Forum - View topicCX's Anime Reviews (can be spoiler-ific). Latest: Shimoneta: A Boring World Where the Concept of Dir
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Jose Cruz
 Posts: 1773 Location: South America |
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I also think that the art in the late 80's and 1990's OVAs was better, more complex and more organic looking.
Thing is that today with the expensive labor and low budget of TV (compared to OVAs) the complexity of the art decreased. |
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Captain X
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Patlabor: The TV Series
(47 episode series) I had originally planned to watch this series after watching the original OVA and the first movie, but my anime group voted to watch it so I ended up watching this series first out of the franchise. From what I can gleam from reading about it, this doesn't really matter because the TV series was its own adaptation of the original manga source material. As for how it was... Eh, it wasn't bad, I guess. This series follows the "Mobile Police, Division Two," a police department that specializes in the use of a type of combat mecha that is itself part of a larger category of machines known as "labors," because as the opening of each episode informs us, they were initially used in construction and industrial applications, until criminals figured out they could use them to commit crimes with. Then, much like with Ghost in the Shell and the internet and internet crimes, there was a police response that created the "Mobile Police" which used specially made "patrol labors," hence the "Patlabor" name. Division Two are essentially the underfunded underdog of the police force, even compared to other mobile police divisions that use patlabors, constantly needing to justify its existence and expense, in spite of actions that often result in some rather high amounts of damage. The series is largely episodic, and has an overall light tone. There are a few continuing story arcs throughout the series, which actually apparently caused to series to be inflated from an originally planned 24 episodes to its nearly 50 episode run. For instance there's an arc that features a continuing terrorist threat against some kind of UN initiative called the Babylon Project (something lent itself rather well to Babylon 5 riffs), which itself was never really explained all that well beyond that it was some kind of international/globalist effort that terrorists were constantly trying to attack. There was also an arc that dealt with the military-industrial complex that involved a labor company trying to get test data for its labors by secretly testing them in combat against military and police labors, and while there could be humor in those stories, they tended to get more serious in tone than usual. For the most part, though, the series is interested in showcasing the antics of Division Two, which tended to be rather hit and miss. There were some pretty hilarious episodes, though, like the one where one of the mechanics goes to New York but it's all in his head so it comes off as this weird mirror universe version of Division Two. While it could be argued that Noa Izumi is the protagonist of the series, it's actually more of an ensemble. Noa is a fun character, in part because she reminds me quite a bit of a woman I've had a crush on for a long time, not only in her looks but in her enthusiastic attitude and her competence in combat. 
*sigh* 
Actually one of the more humorous aspects of the series is that Noa is basically the most competent member of Division Two, not only in terms of piloting her mech (which she names Alphonse), but as a police officer, in spite of being a rookie when it comes to piloting the labors. This contrasts her with the other labor pilot in her division (they only have two labors), Isao Ohta, who seems to see himself more as a soldier than as a police officer, and is responsible for most of the damage caused by Division Two. He's a bit like a Japanese Dirty Harry, only he sucks at his job. There are a few other interesting characters, like the half-American/half-Japanese Kunuka Clancy, who initially starts out as something of a competitor for Noa until the two earn each other's respect, and Asuma Shinohara, who is actually the son of the head of the company that produces the labors for the police (and most of the world, apparently), and ends up being something of a will they/won't they romantic interest for Noa later on in the series. Aside from Noa, my favorite character has to be Captain Kiichi Goto, who has to be the most laid back authority figure I've seen in any show. He's strict when he has to be (like when Noa and Ohta end up doing a lot of damage), but for the most part he channels his inner Dude. We're talking about a guy who barely raised an eyebrow to being confronted with the ghost of a samurai warrior and just calmly grabbed the closest thing to defend himself with (you'll just have to watch that episode for yourself  ).
This was a fairly entertaining series to watch, though it could really be boring at times, and it was pretty obvious that it was aimed more at younger crowd, even without the knowledge that some of the labors were introduced on the show to sell toys. You can just tell right off watching it that it was made for kids, because it really comes off as a Saturday morning cartoon. That isn't to say that it's a bad show (I watched and enjoyed Avatar, after all), just that you have to be ready for what you'd be getting yourself into when watching this. Another issue many people might have is the dub. This isn't to say that it was especially horrible or anything, just that it's exactly what one might expect of a dub made during the earlier days of localization. Most of the cast is okay, it's just that a couple of them had some pretty bad delivery. The actress that dubbed Noa in particular stood out, probably at least in part because she was a central focus of the show and thus had a lot of lines. But when she tried to sound excited or scream or pretty much anything that didn't call for a completely flat delivery, she came off sounding like a kid playing make-believe. It just didn't fit with the character in my opinion, but I didn't hate the dub or her in particular or anything. If anything I see it as something to take in stride as being part of the experience of watching an old anime like this. Doesn't mean I won't bitch about it, though. 
