Patlabor 2, the Movie: realistic portrayal of modern aerial combat | Hacker News Reader

Patlabor 2, the Movie: realistic portrayal of modern aerial combat

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220 pointsKolmogorovComp85 comments

Something that occurs to me: it's not surprising that an anime film from 1993 is the most accurate portrayal of aerial combat. It's not only a matter of differing attitudes towards what to expect from cinema, both Japan vs US and animation vs live-action. There's another factor: the US military, and the interests they have in how they're depicted on film. Even more specifically, what aspects of their operational standards and capabilities are disseminated to the public. I would not be surprised to find realistic elements in a contemporary American film, that the military provides "assistance" to in the form of equipment and consultation, struck. And not because anything is classified (if knowable by the public) or even necessarily sensitive; it's just that a component of psychological force projection is the control the military has over what the average person knows about how they operate. A cartoon released 30 years ago depicting Japanese forces may not have had analagous interests breathing down their neck.

That's my layman's take, anyhow. I appreciate the irony.

There is a cultural thing. Japan, like the US, has gun nuts. But the ones in Japan don't have access to real guns. So there's much business in non-functional replica guns. An anime for that market, Gunsmith Cats, came out around 1995. It's set in a gun store in Chicago. So the production team from Japan visited Chicago and and went to a real Chicago gun store to see what one looked like. There's video.[1]

[1] https://youtu.be/o8dBJ2mxxFk?t=683

That's interesting, because gun stores in Chicago basically aren't a thing. They're all in the suburbs. "Illinois Gun Works", in the video, is in Elmwood Park.

Not only that Chicago has some of the strictest gun laws in the US. When that video was made you couldn’t _possess_ a handgun in Chicago unless you owned it prior to 1982.

That law has since been struck down as unconstitutional but the recently passed statewide assault weapons ban was patterned on the Chicago ban, also in effect at the time that video was made that is still in effect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military–entertainment_complex

First of all, I love this. I love the scene, and I love the breakdown. I learned a lot. I had no idea about the level of accuracy... that is so cool.

There's one thing that feels unrealistic to me, based on what I've learned from this military aviator-turned-YouTuber: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrBPshC_84s&list=PLObcJkVHai...

One thing he always points out is that during actual military operations, friendly jets fly in very wide formations, ie the planes might be a mile apart in the sky. Never in the tight "fingertip" sort of formation seen here @ 1:28 in Patlabor 2:

https://youtu.be/JnOfNQ9VWo0?t=88

There are various reasons for this - safety, not wanting to present a bunched up target to the enemy, you and your wingmen can cover a greater area with your eyes and radars, etc.

(Of course, I also don't mind when movies/anime take some liberties. Obviously, multiple friendly planes in a tight formation just looks cooler. I get it! I'm only mentioning it in the context of examining that scene w.r.t. realism)

If they weren't able to communicate by radio (the premise of the scenario) they might stay close to at least communicate visually.

I really liked the review and the general breakdown.

BUT one thing stuck out, because they were so forceful, is their opinion "The radar screens aren’t the spinning ‘sonar blip’ bullshit you get in a lot of games, movies, and animation." That is horseshit. I was a military radar tech in Japan (95-98) and '‘sonar blip’ bullshit screens' were still the primary ATC displays on at least some mainland bases.

But that's old school tech, modern day solid state phased arrays are cheap now.

I see what you're saying, but his point seems to be, to me, that the "ACTUALLY!" crowd enjoy pooping on the display he's referring to as being something of an egregious anachronism, but in his experience (professionally and temporally relevant to the link discussed) that isn't the case.

That was really intense. I remember seeing this clip a few years ago and thinking, "there's a lot of attention to detail here, but why do the jets appear to be F-15s with canards on them"? It seemed like a random detail to get wrong. Little did I know that was meant to be a derivative of the F-15 STOL/MTD, which is actually an amazingly plausible guess of future technology.

"Zipang"[1] is another "real" (i.e. not "fantasy" anime), detailing the adventures of a modern Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force destroyer and it's crew who are somehow transported back to the midst of WWII, specifically the Battle of Midway. it's really quite good, and available on NYAA.

[1] https://myanimelist.net/anime/29/Zipang

Would that be a counterpoint to that movie I watched as a child, and the title of which escapes me, about a modern US aircraft carrier transported back in time to WWII and (IIRC) getting in a fight with Japanese planes?

