Patlabor (OVA)

Breath-takingly beautiful transfer
I admit it. I am a Patlabor fan boy. I love anything and everything Patlabor. This OVA series is no exception.

Before we start, I will say that if you already own the CPM release, keep it. The only reason to keep it isn't because the Blu Ray stinks - the reason to keep it is for the Mamoru Oshii commentary. None of the other extras on the original DVDs are really worth missing, but this omission means I am keeping my DVDs close at hand.

Patlabor OVA is a collection of mostly one off stories (well, except the single two parter). The first episode goes into the formation of the squad, while each subsequent episode seems to up the storytelling ante. Whereas the movies are thought provoking mind benders (sort of... Oshii was just hitting his stride before Ghost in the Shell), these aren't quite so much, but every episode is definitely worth viewing.

The story goes that in the future the world is populated with Labors, bipedal mechs used for all sorts of...

Great show! Poor quality for Blu-ray!
Whoever says that this was an excellent transfer is false. If you compare this to Bandai's release back in 2010 you'll realize that section 21 did a s***ty job at hte transfer to blu-ray. I bought mine, popped it in the blu-ray player and what to I see? An upscale version with the grain from VHS to dvd port era! This isn't blu-ray quality at all! Section 21/Made in Japan makes blu-ray look like joke. Not only that, the subtitles are sloppily put together. The subtitles are way to large for the video and they often go beyond the constraints of the 4:3 standard resolution screen. This is crap production quality. This looks nothing like the Japanese conversion procedure from dvd to blu-ray. Section 21 thought they could pull a cheap one over us by not grabbing the remastered blu-ray versions from Bandai, instead give us an upscale version from the older DVD releases.

I suggest to you all to keep away from this version and buy bandai's blu-ray release. It's cleaner and looks...

Good classic mecha anime series
Looks beautiful on Blue-ray; you can hardly guess this show was made in the '80s. Buy this so we can get the full Patlabor series and movies.

Click to Editorial Reviews