There really isn't much to do in way of analysis or further commentary to make for this series, other than that it does touch somewhat on the military-industrial complex, as well as the relationship between the military and law enforcement, and the importance of the distinction between the two. Probably the only extra thing I can really say is to poke a bit of fun at the patlabors for their use of giant revolvers instead of having integrated weaponry, but that's just kind of a mecha thing in general that I like to make fun of. There's also the premise that the top-of-the-line Ingram patlabors used by Division Two have to be customized to their pilots, which is just ridiculous from an engineering point of view, along with the notion that prototypes are somehow better from the production model of something (rather than being the working model used to identify and eliminate problems). I'd say that this is a somewhat fun series to watch, though probably not something you can marathon, and probably not something you would get much rewatch value out of. I have to admit that this is partly because of the length in my case, but the boring stretches of filler certainly don't help either. I don't want to sound too negative, as there are plenty of good episodes in this series' 47 episode run, it just probably isn't worth watching them more than once. This, for me, makes it slightly above average (but not much), earning it a 6/10 on my nebulous scale of good. |
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 9840 Location: Virginia |
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@Captain X
But you didn't finish the series.  Sorry, that was a joke, sort of. The second OVA series "The New Files" is essentially a continuation of the TV series. So, you still have 16 episodes to go. Much of it is a continuation of the Griffon plot. The first episode is called "Griffon Resurrected.
The first and second movies follow the first OVA series continuity. The third movie is a side story set in the Patlabor universe. The crew appears only in a supporting role at the end. I enjoyed the entire series much more than you did, but tastes differ. |
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Captain X
Posts: 253 |
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I'll probably get around to the rest of it eventually. I'd actually planned to watch all of them in the order they aired, but my anime group wanted to watch just the TV series.
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Jose Cruz
Posts: 1773 Location: South America |
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I watched Patlabor when I was in the 6th grade in school. So now I don't remember a lot about it though. Although I remember liked it a lot and it felt very different from the other series on Cartoon Network (yep, in my country Cartoon Network showed Patlabor at about 5 PM on weekdays).
 I also remember a lot of the episodes were very "episodic", so to say.
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Captain X
Posts: 253 |
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Shimoneta: A Boring World Where the Concept of Dirty Jokes Doesn't Exist
(12 episode series) This is by no means "The Anime to Save Anime" that at one point many fans claimed it to be, but it is a fun satirical look at censorship culture and the effects it might have if carried out to its logical conclusion. Its real strong point is how it manages to be light and funny in spite of tackling a rather serious subject matter that is rather relevant in current times. So while it's too much to say that this show is going to somehow save anime, it did happen to be in the right place at the right time. As the beginning of every episode informs us, this series takes place in the Orwellian future of Japan, which has passed a law called "The Law for Public Order and Morals in Healthy Child-Raising" that essentially bans anything that could be considered lewd or otherwise immoral. This not only includes things like porn or the figurines from your favorite ecchi series, but also cussing or using any other words the state has forbidden on the grounds of Helen Lovejoy's favorite argument. This is actually somewhat comparable to the PC future of 1993's Demolition Man, except that this series takes it even further. For instance, rather than simply having a computer print out tickets whenever you cuss, instead the not at all symbolic collar you wear around your neck will start sounding a shrill alarm that informs you that the morality police (yes, they actually call them that) are going to come and arrest you, perhaps by even busting into the place you happen to be and beating the crap out of you the way American SWAT teams like to do to pot smokers. And just to make sure you don't draw anything lewd since you can't just buy porn, the little omni-tool bracelets you wear around your wrists and use like a smart phone also keep track of your hand movements and likewise alert the morality Gestapo. Hell, it would probably alert them if you tried fapping or playing the slots or twisting the tentacles or whatever, too, provided you even knew how to do it since you'd be childishly naive about anything relating to sex. The series follows Tanukichi Okuma on his first day at Tokioka Academy, "Japan's most elite public morals school." He's looking forward to reuniting with his childhood friend/crush, Anna Nishikinomiya, who is serving as his new school's student president. He actually practically idolizes her, as when he was a child, she was the only one to not ostracize him following his father's arrest as an "ero-terrorist" for attempting to distribute condoms on the steps of the Diet building (while shouting "free the penis" ). Unfortunately for him, he gets caught up defending someone he knows to have been falsely accused of groping a woman on the train, which in turn leads to him getting saved by the ero-terrorist known as Blue Snow. He very quickly finds out that the man he saved, Raiki Gouriki, actually was stalking him on that train as he suspected, and that he's on the student council as well. Also, it turns out that Blue Snow is actually Ayame Kajou, student vice-president and Anna's best friend. The way Tanukichi ends up finding this out is after Ayame kidnaps him and essentially blackmails him into forming SOX with her in her effort to spread what amounts to sex education to their school, as well as her normal activities of spreading porn and shouting dirty jokes.