Probably The Final Countdown[1]; if it had Kirk Douglas and Martin Sheen, then that would cinch it.

1: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080736/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1_tt_6...

In this vein, I can recommend the "Axis of Time" novels ([1]).

The novels deal with the radical alteration of the history of World War II and the socio-historical changes that result when a technologically advanced naval task force from the year 2021 is accidentally transported back through time to 1942.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_of_Time

Allow me to anti-recommend this series, as it is just bad. Even considering it through the 'airport pulp fiction' lens, it is not great.

U.S.S. Nimitz: Lost in the Pacific

Yes, that's the one - known as "The Final Countdown"[0]. Thanks!

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Countdown_(film)

The Philadelphia Experiment?

An Akira style rendition of that story, with the people melting into the floor and walls of the ship - we just got a billion dollar movie on our hands

That's backwards; sends a ship from WWII to the present day.

One of my favorite movies. This scene is thrilling, and the montage of the military occupying the country gives me chills.

Same here. It's telling that one of the most meaningful scenes doesn't even have anything to do with mecha... just two guys on a boat talking about the world after the Cold War. "The line between a just war and an unjust peace"

Someone quiped that 'Science fiction at its best is a way to tell stories that don't have anything to do with science fiction.'

That always resonated with me, as my favorite stories and moments are rarely the sciencey fiction parts.

Sokath, his eyes uncovered, indeed.

That reminds me of the Asimov quote: "Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinded critics and philosophers of today, but the core of science fiction, its essence, has become crucial to our salvation, if we are to be saved at all."

Mine too. The soundtrack is spectacular as well. Doesn’t appear to everyone’s cup of tea but I think it’s a masterpiece. For me it had more replay values than Akira or ghost in shell. I must’ve watched it 10 times.

Directed by Mamoru Oshi (Ghost in the Shell etc).

If you like this sort of analysis, read Angry Staff Officer.[1] This is written by a U.S. Army staff officer who sometimes critiques military SF.

[1] https://angrystaffofficer.com/category/star-wars/

It's interesting to find professional Venn diagrams that don't intersect.

Military SF literature had similar issues.

Rare that you'd get someone with actual experience writing. Then occasionally you get someone like Haldeman.

I know Sci fi kind of "solves this" with "hard sci-fi" trying to limit the ideas like time travel and FTL but push our current science the furthest it can go.

(Three body problem, Blindsight, many others)

Maybe there exist some subgenre of military sci fi too?

Oh, there is.

See Haldeman's Forever War, Drake's Hammer's Slammers, or Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga.

Maybe some of the better MechWarrior novels.

Quarter way through Forever War - thank you so much, these are tremendous!

Just found this video summarizing the history of Patlabor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J52ecXnl_EE

I'd definitely recommend the Patlabor TV show if "slice of life, police procedural with mechs" is something that feels attractive to you.

You will enjoy “Growling Sidewinder” channel on YouTube if you like modern aerial combat.

His older stuff is a good way to learn basic DCS dogfighting but the impetus to constantly push more new videos has really killed the overall quality and now it's a lot of a "user mod super plane x versus user mod super plane y."

Growling Sidewinder is alright, but you have to be aware of the limitations of DCS (the simulator he uses) if you want to take it as representative of modern aerial combat. For one, DCS's flight model is based only on open source data, so a lot of fighter's statistics are based on speculation and extrapolation. Second, DCS doesn't do a lot of EWAR and detection accurately, which is especially important for modern 5th gen fighters. And then of course modern air combat is rarely 1v1 WVR, but it's hard to get a couple hundred people running in a single DCS server so there's no easy way to show off modern larger scale tactics

HypOps channel on youtube has the most detailed strategic simulations I've seen recently. Would love to know if anyone else has channels to share.

“Grim Reapers” is also good.

He often analyzes fights afterwards from the tactical view. Especially useful for beyond visual range cases.

Other realistic anime/manga:

Summit of the Gods = Most realistic portrayal of mountain climbing in any film I've seen. Everything from the equipment to the knots that they use was accurate, and they show a lot of obscure stuff. They even got how climbers talk.

Wind Rises = Shows real aeronautical engineering calculations and data sources.

