{"id":2246,"date":"2017-01-09T16:03:11","date_gmt":"2017-01-09T16:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/?p=2246"},"modified":"2017-01-09T16:03:11","modified_gmt":"2017-01-09T16:03:11","slug":"patlabor-dadlabor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/2017\/01\/patlabor-dadlabor\/","title":{"rendered":"Patlabor Dadlabor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"Watching the OVAs\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/haroldito\/31339005043\/in\/dateposted\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Watching the OVAs\" src=\"https:\/\/c4.staticflickr.com\/1\/288\/31339005043_f44dc21005_z.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I watched the first OVAs. I have seen all the movies. It\u2019s a different vibe from anything with mecha coming from Japan. Mamoru Oshii \u2013Ghost in the Shell- is\/was the director. Production backstory:<\/p>\n<p><em>In the late 1980s, Oshii was solicited by his friend Kazunori It\u014d to join Headgear as a director. The group was composed of Kazunori It\u014d (screenwriter), Masami Yuki (manga artist), Yutaka Izubuchi (mechanical designer), Akemi Takada (character designer) and Mamoru Oshii (director). Together they were responsible for the Patlabor TV series, OVA, and films. <strong>Released in the midst of Japan&#8217;s economic crisis, the Patlabor series and films projected a dynamic near-future world in which grave social crisis and ecological challenges were overcome by technological ingenuity<\/strong>, and were a big success in the mecha genre.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>This show is not about mechas. it\u2019s a dad mecha world. It focuses on responsibilities and consequences of having giant robots working in cities, Operating Systems that can fuck up or hackers who are up to no good.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Patlabor Forever\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/haroldito\/32041464202\/in\/dateposted\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Patlabor Forever\" src=\"https:\/\/c3.staticflickr.com\/1\/455\/32041464202_d3d80d42e6_z.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"585\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It feels very real now that we have the <a href=\"http:\/\/laughingsquid.com\/giant-functional-mech-robot-takes-its-first-steps\/\" target=\"_blank\">first tests of giant robots happening<\/a>. It feels like it\u2019s here but I remember being a kid in 89 and being annoyed at that \u201cserious\u201d angle. When you\u2019re a kid you want the fantasy mecha, flying at mach 2, 300 missiles shot at the same time etc. None of that in Patlabor (do you have 300 missiles launching money?). The unit that operates those police robots is under scrutiny, they\u2019re broke, they\u2019re trying to save money\/keep their jobs. Their missions are mostly about heavy construction robots accidents and making sure they don\u2019t damage the city when they operate. They are an elite crew of mechanics and pilots doing boring cop stuff.<\/p>\n<p>There is just a tension, a melancolia in this universe that I haven\u2019t felt in anything else with robots. It makes it unique, it makes me care more. It\u2019s philosophy-based but not going all nuts like Oshii\u2019s future work. It\u2019s simpler: how can we balance our lives with technology? Is technology really that necessary?<\/p>\n<p>It blows my mind that some guys were actively thinking about and designing that world in 1985 and on. Japanese culture is so absurdly good at the \u201cwhat if\u201d game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I watched the first OVAs. I have seen all the movies. It\u2019s a different vibe from anything with mecha coming from Japan. Mamoru Oshii \u2013Ghost in the Shell- is\/was the director. Production backstory: In the late 1980s, Oshii was solicited by his friend Kazunori It\u014d to join Headgear as a director. The group was composed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2246"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2246"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2247,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2246\/revisions\/2247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}