I saw this series referred to as the "anime to save anime" during the time it originally aired, but I have to say that as much as I liked it, I wouldn't really call it that. It's essentially a romantic comedy with a message, and considering its subject matter (not to mention Blue Snow's disguise consisting of a pair of panties on her face and a white sheet with nothing underneath it), it's actually fairly tame fan-service-wise, though at one point they totally manage to sneak a giant dick in past the censors thanks to one of the character's hairstyles. The series is well paced, had plenty of humor of both the well-thought-out and just straight up sex joke variety, and is just overall competently done, but I wouldn't say it's a masterpiece or anything, and to be fair the series doesn't really set out to be. It just happens to stand out for its competence thanks to so much of anime these days consisting largely of moé/ecchi that's pretty much just made to pander to the plastic-collecting otaku fanbase. The story is fairly straightforward, with Tanukichi helping out Ayame, at first rather reluctantly, while being torn with what he feels to be his duty to Anna to turn Blue Snow in to her and the knowledge that this would probably crush her since Blue Snow is actually her best friend. Not to mention the way he idolizes Anna and feels this will keep him from living up to his image of her. Along the way SOX gathers more members, including an artistic prodigy who helps with the whole distributing porn thing by drawing it, though she has to do it with her mouth to avoid her "Peace Maker" bracelet going off and drawing the "morality" police. Later they come into conflict with another ero-terrorist's group led by "White Peak," who steals other people's used underwear and makes a body-suit out of them that he wears. He also claims to be allied to SOX, which makes things a bit worse for SOX by being associated with actual terrorist acts, like bus hijackings, rather than Blue Snow's immature antics aimed more at education and protesting the morality laws/censorship. Ayame is helped by a gift from her father, who was likewise arrested for being an ero-terrorist (though she claims he was framed), which is an old-school flip-phone that is programmed to jam the PM devices within its range for 3 minutes per day. This enables her to cuss and say other banned words, and to make lewd gestures without setting off the collars and bracelets she or the others around her wear. And while it's never spelled out, I'm guessing it somehow keeps the authorities from tracking her. The series is very entertaining to watch, with plenty of good moments along the way that made me laugh so hard I actually had to rewind a bit to avoid missing anything. 
Moments like this... The characters are somewhat cliched, but that's about what one can expect from what amounts to a harem romantic comedy with a twist. I know some people might object to the "harem" label, but if you think about it, almost all the supporting characters have a thing for Tanukichi, including hyper-masculine Gouriki (which is played for laughs). Not all of them are as bad as Anna, but it's there to a certain extent in all of them, even if it's just to tease Tanukichi. Anna is the "pure" love interest, and the twist here is that Tanukichi, for as obsessed as he is with her, is actually not interested in her in a sexual way, though this seems to be in keeping with his view of her as "pure" with himself as being unworthy for her. Which means the other twist is that it's actually Anna aggressively pursuing him rather than the other way around, and is also played for laughs, but I'll get into more depth on that later. Ayame/Blue Snow is this show. She may not be the protagonist/viewpoint character, but she is this show, which is very much a statement against censorship in Japan. She's every bit as dirty-minded and lewd as one might expect from the stereotypically perverted guy, and she has the kind of forceful personality that makes her really interesting to watch as she stands up to her oppressive government and its prudish demonization of sexuality, and combats the childish ignorance of her peers and even some adults. Not to forget about Tanukichi himself, I have to say that that's kind of his problem in a way, in that he's kind of forgettable because of how plain he is compared to all the other, even minor characters. I wouldn't be quite cruel enough to label him a self-insertion character, but he very much serves the role of the "average high school student" that one would see in pretty much any harem anime out there. I feel that this is probably mostly so that Ayame, the true voice of the show, can be that much more prominent. Of course, this show is also very comedic in its satire, so he also functions as the straight man for that comedy, giving Ayame someone to contrast her and bounce her outlandish ideas off of. He could be seen as something of a voice for reason, except that he's also something of a coward with a chip on his shoulder. Having both him and Ayame have fathers labeled as dirty joke terrorists was something of a nice touch by giving them something in common there. This served as a nice starting point for the more "romantic" aspect of their relationship, which blossomed more or less naturally, especially as it became clear that Tanukichi wasn't interested in romance from Anna, and he went from grudgingly going along with Ayame's plans to a mutual respect developing between them. There are a lot of characters in this show, though I wouldn't really call it an ensemble, because even the antagonists of the show are somewhat bit parts. While Anna's parents are the more overall antagonists in that they are politicians pushing for even stricter anti- obscenity laws and more pervasive surveillance (though I don't know how much more Orwellian they could get), probably the most prominent antagonist was White Peak, the leader of a group he called "Gathered Fabric." I mentioned them briefly before, but essentially their goal was to steal people's used underwear (preferably the ones they were literally wearing) for them to wear, with White Peak wearing nothing but a bodysuit made out of them. I feel this is because White Peak embodied the kind of