach now, and on those occasions I play it for students, they think it’s pretty cool (except for the students in the Anime clubs who remind me how much better the subtitled episodes are).

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Wow! I feel honored that you actually replied! Thanks so much! I wrote about you on my blog too btw. Pretty much the same thing though. But if you want to read it it’s Comcast’s Anime Selects on Demand – Part 2 | Prede's Anime Reviews just scroll down to the Patlabor dub part. And just FYI I was not making a sly attack on you or anything. I’m pretty sure you’re a good actor since you were great as Aster. I think that there were times in the Patlabor dub where things should have been given a second go, as you said. And there were more then a few times when everyone could have used a little better direction. But I don’t blame the cast for that. It’s not your job to ask for another take.

Yes Goto is my favorite character. He’s quite a guy. And as I said I like your voice for him. Very interesting to hear your opinion on all this. That’s pretty cool that you teach, because I’m a substitute teacher. If I was in an anime dub, I’d show it to my students too. I think it would be interesting to get taught by the voice of Goto…

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I just got my copy of the Patlabor OVA BD today in the mail. Hopefully I’ll have time to watch it. :slight_smile:

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Original OVA episode #1 http://theanimenetwork.com/component/option,com_kunena/Itemid,183/catid,5/func,view/id,132014/limit,20/limitstart,740/#140855.

Wiki: Patlabor - Maiden Japan (in conjunction with Section23 Films) has licensed the original Patlabor OAV series and will be released on Blu-ray and DVD April 30, 2013. They have also licensed the TV series and will be released on Blu-ray and DVD on July 16, 2013.

ANN: Maiden Japan Licenses Patlabor Video Anime Series (Patlabor: Early Days). Anime News Network. Retrieved 15 January 2013.

ANN: Maiden Japan Licenses Mobile Police Patlabor TV Anime Series (47 episodes). Anime News Network. Retrieved 21 March 2013.

-Joe

Edit: Mentioned in the blog.

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Patlabor The Mobile Police The Original OVA Series, Ep 1, is now live at ANO

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Maiden Japan Adds Patlabor: The New Files OVA

posted on 2014-10-22 13:16 EDT
DVD and Blu-ray slated for release on February 17, 2015

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The New Files Complete Collection Cover Art/Disc Art

DVD

2118×1280 519 KB

909×1280 174 KB

909×1280 326 KB

Blu-ray

1790×1280 406 KB

1012×1280 193 KB

1012×1280 342 KB

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Did the English dub really only go through episode 4?

I remember it being very limited but…

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