Patlabor 2 the Movie

The most overtly ‘political’ Anime ever made in Japan, Oshii’s apocalyptic coda to the Patlabor series asks a very provocative question: if the concept of a ‘just war’ is a lie, is an unjust peace any less a lie? It’s several years on from the previous film and there have been changes in the SVD. Captain Goto is semi-retired, and so are some of the Second Section’s trustiest Labors. Things are quiet – until a series of terrorist incidents (the first real, the second virtual, the third…) throws the government into chaos, sets the police against Japan’s Self Defence Forces and opens the way to a possible civil war or a pre-emptive strike by the Americans… What has this to do with the near-annihilation of a UN Labor team in a South-East Asian jungle, seen in the opening sequence? Or with the appearance of an unidentified fleet of bright yellow blimps in the sky over Tokyo? Goto teams up with his old SVD friend Matsui to figure out what’s going on and why, but the result is not an exercise in James Bond heroics. Rather, it’s an expert deconstruction of the ‘peace’ and ‘stability’ Japan has enjoyed in the decades since the end of the Pacific War. And you can tell that Oshii means every frame of it. A genre masterpiece. (T.R.)