Patlabor trades giant robot warfare for something better: a precinct full of people who happen to pilot machines, solving problems that don't require saving the world. Mamoru Oshii builds a cast so lived-in and funny that you stop thinking about robots as spectacle and start seeing them as tools in the hands of cops who'd rather grab coffee than fight. Seven episodes is barely enough, the show ends right when you want to live in this world forever.
Giant robots called Labors, built for heavy construction work, are everywhere in the near future, and criminals soon find ways to turn them into weapons. To answer this new kind of crime, the police form Special Vehicles Section 2, a unit that fields its own Patrol Labors, or Patlabors, to stop rogue machines and the people piloting them. Izumi Noa joins the unit as a rookie officer and gets a top-of-the-line Patlabor of her own, which she names Alphonse. Alongside fellow pilot Isao Oota, the aloof Asuma Shinohara and the rest of her squad, she faces unhinged construction workers, eco-terrorists, workplace revolts, conspiracies and even sea monsters. Mixing mecha action with science fiction and comedy, this seven-episode OVA also follows Noa as she learns to balance her social and professional life within the unit.