Initial D also has pretty good description of car dynamics, (although stylisticslly the speeds are greatly exaggerated and drifts are portrayed as taking way longer than in reality)

For example, initially, the protagonists car was setup to be more twitchy, since his father wanted him to get good at control. Once he started racing, his father set his car up for more understeer. This is exactly what you do for RWD cars - more understeer allows you to get on the throttle harder out of corners without spinning the car out.

This is exactly what you do for RWD cars if you don't have good throttle control. But this is not a fast way to set up a car. Recall: "loose is fast and on the edge of out of control."

Not quite

In a corner, because of the dynamics of a 4 wheeled vehicle with springs, the weight on each tire can be tuned by changing the spring rate. For example, if you stiffen the rear end springs (or use a stiff sway bar that effectively increases the spring rate when the one side is loaded), you end up with a more uneven distribution of weight on the rear tire, and a more even weight distribution on the front.

Furthermore tires behave in a non linear way in terms of lateral grip. That is, if each tire has 50% of vertical load, evenly, the lateral grip is maximal. If one tire has 30% and the other tire has 70% (due to static weight transfer in a corner), the total lateral grip is less than maximal.

Combining these two effects is how you tune the cars. If you look at sport FWD cars, especially rally ones, they lift the rear inside tire while cornering. That is because they run a very stiff rear suspension to ensure that the lateral grip on the rear is less than the front when in a corner, because of the above 2 effects. The reason they do that is that FWD cars are very prone to understeer (if the front tires are driving, they don't have as much lateral grip). This balances the cars out more, letting the rear come about as long as there is lateral load transfer. The downside is that the car becomes very prone to lift off oversteer because of forward weight transfer.

With RWD cars its the opposite. If you have enough power to cause oversteer, running a stiff front sway bar means that the rear tires have more evenly distributed vertical load which means more lateral grip, which means you can put down more throttle without losing lateral grip at the rear. The downside is that the cars have to be driven more aggressively into the corner, with heavier braking and earlier throttle application.

There are of course other considerations to this, but this is generally how cars are tuned for oversteer/understeer. You can use these effects for your cars as well, sway bars are available for most every vehicle out there. If you have a FWD car, you can remove the front sway bar and change the rear one for a stiff one, and you will readily see that the car just seems to turn better.

I’m not sure why a person would be trying to race a FWD car or why they would burn up their right rear by using the throttle to create oversteer. But I do know that none of this would be a problem if the car turned well. I maintain that loose is fast.

(It’s possible that you’re talking about one of those strange forms of racing where they sometimes turn right?)

I love this scene! I just rewatched it yesterday. It's a great example of how to make a tense, exciting scene without needing to have a hundred-million dollars of CGI effects and explosions everywhere.

Doesn't hurt that it has F-15's in there, which are the best looking fighters if you ask me!

I was wondering whether the canards were an artistic license but apparently there were a few experimental F-15s with them.

edit: ... which are mentioned in the article :D

That was indeed surprisingly intense. I already read what was going to happen, but still.

Just came here to tay that Patlabor is pretty far from "obscure" as an anime. In the late 90s/early 2000's it was pretty big, although anime wasn't big in the United States yet and that could explain the author's comment?

Title was editorialized to remove clickbait content

Patlabor is one of my favorite anime, as it follows the de-idealization of giant robots from Grendizer to Gundam to technology on the edge of the quotidian.

I did not recognize the fanservice tropes when I saw it the first time and the second time I realized those tropes were a lot older than I knew. (Like the scene where two women compete over their bust size and then over their ability to hold their liquor) Despite that, it's just great. I wish they'd make an anime remake and not just a live action like

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Next_Generation:_Patlabor

Honestly one of the best mecha anime ever, right up there with Neon Genesis and Gundam. Maybe even better in some regards.

For me, Patlabor 1 and 2 are thrillers who happen to have mechas in them. Despite the name and the prominent role of the Labor Patrol department the movie is about the police work done by the Patlabor police force or the counter-terror unit in part 2. As a thriller you know who the baddie is from early on. The conclusion is not therefore not the unveiling of the culprit as it would be in a crime movie, but the neutralization of the well-known culprit, quite often by force (why is that?) Here you see mechas battling it out against a fortress, but it could just as well be a SWAT team storming an appartment block and it would be entertaining all the same. I would place it under "color" and I agree, it can make all the difference ;)

Right, Patlabor is strong even without the mechas.

