Patlabor OVAs-Rewatch
So I wasn't really planning on rewatching the Patlabor OVAs as I have other shows to catch up on but it somehow just ended up this way. It's somewhat interesting going back and watching this as I'm more familiar with Oshii's direction than I was the first time. You can really see his influence come through in the first and last episode for similar reasons.
For example the first episode has a number of those zoomed out landscape shots with a technological element at the forefront. He does this so as to play off the inherent juxtaposition of modern vs old, as a way of highlighting the abnormality of technology. He's quite good at it as he'll play with the lighting/coloring to create a more striking image. He's not afraid to 'black-out' an object in order to increase the contrast, such as an Ingram with their police lights on. It's more prevalent in the Ghost in the Shell franchise but Patlabor was essentially a warm-up act to GitS, so there's still a number of shots here. I'm also sure that fans of the franchise will recognize the color palette of the frame above on the left as he reuses that sunset setting for the opening of the first Patlabor movie. As most people would attest to, Oshii loves his scenery shots, probably to his own detriment at times. However it's used relatively sparingly in the OVA series, especially compared to the second Patlabor movie where the movie was inundated with those types of shots.
Another somewhat noteworthy directorial technique is how events are storyboarded in the show. By that I mean there will be buildup to a joke or line and instead of delivering that punch line, the show will skip past it and show the consequence. For example the above scene has the characters joke about meeting a mad scientist and one comes in. Instead of Asuma delivering a line such as, "Wait a minute, you're the mad scientist that we came across earlier!", the show skips forward to them arriving at his lab. Another example is at the end of the first OVA where Noa gets pissed and throws her arm at the terrorists in a makeshift Rocket Punch. The episode doesn't show her punch landing or any of the immediate fallout but quickly shifts to a shot of the scenery and skips forward. Oshii uses a gong sound so as to signify that her arm hit but doesn't show the impact shot. He'll slightly tinker with the audience's perception to deliver the joke in an unexpected manner. It's a bit faster that way and so the jokes land better than they would otherwise.
A few other minor things I noticed is the way that Oshii will depict unusual events. In the case above, the characters and background are depicted normally in a preceding scene in that they look as visually sharp as they can be. However when something surreal happens, such as SV-2 using their Ingrams for the first time, the visuals are intentionally blurry. The blur creates a dreamlike effect in the visual and thus further enhance the importance of that scene. For the citizens watching, it's almost like a scene out of a comic and the visuals reflect that. That is until Ota wrecks his Ingram by jumping off a bridge. Another tweak he does is mess with the audio in a moment, thus changing the audience's viewpoint. This happens at the beginning of episode 2 where all the characters sound normal but as things start to diverge from reality, an echo effect is introduced into the recordings of the voice actors. This echo effect hints that something is not right, leading to the punch line that the scene was all a dream.
It's kinda funny rewatching the first episode as there is tons of expository dialogue and knowing how insane Oshii's stance on dialogue is now. It does serve as a way of characterizing Shige and the Old Man as the contrast in how they recite their longings to see the new SV2 units serve as a good introduction into their personalities. Still though the dialogue can come across as a bit clumsy such as in episode 2 when Ota is recounting basic information in their world to Asuma, who should be somewhat up to date considering his position. I'm being a bit nitpicky though as it's not that bad and the voice acting makes the lines fun through execution, such as Shige's hyper energy. That said, the introduction of Noa was handled cleverly in that she doesn't have many lines but her personality is established through her late arrival on the motor scooter, clothing, and voice acting. Ota's descent into shooting madness was a hilarious way too of not only showing how two-sided he can be, but also fleshing out the personalities inside the SV unit such as Goto.
Cool use of distance in the frame so as to establish the perspective of the new recruits and them being isolated.
I forgot how much of a lead-in episodes 5 and 6 are to the second Patlabor movie. That said, I think the episodes do a much better job of retaining the characters' personalities compared to the movie so it still feels like a Patlabor show whereas the movie doesn't. While Goto taking the show over still happens, it feels more like a group effort compared to the singular focus in Patlabor 2. I thought it was pretty clever too to use Asuma traveling around as a way of introducing the characters' home lives. That way the two episodes serve to show different sides of not only Goto but everyone in the SV unit, well besides the mechanics. Obviously Patlabor is still top tier, that was never under dispute, so it should be interesting to see how the reboot looks next month. I think I might give the Oshii live-action Patlabor stuff a quick watch to see what that looks like, but I'm not going in with high hopes.
