At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

A simple plot that even then wasn't fully developed. The main antagonist is nothing but a name - neither physically present nor any hint of any motive or rationale. There's one minor twist in the plot but it's revealed too early on to register as anything particularly special; and isn't really believable in the context either.The characters are similarly simple and undeveloped. All you really get is a bit of goofiness and an overdone grump. There were family elements, differences in opinion, unique relationships, etc, that could've been exploited to good effect but were left empty.So what drives the movie? An odd mix of: a) Typical anime action. Nothing new - just robots and robot suits bashing on each other. b) Art-house style trying-to-be-philosophical long pauses and random quotes.Might be intriguing if you like both of the latter. But don't watch it for either the story or the human element.

I was fortunate enough to come across this video early in my exploration of Japanese animation. It was also the first video where I began to take notice of the greatly different pacing that the Japanese have in terms of plot & character developement. This is a story about a scientist that commits suicide after creating a virus that will eventually cause giant robots known as Labors to malfunction and lay waste about them. (Labors are manned, humanoid machines used in heavy lifting, construction and peacekeeping (domestic & military) tasks.) The action is split between the policemen who struggle to contain the destruction as the first infected Labors begin to malfunction and a pair of detectives who painstakingly retrace the dead doctors last steps before his suicide. If you're looking for something to cut your anime teeth on that's not too outlandish.. I highly recommend this video!

i am a huge fan of mecha, but this particular movie was, well, boring mostly. the story is a good one, but it lacks the action and character to back it up. most of the action is at the end of the movie, along with a little in the beginning. the animation, however, is very well-drawn and the subtitled voice acting is some of the best next to gasaraki (subtitled rules, regardless). anyway, even though mamoru oshii directed this, it fell short of being something that is impacting, though others say different. its your call.

Much as I love Patlabor the OAV and TV series, I found this film too be too slow moving at times and all too serious. The quality of animation was slightly above the OAV's and the character designs also kept closely to the OAV (as opposed to the more mature look in P2).As I understood the plot, a mysterious hacker introduced a virus into the operating system (called H.O.S. or Hyper Operating System) for ALL labors in Japan. This virus could cause unmanned units to go beserk, and is activated by a unique ultra-sound frequency created at random by the gusty winds that blow across the Tokyo skyline.Tied in to all this is the newly completed tower of the Babylon Project to reclaim land in the Tokyo bay. Apparently the tower is a giant tuning fork which could give the doomsday signal when a great storm hits the bay.All this sounds intriguing, but it takes way too long for the plot to advance to a coherent stage. There is hardly any action save for the last 20 minutes or so. Most of all, I missed the great dialogue and humour in the video and TV series.