Something I find amusing about the series is almost half the time they are dealing with ghosts instead of criminals. (Thus Patlabor is much about the uncompleted legacy of the past as it is about the problem of the near future.) Ghosts and ghost stories are huge theme in anime that you might miss because the portrayal of ghosts in anime and western culture are very similar qualitatively, but quantitatively I think they turn up a lot more. It's much like the way religious professionals turn up more in anime than they do in comparable western media. (e.g. "Cherry" the Priest is a major character in Urusei Yatsura in fact he and his niece Sakura were developed before Lum and Ataru were)

Iron Blood Orphans is probably the most 'realistic' in the genre. Defenitely the best gundam combat.

Warning: it's rough and not a happy series.

>Iron Blood Orphans is probably the most 'realistic' in the genre.

Save Barbatos' waist circumference. /s Joking aside, while it still succumbs to a lot of genre and franchise cliches, I have to agree that it did a lot of things more maturely than preceding series. The ending is one of the most refreshingly grounded in the franchise (which is probably why so many fans hate it).

none of the best Gundam series are particularly happy. The original MSG starts off with a blunt and incredibly depressing scene.

Operation British in MSG started a strange trend where Australia gets left with large crater marks in basically every Gundam timeline, and many non-Gundam properties.

The whole colony drop scene in MSG just terrified me as a kid. It was the first time I saw large scale human-on-human violence expressed in such a medium, and I was not ready for it. Then I realized "oh, this is a metaphor for the US nuking Japan".

Wait, so Patlabor is about Mecha and Patlabor 2 is about realistic military stuff?

I feel like Netflix and the western market is having a slow positive effect on annoying fanservice in anime. One can hope. I find it incredibly irritating.

I can accept a certain amount but then there are series like High School DxD which are nothing but fanservice. The real engine of fan service today are vtubers and mobile games which I think are likely to infect anime because the “minor leagues” of anime and manga art are the fan artists that show up on sites like pixiv and Danbooru and it is pretty rare to see anything people want to draw a lot on Danbooru that is really an anime.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SensorSuspense

I mean, this isn't really that novel. Is this a factor of me being alive through the time period and the author is young and it predates them?

Like practically any movie with an aircraft carrier will involve radar blips and intercept vectors/times and comm problems and unknowns.

/s Does it show how children in afghanistan are afraid of good weather, because drones might see them and operators decide to open fire?

Not really showing all aspects of aerial warefare then.

Not Hollywood enough

I haven't seen this movie but will check it out. A little off-topic, but I wonder if any of you folks have some recommendations for newish anime/manga that is available to stream.

I'm a long-time fan of the classics (e.g. Ghost in the Shell) but until recently, haven't seen anything new that grabbed my attention, until I stumbled across "Blame!" on Netflix which I really enjoyed. So I spent some more time adding various titles to my playlist but they have all been rather unintelligent and uninspiring. I am especially interested in movies (as opposed to series) because I don't tend to want to spend dozens of hours watching anything, but I'm open to whatever. Any suggestions?

Gundam: Hathaway is interesting; maybe not quite as disciplined as an Oshii outing, but it happily surfs the intricately constructed wave of UC worldbuilding.

Not an anime, but I recently watched a playthrough of the Project Wingman DLC, Frontline 59. It is admittedly the polar opposite of TFA, but if you go in with no knowledge of the original game's story and lore, like I did, it turns out to be decently challenging, thematically. Literal Pyrrhic victories abound.

Something completely different: Odd Taxi. Again, best to go in without any prior knowledge. Just vibe with it. Like Psycho-Pass, it's an encouraging example of the quality of stories you can have when someone who doesn't usually make anime makes an anime.

Seconding ODDTAXI. I've shown it to a few people who aren't usually into anime and they all really enjoyed it. I read an interview with the director where he said he considered Satoshi Kon to be one of his primary influences, which makes a lot of sense.

There's an 8 year old Psycho Pass movie you can probably watch cold. If you like it, you'd enjoy the series. There's also a new Psycho Pass movie that came out in July (I haven't seen it yet and I'm not sure if it is streaming yet). An unfairly high level overview of Psycho Pass is something like minority report meets blade runner.

It's not new at all, and you've probably already heard about it or seen it, but I'd be remiss if I didn't suggest Serial Experiments Lain for fans of SF anime.

I'll second Psycho pass -- Even ep1 of the first season if you want a "smaller lift". It's gory, so if that's not your thing be ready -- but I really enjoyed the story and universe.

