Japan makes the best dvd / blu-ray boxsets, period. Check out the beautiful blu-ray boxsets for Patlabor’s TV series 1 and 2 :
How I wish I have a large pile of cash lying around somewhere to buy these babies ! The TV series may not have the moody, cinematic moments/political intrigue that we’ve come to appreciate from Mamoru Oshii’s feature films, but the sometimes silly/mundane drama and humor is excellent and I really love the TV series for that, especially if you can understand Japanese. ( much of the flavor is lost in translation otherwise )
(below) And for completion’s sake the Blu-rays for Mamoru Oshii’s Patlabor The Movie and Patlabor 2 The Movie. The latter is one of my favourite anime films of all time. ( I left out the third movie because I don’t really like it that much. 😛 )
You can get all these blu-rays from Amazon Japan :
Patlabor Ultimate Blu-ray Boxset
Patlabor Ultimate Blu-ray Boxset Review
Patlabor TV Series Art Book Review
Patlabor The Movie 2 Art Book Review
Methods – Patlabor 2 The Movie Layout Boards Book Review
August 20th, 2012 at 7:24 pm
Argh – annoying! Patlabor is one of my all time favourite anime series, and Patlabor 2: the movie is my favourit anime film. You cant get them on blu ray in the UK, and japanese region BRs dont work in the UK 🙁
August 21st, 2012 at 11:19 pm
Andy – Yeah, the Japanese blu-ray release is shockingly expensive. But the TV boxset you got at Mandarake must have been a good buy eh ? Mandarake’s the best. :]
August 22nd, 2012 at 3:07 pm
Those box sets are incredible. And incredibly expensive. 🙂 I still haven’t been able to find a straight explanation of why DVDs and BluRays are so expensive in Japan. The OVA and TV box sets are literally 10 times more expensive than you’d expect in the US, and the movies are about 3 times more expensive.
Patlabor is wonderful though. Fantastic characters with enough personality and charm and chemistry to be really amusing to watch, but also with enough depth to have serious character moments, as well as deal with Oshii’s political/philosophical stuff (tbh I think Patlabor 2 is better than Ghost in the Shell). And you’ve got Kawai’s music and Izubuchi’s mechanical design, plus the rest of Headgear.
I’d love it if there was more Patlabor, especially if it did a good job integrating the character stuff with the political/philosophical stuff. The TV series didn’t get too philosophical and the 2nd movie was too preoccupied with ideas to deal with characters. The third movie of course failed in both areas, and is best forgotten. :p
August 26th, 2012 at 6:09 pm
Jason – I’ll love to see a US blu-ray release that is actually affordable, but that’s probably unlikely as Patlabor doesn’t have a big enough critical mass to warrant such a release.
Hope I’m wrong though. :]