WXIII: Patlabor

Anyone who comes to this anime expecting cliché Japanese robot/monster fights is in for deep, deep disappointment. But if you are interested in one of the finest Japanese procedural films since Kurosawa's High & Low, watch this film.

I have no idea what inspired the creators of the otherwise pedestrian Patlabor series to create this almost noirish meditation on the grey, atomized life of modern Japanese. But by combining the deliberate pace of Kurosawa's masterwork with portraits of weathered bureaucrats and alienated beauties lost in in Tokyo's concrete jungle, this work envelopes one in Japanese life at the millennium. It's an extraordinary piece of immersion into a culture that is superficially like ours but in reality vastly different.

The plot i subside the point--it is the day to day details of the two lead detectives that are the true subject of this astonishing film.