I personally prefer more meat-y plots and stay away from series with scenes that are cute (or stylish) for the sake of being cute (or cool).

That said, here are some of my favorites:

https://myanimelist.net/anime/13125/Shinsekai_yori (2012)

https://myanimelist.net/anime/42310/Cyberpunk__Edgerunners (2022)

https://myanimelist.net/anime/23283/Zankyou_no_Terror (2014)

https://myanimelist.net/anime/2581/Kidou_Senshi_Gundam_00 (2007)

https://myanimelist.net/anime/50709/Lycoris_Recoil (2022)

Also an honorable mention for Pantheon. It's a western animation but season 2's finale was basically one of greg egan's books come to life.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11680642/

Some old stuff, because I'm old. But maybe some of it you haven't seen.

   Crusher Joe (Sunrise, 1983)
   Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam (Sunrise, 1985)
   Serial Experiments Lain (Triangle Staff, 1998)
   Macross Zero (Satelight, 2002)
   Planetes (Sunrise, 2003)
   Terror in Resonance (MAPPA, 2014)

I just watched Planetes last weekend. I'd started it many times but never finished it. Once the main story arc with the main character gets rolling, it gets really good.

I wish more anime shows would be a one season and done affair, instead of the trend for shows to just go on and on indefinitely.

I have the same struggle in finding decent anime. Lately the anime world has deprioritized anime for art's sake in favor of commercial interests. It has led to a situation where anime quality has deteriorated. Mamoru Oishii spoke about this industry problem in an interview earlier this year: https://www.cinra.net/article/202303-oshiimamoru_ysdkrcl

As far as movies go, I can't think of any intelligent and inspiring ones from the past 15 years besides GitS: Solid State Society, however, the movie only makes sense if you've seen GitS: SAC season 1 and 2.

You might enjoy Redline (2009) for it's audaciousness, but it's not deep. The Deer King (2022) is one I've been meaning to watch, but is likely to just be more of a feel good movie.

I know you said you weren't interested in watching a series, but you might enjoy the plot of Ichirou Inuyashiki (2017). It's available on Crunchyroll.

I've had a lot of fun with the concepts and setting of the Gantz series. Gantz:O in particular is a blast of a CGI movie. The story devolves into nonsense, but if you stick it out it's an absolutely bonkers ride through the end of the Manga.

The tech in the series is also really creative in terms of ideas, aesthetic, and the risk-reward built into many of the items. There's some really iconic imagery in it that sort of starts from how the "teleporters" work.

https://youtu.be/HViJXK3DOLc

The anime and live action movies are "ok" though.

It has a weird way of kind of worming its way into your brain and leaves you always wanting more.

Be warned, parts of the media franchise are very NSFW.

It's not Japanese, but the animated series 'Pantheon' is very good.

I haven't actually got around to finishing it, but I've been enjoying 86: Eighty Six which is more grim military mecha stuff. Not particularly grounded but is definitely about certain real-world themes. It was apparently inspired by drone warfare (and I might extrapolate from there: the lies we tell ourselves about how "clean" that kind of warfare is).

In the movies category, it's a total 180 from Patlabor, but I highly recommend Wolf Children by Mamoru Hosoda. It's a masterpiece.

Also Millennium Actress.

If you liked Ghost in the Shell then Patlabor 2 is definitely the movie for you. I recall reading that Oshii and team got the offer to do GITS based on the strength of P2.

While I love GITS I think Patlabor 2 just might be the stronger film. More grounded and cerebral, and no distracting male gaze.

I wish we could get techno-thrillers like P2 rather than warmed over Tom Clancy nonsense, but that’s the film industry for you.

I know what you mean by "Tom Clancy nonsense" but I would like to point out that he did do some stuff in the genre of techno-thrillers. I long for the day we can get a _Red Storm Rising_ movie (ideally one which focuses on the hardware and not the romance of course) but until then there's always Fixedit's Red Storm Rising project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zo8FhChnyq0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOiQhtMPe7Y

It's exists both as a series and a movie, I watched the series but the film tries to be close despite a limited runtime.

If you would try to look for the synopsis you probably would be spoiled one of the key elements, so be vary.

Thanks, this sounds great.

"Yakitori: Soldiers of Misfortune", also on Netflix, is a series but I enjoyed the military/diplomatic/political plot.

Not so new and a series, ghost in the shell standalone complex is still one of my all time favorites.

And then you have Ukraine.

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