Patlabor 2: The Movie

Patlabor 2: The Movie (機動警察パトレイバー 2 the Movie) is a 1993 Japanese animated science fiction political thriller film directed by Mamoru Oshii and written by Kazunori Itō, who also respectively directed and wrote Patlabor: The Movie.[1] It was produced by Production I.G, Bandai Visual and Tohokushinsha.[2]

Patlabor 2 strays from past iterations of the Patlabor series by heavily focusing on political themes. It touches on domestic and international issues that the Japanese government faced during the 20th century.[3] The film focuses on the post-occupation status of Japan, during which the country had economically, politically and technologically progressed under prosperous years without being involved in another war after the nation surrendered and was occupied

Plot

Set in 2002, three years after the events of the first movie,[4] Noa Izumi and Asuma Shinohara are now testing new Labors at a facility run by the Metropolitan Police. Isao Ota is a police academy Labor instructor. Mikiyasu Shinshi has since been reassigned as the Tokyo Metropolitan Police's head of General Affairs. Seitaro Sakaki has retired with Shigeo Shiba taking over his position as head of the labor maintenance team with Hiromi Yamazaki, Kiichi Goto and Shinobu Nagumo remaining with the unit as Kanuka Clancy had permanently returned to New York. Most of them had been replaced by fresh labor pilots.

Suspicious events begin to materialize with the face of a military takeover of Tokyo by GSDF forces and martial law[3] after the Yokohama Bay Bridge is destroyed by a missile,[4] with belief that the JASDF was the culprit. Protests in various JSDF bases take place as a means of conveying their denial of the bridge attack. Before long, public panic comes as JGSDF-marked gunships attack in several bridges in Tokyo Bay, various communication centers and SV2 headquarters, coupled by the release of a supposed deadly gas after Special Assault Team snipers shoot down an auto-piloted blimp that was responsible for jamming all electronics in the Greater Tokyo Area.

Goto and Nagumo once more assemble the original Section 2 members in an abandoned subway passage as they embark on a secret operation to apprehend Yukihito Tsuge, a former GSDF officer who planned the terrorist attacks as a means of forcing the country to face its own military inadequacies after decades of peace. With the threat of military intervention by the United States Forces Japan looming unless the government controls the situation, the team uses an old stretch of the Ginza Line to approach an artificial island Tsuge uses as his hideout. Goto also takes care of things on his end by facilitating the arrest of Shigeki Arakawa, a GSDF intelligence agent who is actually one of Tsuge's former cohorts. After a fierce fight inside the artificial island's tunnel which results in flooding, the team evacuates the tunnel while Nagumo breaks through to finally arrest Tsuge.

Release

It was shown originally in Japanese theaters on August 7, 1993.[12] Later in 1998, the movie was released again with Dolby Digital 5.1 channel remix and additional music.[13]

Patlabor 2: The Movie was dubbed and released in 1995 in UK by Manga Entertainment and by Manga Entertainment in the US in 1996. In the mid 2000s, Manga Entertainment lost the licenses to Patlabor: The Movie and Patlabor 2: The Movie in the UK and the US, but retained the license in Australia, where Manga Entertainment properties are distributed by Madman Entertainment. Bandai Visual later released the film under their North American label, Honneamise, with a new English dub produced by Elastic Media Corporation.[14]

Aside from Bandai Visual having the license to North America and the UK,[13][15] Panorama owns the license for Patlabor 2 to Hong Kong and Macau with a Cantonese dub and subtitles aside from the original Japanese dub.[13]

In Japan, Bandai Visual/Emotion has released Patlabor 2 on DVD, Blu-ray and on UMD.[13] Only the double disc DVD/Blu-ray and DVD/HD DVD sets as well as the single disc Blu-ray release has the remade English dub and subtitles.[13] The Blu-ray also includes a booklet that includes illustrations and screenshots from the movie.[16]

In Australia & New Zealand, Patlabor 2 was released dubbed on VHS in 1996 by Manga Entertainment UK, and on DVD in 2003 by Madman Entertainment under licence from Manga Entertainment, including Dolby Surround 4.0 mixes of both the original Manga UK English dub and original 1993 Japanese dub. For unknown reasons, Madman had opted to use an inferior, non-anamorphic SD video source supplied by Manga USA that had undergone an NTSC conversion from a PAL master tape originating from Manga UK, which unlike Manga's release of the first Patlabor movie, used film negatives from Japan as a source and slightly sped up the framerate from 24 to 25 frames-per-second to be PAL-compliant. This resulted in slight ghosting and the introduction of a soap opera-like effect that mimicked field-blending. A remastered version of the movie has never been made available for release in Australia, despite the OVAs and TV series having been made available by Madman using remasters.

Beez Entertainment licensed the film in Europe. Section23 Films has licensed all three Patlabor films, with the second film released on Blu-ray and DVD on July 21, 2015.[17]

director	Mamoru Oshii
writer	Kazunori Itō
based on	Patlabor by Headgear
starring	Ryūsuke Ōbayashi Yoshiko Sakakibara Naoto Takenaka
producer	Mitsuhisa Ishikawa Shin Unozawa Tsuyoshi Hamawatari
music	Kenji Kawai
cinematography	Akihiko Takahashi
editing	Shuichi Kakesu Yasue Funami
studio	Production I.G
distributor	Shochiku
runtime	113 minutes
country	Japan
language	Japanese
gross	¥180,000,000

Patlabor 2: The Movie

Plot

Cast

Production

Subject

Thematic background

Basis

Release

Reception

Novel series

Sequel

Further reading

External links

References