Patlabor: The Movie

I’ve written about Patlabor before. The TV series is a great sitcom about Japanese police officers in the future, that offers commentary on politics, humor working with strange people, and treats robots as nothing more than we would treat guns or police cars in a police sitcom set in 2015. The second movie is an sophisticated political and philosophical tale about foreign wars, Article 9, and the point of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces. So what are we to make of the first Patlabor movie? Did Headgear go all out for the first time the heroes from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Special Vehicle Section 2 make it to the silver screen?