The Anime Network doesn’t stream too much in the way of feature films from the anime world, but they’ve got a new one going up today on The Anime Network with Patlabor: The Movie. The film was recently picked up by Maiden Japan with a home video release coming soon. The film originally hit theaters back in 1989 from Production I.G. with Mamoru Oshii directing based on the script by Kazunori Ito.
Maiden Japan will be bringing it out on DVD and Blu-ray on May 5th, 2015 priced at $29.98 for the DVD and $39.98 for the Blu-ray with both featuring Japanese and English language tracks as well as English subtitles.
The film was previously released by Manga Entertainment and then Bandai Visual USA, but has been out of print for several years.
Plot concept: Earth’s sea levels are slowly rising and coastal cities around the world have been forced to resort to drastic measures to keep floods of Biblical proportions at bay. Nowhere has the need been more desperate than in Japan, where the city of Tokyo has launched the massive Babylon project: a land reclamation undertaking so vast that it can only be completed with the aid of human-piloted construction robots called Labors. Unfortunately, any invention can be used for good or for evil, so to keep the Labors from being misused, the Tokyo police maintain their own units of Patrol Labors. Now the officers of the SV2 are about to receive their ultimate trial by fire, as multiple waves of Labors begin to mysteriously go berserk all at once. As the armored blue line fights to maintain control of the resulting chaos, they must also solve the mystery behind the outbreaks. Are they random? Are they tied to the construction of Babylon itself? Or is there a human element secretly orchestrating the ultimate destruction of the entire city? The wrath of nature and the gods is unleashed and only the courage of a handful of brave men and women can save the city in PATLABOR – THE MOTION PICTURE!
