| 機動警察パトレイバー２ ｔｈｅ Ｍｏｖｉｅ Patlabor 2 the Movie |
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| Directed by | Mamoru Oshii |
| Produced by | Bandai Visual Production I.G Tohokushinsha Film Corporation |
| Written by | Kazunori Itō |
| Starring | Miina Tominaga Toshio Furukawa Ryūsuke Ōbayashi Yoshiko Sakakibara |
| Music by | Kenji Kawai |
| Editing by | Shuichi Kakesu |
| Distributed by | Bandai Visual, Shochiku |
| Release date(s) | August 7, 1993 |
| Running time | 107 minutes |
| Country | Japan |
| Language | Japanese |
Patlabor 2: The Movie (機動警察パトレイバー Kidō keisatsu patoreibā the movie 2) is a 1993 Japanese anime film directed by Mamoru Oshii, who also directed Patlabor: The Movie.[1] The movie has taken some liberties from being a mecha-themed movie in theme to a political-themed one with domestic and international issues that the Japanese government had faced during the 20th century.[2] The main theme of the movie is mainly based on the status of Japan, which had been economically, politically and technologically progressing under prosperous years without being involved in another war after the nation's defeat and occupation by the Allied Forces after the end of World War II.[2]
It was shown originally in Japanese theaters on August 7, 1993.[3] Later in 1998, the movie was released again with Dolby Digital 5.1 channel remix and additional music.[4] Patlabor 2: The Movie was dubbed and released in 1995 in Australia and the UK by Manga Entertainment and by Manga Entertainment in the USA in 1996. In the mid '00s, Manga Entertainment lost the licenses to Patlabor 1 and 2 in the UK and the USA, but retained the license in Australia, where Manga Entertainment properties are distributed by Madman Entertainment. Honneamise was the DVD label of Bandai Visual for handling North American sales in 2005.[5]
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The movie is set three years after the events of the first movie.[6][7] Noa Izumi and Asuma Shinohara are now testing new Labors at a testing facility run by the Metropolitan Police. Isao Ota is a police academy Labor instructor. Mikiyasu Shinshi had been reassigned as the Tokyo Metropolitan Police's head of General Affairs. Seitaro Sakaki retired with Shigeo Shiba taking over his position as head of the labor maintenance team with Hiromo 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 Most of them had been replaced by fresh labor pilots.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 JGSDF forces and declared Martial law[2] after the Yokohama Bay Bridge was destroyed by a missile,[6] with belief that the JASDF was the culprit. Protests in various JSDF bases took place as a means of conveying their denial of the Yokohama Bay Bridge attack. Before long, public panic came with the attack on several bridges in Tokyo Bay and various communication centers with SV2 headquarters, supposedly by JGSDF-marked gunships with the release of a supposed deadly gas after Special Assault Team snipers shot an auto-piloted blimp that was responsible for jamming all electronics in the Greater Tokyo Area.
Goto and Nagumo once more assembles the original Section 2 members in a hidden subway passage as they embarked on a secret operation to apprehend Yukihito Tsuge, the mastermind of the terrorist attacks in the Greater Tokyo Area and a JGSDF officer who had gone AWOL after the disastrous UN Peacekeeping operation in Cambodia back in 1999.[6][7] When the JSDF and the police couldn't see that Tsuge was the culprit for bringing confusion into Tokyo, Goto and Nagumo authorized an operation to capture Tsuge after seeking assistance of a JGSDF intelligence agent named Shigeki Arakawa and the ex-officers of SV2[7] without backing from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. Tsuge was eventually arrested by Nagumo herself after she and the other original Section 2 members were able to storm an artificial island used as his hideout.
Shigeki Arakawa (荒川 茂樹 Arakawa Shigeki)
Voiced by: Naoto Takenaka (Japanese), Blair Fairman (English, Manga Entertainment dub), Kim Strauss (English, Bandai Visual dub)
Yukihito Tsuge (柘植 行人 Tsuge Yukihito)
Voiced by: Jinpachi Nezu (Japanese), Robert Clotworthy (English, Bandai Visual dub)
Production of Patlabor the Movie 2 started after Kazunori Ito was appointed as the scriptwriter for the upcoming movie back in the early 1990s.[15] The original plan called for the same plot used in the original OVA series episode "The SV2's Longest Day," which showed renegade JGSDF soldiers and officers conspiring to undermine and overthrow the Japanese government.[16] However, it was soon abandoned when Mamoru Oshii told Kazunori Ito that maybe the scope of terrorists causing havoc under the cover of a coup would be a better movie idea.[15]
Ito soon met with other members of HEADGEAR to create some ideas that can be used for the movie, based on the theory that Patlabor 2 will be their last work on the Patlabor franchise. Soon after realizing that he couldn't take most of their suggestions, Ito had told them that he would end his consultation with them and announced that he would brainstorm the movie's script alone and isolated himself from the rest of HEADGEAR to give him some space to work on the movie's script with Oshii working on the storyboard.[17]
A reference placed in the move based on pre-World War II Japanese history is the SSN news broadcast of the Yokohama Bay Bridge attack was at 2:26. The time shown on the amateur footage in national television is a reference of the February 26 Incident, where Kōdō-ha fanatics of the Imperial Japanese Army tried to occupy central Tokyo as part of a coup d'état attempt.[18]
Aside from Bandai Visual having the license to North American and the UK,[4][19] Panorama owns the license for Patlabor 2 to Hong Kong with a Cantonese dub and subtitles aside from the original Japanese dub.[4] In Oceania, Madman Entertainment has the license to market Patlabor 2 in the region.[4]
In Japan, Bandai Visual/Emotion has released Patlabor 2 on DVD, Blu-ray and on UMD.[4] 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.[4]
