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| Overall | Art | Animation | Character Design | Music | Series Story | Episode Story | Reviewer | |
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| Watch | 10 | 10 | 9 | 6 | 6 |
 Ggultra2764
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[series:1639#1552] | |
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This isn't really as good as the first two Patlabor movies. WXIII focuses on a couple police detectives looking into the recent attacks around Tokyo Bay involving a biological creature whose presence is being concealed by the upper echelons of society. Lacking the political intrigue of the first two films, the first half of WXIII starts off rather slow as one comes to realize that different characters are given focus in this film instead of the members of Section 2, whose roles are reduced to supporting or background characters here. The movie doesn't provide much background on the two new detectives hence they're rather hard to connect with. What is revealed about the origins of the creature help redeem the movie to a degree for its second half leading into the combined efforts of police and military to dispatch the creature, leading into some tense action and a tragic finale. Yet with the movie feeling mostly detached in the developments of its characters and lacking both the intrigue of its earlier iterations and prominent characters from Section 2, it was rather hard for me to get into WXIII throughout its run. Like the prior two movies, WXIII is drawn in realistic detail sporting excellent shots of Tokyo areas and lifelike character designs, as well as having fluid movement at many points throughout the movie. Animation highlights from the film for me included a chase sequence of the two mentioned detectives fleeing from the creature and the final battle sequence where the Patlabors of Section 2 take on the creature. However with this movie stripping away much of what made the Patlabor franchise an engaging work for me to check out, WXIII has to be the weakest offering I've seen from the franchise. Last updated Saturday, February 09 2013. Created Saturday, February 09 2013. | ||||||||
| Rent |
 Stretch
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[series:1639#628] | ||||||
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I've been a Patlabor fan for a long time and wanted to see the final movie, but I delayed viewing because I'd heard it was rather dark and disturbing. The movies in general tend to be somewhat more violent and serious than the TV series or OVAs. WXIII finally climbed to the top of my rent-DVDs-by-mail queue and I sat down to watch. I don't watch all that many anime films, and right off the bat I was surprised at the lush quality of this movie. The character designs are highly realistic (no green hair here), and the animation very detailed. Clearly this one mustn't be watched half-heartedly, but rather demands one's full attention. It quickly became clear that the principal characters are not members of SVD2, but rather police detectives Kusumi and Hata; indeed, for awhile I wondered if the Patlabor crew would appear at all. They finally do show up, but are very much supporting characters. The mystery which Kusumi and Hata unravel was fairly interesting; the obsession which the people behind the Patlabor films have with government conspiracies was very much evident yet again. I was surprised to learn that the "monster" here isn't some sort of rogue Labor, as is usually the case. The solution to the mystery wasn't what I was expecting, but it didn't exactly thrill me either. I found the ending to be unsatisfying; a sad, miserable story rather than a rewarding, meaningful one. Still, the movie wasn't nearly as dark as I'd feared, and packed a lot of technical quality.
Last updated Saturday, July 14 2007. Created Saturday, July 14 2007. | ||||||||