argument most moralist busy-bodies used while pushing for the morality they want to legislate, and Anna's parents actually do just that, as well as conflating Gathered Fabric's actions with those of SOX's. Which brings me to the more in depth part of this review. While I usually try to avoid going into politics too much, that's pretty much unavoidable in this case, as this touches very close to home for me. Because while this show was actually targeted at censorship in Japan, the themes of this series fit rather well into the United States given the militarization of the police and their tendency to go way overboard in their response to any perceived threat (even if only to their authority), or if they just decide they don't like someone's attitude, as well as the more recent efforts to ban anything perceived as objectifying women and just undermine free speech in general. The series actually gives us an example of this early on in the first episode by having a woman scream that a man groped her (she admits this was entirely intended to blackmail him out of money), and even though he actually didn't (he was actually stalking the protagonist), the accusation was enough to have the morality police come running to give the guy a beat down before hauling him off to prison. So while the title of the legislation in this anime and the rhetoric of the main antagonists of this show calls back to the Jerry Falwell, conservative Christian, "moral majority" of the '80s and '90s, the censorship and authoritarianism is equally applicable to the feminist, "progressive" liberals who also no doubt see themselves as being akin to the "moral majority." After all, they seek the same kind of censorship, and even use some of the same rhetoric (i.e., the objectification or exploitation of women), even if it the reasoning they use is different (conservatives demonize female sexuality and feminists demonize male sexuality). This is essentially the crux of what Shimoneta is getting at, and actually just comes right out and spells this out for the audience more than once, that sexuality is a natural and important part of humanity and shouldn't be demonized, even if there are those that go too far and infringe on the rights of others. It also calls out the childish nature of the reaction that calls for censorship and demonizes its opposition. After all, not only is the reaction itself completely self-centered and childish, but the outcome of this is to perpetuate this childishness in others by either acting ignorant for the "benefit" of others, or actually causing ignorance by withholding information about something as simple as how babies are made. Of course people still talk about it on the sly, and a few even act like they know more than their peers, but they're still completely ignorant about it and feel completely confident in their sense of moral superiority over others they consider perverts for actually knowing what they only think they know about and whisper about to their friends. After all, for as much as feminists complain with righteous indignation about what they perceive as objectifying women, they will often do very much the same thing to men (as can be seen in various articles on feminist sites like The Mary Sue about Orlando Bloom's dick and pictures of male Olympians in their Speedos) while being completely confident in their own moral superiority. The series gives us an example of this through Anna, who sees herself and is seen by others as being moral and pure, and doesn't see the hypocrisy in her objectification of Tanukichi and her later sexual assault and rape of him. Her reasoning is that since she wants it, and she's moral and pure, that makes her desires moral and pure. It's because of these themes that I feel this series is very relevant to the current political climate, in part because I feel it really isn't all that exaggerated in the way Demolition Man felt in response to '90s PC culture. So your enjoyment of the series is very much going to depend on your views of the censorship of speech/expression and your perception of a threat to free speech/expression from the government and/or busybodies. If you are concerned with these things, this series will likely resonate with you at least somewhat. If you are pro-censorship or otherwise agree with the rhetoric behind censorship, you probably won't like this show. Actually I've seen comments on anime boards from people upset that this show glossed over the "positive aspects of censorship," so I know that this is going to be the main thing that determines whether you like or dislike this show. As you might be able to tell by this point, this series resonated with me quite a bit, and I really enjoyed this series, not only for its thoughtful story and themes and characters, but also for its humor and sense of fun. Personally the only real problem I had with this show was its use of the old trope of female on male rape being funny thanks to Anna's persistent attacks on Ayame and the reaction of other characters to these attacks. To be fair, Tanukichi does go from having fun at Ayame's expense to expressing disgust at Anna over it, especially as things go from Anna trying to get Ayame to drink her "love nectar" (you can probably guess) to her getting more rapey and threatening to stab him at one point over another girl he claimed was his cousin living in his apartment. I suppose it could be seen as the series being consistently irreverent, and perhaps as a sly way of addressing this double standard, but given the straightforwardness of pretty much everything else in the show, that could be over-analysis on my part, or, you know, just looking for a way to excuse what I see as a problem with this series. 
So while this wasn't the "anime to save anime," I still feel that it is important and worth a watch. It manages to get its message across without coming across as a lecture through its heavy use of humor. Its characters are a bit clichéd, but still extremely fun to watch. That being said, your enjoyment of this series is going to depend entirely on your outlook toward censorship. It's a bit hard for me to score this, but I think I'm going to call it a good solid 8 inches out of 10.
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