Patlabor 12
I fucking hate this show. It's good, and my tiny, angry brain doesn't understand how to comprehend things that are good and nice now.
I blame myself most.
So this episode is about Officer Ota, who is a hotblooded dude living in a real robot world. People tend to think he's incompetent and a screw up, but he's just really excited about his job! Anyway, Ota's aunt tries to fix him up with a girl, and this girl is actually really sweet and doesn't seem to hate how nervous he is. She impresses him, and for a guy like Ota, her attention does a number on his heart strings.
And I mean, she's a cute girl, has that whole Aerith look going on, and oh yeah
she thinks mechs are sexy. So yeah, Ota's in love, and I'm in love, but when he tries to tell her she breaks it off and then things get out of control and it turns out she has a boyfriend already and Ota has to risk his life to save the guy. When it's all said and done this is how the guy looks:
It's rough, really rough, but like a champ, Ota just kinda silently takes it. At the end, this is the poor guy's reward:
Not at all the snowy romance he'd been looking for. This frigid farewell really drives home to me something that I don't think I see a whole lot of
real robot shows do: show real people with real problems. And I know, the term came about because robots like the Gundam were depicted as giant machines rather than giant super heroes, but there are times when a sprawling epic about the horrors of war can become pretty damn detached from the real struggles people face, even when it isn't written by Tomino.
So shows like Dai-Guard and Patlabor and to a lesser extent Full Metal Panic! kinda catch my eye when they come along and show you the way that a giant robot figures into the every day lives of ordinary people. Whether it's Aoyama dealing with being called a man-ho because he leaves work every day to secretly care for his sick mother, or Ota sitting in the snow with his crushing loneliness, or Kaname burying the loss of her mother and ruin of her family behind an aggressive and cheerful veneer, there are elements to these shows that are set more in a close depiction of society that I find both endearing and pungent. Just as Kouji shouting bloody murder while firing rockets from his fists is what giant robots are all about, in a way Izumi and Asuma's little office romance between running out to arrest some rampaging robot is what this is all about, too.
The giant robot is almost there to illustrate a point about what makes us human, you know?
