Some more promotional pieces for "Patlbaor Ezy File 1" have made the rounds on various Japanese entertainment websites, including an interview with series director Yutaka Izubuchi. While it does repeat a lot of previously mentioned information about the new anime, there are a few new bits of information that came to light which are of interest;
"Patlbaor Ezy" was first announced in 2017, and after nine years it has finally been unveiled. But where did it all begin? We asked director Izubuchi.
"Looking back, when I was working on 'Space Battleship Yamato 2199' (in 2012), for which I served as general director, Jun Yukawa from Bandai Visual (now Bandai Namco Filmworks) unofficially approached me and asked, 'Would you be interested in working on a new Patlabor project?' At that point, Yuji Matsukura from the animation production company JC Staff had said, 'If Izubuchi is the director, we're willing to take on the project.' However, I was completely swamped with 'Yamato,' so it was a bit difficult for me to accept at that time."
In 2013, the live action film series "The Next Generation - Patlabor -" was announced with Mamoru Oshii as general director. "I've talked about this in various places, but I wasn't officially informed of anything. Even though Mr Ito had said that he absolutely didn't want them to make a parody of the character names, they went ahead with it anyway. In a way, this ignited the 'Patlabor spirit' in the other Headgear members".
In 2016, "Mobile Police Patlabor Reboot" was announced as part of the "Japan Animator Expo", a short film series project by Studio Khara and Dwango. "This started when Tomoyuki Ogata, the vice president of Khara, asked me, 'Is there anything we can do with Patlabor?' The complicated rights issues surrounding Headgear had just been resolved, so we thought, 'Now might be the right time,' and the discussion progressed. Yasuhiro Yoshiura volunteered to direct, and it came to fruition in a great way. This isn't exactly a pilot episode, but it gave us a sense of direction for creating new Patlabor works in the future".
In "Ezy" the story takes place in the 2030s, approximately 30 years after 1998, when the Second Platoon was established. Izubuchi emphasizes that this is a "reboot" rather than a "remake." "Even if we were to remake it, setting it back in the 20th century and having robots appear in the city… Doing that now wouldn't feel convincing. Back then, we put up a disclaimer saying, 'This story is fiction… but this may not be the case in 10 years,' but we never imagined that 10 years would arrive so quickly, and now it really has become a thing of the past. So, I thought that if we started with the premise that 'a world where these kinds of Labors roam exists,' and then depicted an extension of that, it would be impossible in reality, but it would be possible to create a world where Labors and Special Vehicles Division 2 could exist without it being strange. That's what I thought."
The backdrop to the story was the "Babylon Project," a massive land reclamation project to fill in Tokyo Bay, and the justification for the use of Labors was that Labors were being operated for that purpose. However, "you could say this was just a convenient plot device for depicting a world where Labors are in operation, influenced by the bubble economy of the time, and such bluffing was tolerated. But then, in the subsequent 'Patlabor 2 the Movie' (1993), the aerial-like footage of the Bay Bridge explosion shows the current Tokyo Bay as if nothing had happened, and on screen, it's as if the Babylon Project itself never existed. We tried simulating various worldviews in which Labors could exist, but we decided to just accept that the plan had fallen through, or to forget about it, or to move on."
Furthermore, the Babylon Project had a backstory involving the reconstruction efforts following the 1995 Tokyo Bay earthquake, but this unexpectedly turned out to be closer to reality. Taking these circumstances into account, "Ezy" is set in the 2030s, a time when the working population is steadily declining, while Labors themselves are becoming increasingly automated through AI technology.
Regarding the Second Division, which is active in the 2030s, Director Izubuchi used the analogy of "sword hunting," saying, "When I thought about why Patlabor is necessary, I realized that Labors are already becoming unnecessary in the world and are under a registration system, but what if unregistered Labors or Labors that have been hidden somewhere cause incidents, and the Special Vehicles Division 2 is tasked with exposing and recovering them as dangerous entities? The Special Vehicles Division 2 is the one that takes on that job, so they're essentially taking on a role similar to 'sword hunting' (I'm assuming Izubuchi is referring to the Sword Abolishment Edict during the Meiji era in which it was illegal to own or carry swords)."
Director Izubuchi continues, "If you take this to its extreme, ultimately the Special Vehicles Division 2 itself becomes unnecessary. I thought that if they were on a mission to eliminate their own reason for existence, that internal conflict would make for a compelling drama, but I was told by those around me that it would ruin the dream, so this idea was scrapped. Well, I'm not the type of person like Oshii who would try to convince someone to do something if they refused, but rather I'm the type who clears each project one by one and uses those as stepping stones to move forward," he says, describing his stance as a creator.