Most of the prevailing theme in the movie has been cast on the Japanese Self-Defense Forces and on their legality as Japan's military force since Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, created on May 3, 1947 by the Allied Forces, meant that the JSDF is only allowed to defend Japanese territory from hostile invasion and not to be deployed in any manner on foreign soil.[2] On June 15, 1992, Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa had pledged to contribute JSDF personnel to head to Cambodia and participate in UNTAC, which called for 2,000 Japanese personnel to be deployed including various JSDF personnel from the JGSDF, JMSDF and JASDF, police officers and election observers with the condition that most of them would not see any combat operations due to Article 9 regulations,[20] though this deployment was seen as a testing ground for potential future peacekeeping operations in foreign soil in order to obtain a seat in the UN Security Council.[20][21]
There was some opposition from this after the Diet of Japan had passed the UN Peacekeeping Cooperation Law, allowing the JSDF to be in UN peacekeeping operations.[2] with a low approval rating of 20% when it became law. In a public poll taken, 70% percent of the public had been against sending JSDF personnel to Cambodia due to memories of World War II[22] with an SDF public relations group polling the first 600 troops deployed to Cambodia with a poll of 19% saying that they would refuse any order to be deployed in other UN Peacekeeping operations due to their confusion as the JSDF has not been engaged in any hostile activity after World War II.[23] Among those who had opposed this deployment were Kazunori Ito and Mamoru Oshii themselves from the public level.[2] Further opposition became noted in Japan when Atsuhito Nakata, a civilian election observer and Haruyuki Takada, a police officer with the rank of Superintendent[24][25] were killed during a gunfight in Cambodia,[26] resulting in protests calling for remaining Japanese UN volunteers to go home[21][26] before Takada's father went on national television and told the protesting crowd that he was proud of his son's sacrifice in order to let Cambodia have peace.[21] In addition, Ministry of Foreign Affairs representatives have issued a press statement that their deaths were regrettable, but have insisted that the JSDF's participation in UNTAC would continue and said that their deaths "were very regrettable for Japan, also indicated that world peace and security are sometimes only achieved at the sacrifices of precious lives."[21][26]
But after the UNTAC mission was complete, 50% of the polls taken now suggested that they actively supported JSDF personnel that were sent off to Cambodia and were hailed as heroes upon returning home.[22]
At the time of Patlabor 2's release in 1993, a lot of issues had faced the Japanese government in both the domestic and international level. Most of the issues include the end of the Soviet Union, Japan's economic prosperity in the 1980s and the 1990s, and outbreak of the Gulf War with the 1990 market crash that left many Japanese devastated.[27] In an interview with Animage magazine on October 1993, Hayao Miyazaki said that the opening scene of the movie was inspired by the local Cambodian scene, especially with the appearance of what seems to be Angkor Thom since Miyazaki said that it is the case. He also mentions with Mamoru Oshii on the nature of the limitations that JSDF personnel faced in Cambodia, since the JSDF was formed originally not as a sort of military body of the post-WWII Japanese government.[28]
Several real-life incidents were also mentioned or used for the movie. For instance, references to Viktor Belenko's defection to Japan in 1976 were mentioned by Arakawa himself when he spoke to Goto and Nagumo.[29] Another incident with the nearly fatal dogfight over Tokyo was supposedly based on an accident in a computer simulation that forced the US military to go onto DEFCON 3 and almost went to nuclear war with the Soviet Union.[29]
A comparison used here was with the JGSDF intervention in declaring martial law with planned intervention of United States Forces Japan military units over the crisis in Tokyo shadows the last days of Japan's defeat in World War II when rogue Imperial Japanese Army units planned to stage a revolt against the Emperor after he declared the country's surrender to the Allied forces.[29]
Views on Patlabor the Movie 2 have been very positive. One review from the Anime Cafe states that Patlabor the Movie 2 is an "intellectually stimulating anime", combining the movie's mecha concept with the plot similar to a Tom Clancy novel.[30] Anime World states that while the sequel is better than the first in terms of action and drama, some viewers may not understand the political aspects of the film, though its philosophical themes may be easier to understand, especially with the concept of just war and unjust peace.[31] Japan Hero's review of the movie commented well on the side story that the movie showcased the main characters who had to let go of their past and to move on and grow up, with the fact that they had to get back together and face a threat that could make a country ruled by civilian authority or one ruled by fear and paranoia.[32] Anime News Network has noted the background music used in the movie "favors heavy, pulsing techno beats backed by airy, haunting vocals for the intense scenes and soaring synthesized scores in other places."[7]
The re-released version of the film by Image Entertainment and Bandai Visual is considered superior to the earlier one by Manga Entertainment, according to a couple of near-anonymous posters on Amazon.com. Although at least one reviewer dislikes the new sound mix, which was done in 1999, and definitely prefers the old one.
In 1994, the film won the Mainichi Film Concours award in the category for Best Animated Film.[33]
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