Patlabor

On the data. Two continuities, and the split is the thing to get right. The 1988 direct to video series, The Early Days, came first. Patlabor: The Movie in 1989 and Patlabor 2 in 1993 both follow it. That is the route to the two famous films, and it is only seven episodes long, so it is a short commitment. The forty seven episode television series, also starting in 1989, is a separate retelling. It reintroduces everyone, reorders events and is broader and funnier. The New Files, sixteen more direct to video episodes from 1990, belongs to this continuity, not the first one, even though it is the same format as The Early Days. That catches people out constantly. Patlabor 2 is the one to see. It is a film about a coup attempt in Tokyo, about what a country that has not fought a war owes to one, and about a city under military occupation by its own government. There are perhaps three minutes of robot action in it. It is usually named in the same breath as Ghost in the Shell, which Oshii made next and which reuses several of its images. WXIII, the third film, is an outlier. It follows two homicide detectives, the regular cast barely appear, and it was not made by Oshii. It is worth seeing but it is not what the first two are. The live action series from 2014 is Oshii returning after twenty years. It was shown in cinemas as seven chapters of two short episodes each, then followed by a feature film in 2015, and it is set decades after the originals with the old unit long disbanded. A revival called Patlabor EZY was announced as eight episodes across three cinema releases starting in 2026, set in 2033, following the television continuity. Nothing is listed here beyond what has been announced.

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