Tag: Mamoru Oshii

January 14, 2024 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. The first Patlabor film is an excellent cerebral thriller. Patlabor 2 The Movie, though, is an artistic statement. Thirty years old, it’s still the anime that feels the most like live-action. It’s only tangentially a mecha film, with the title Patlabors on screen for a fraction of the running time. This is […]

November 25, 2023 · 2 comments

By Andrew Osmond. Mamoru Oshii, the director of Patlabor the Movie, once described his 1989 film as pop entertainment. Any fan of Oshii, best known for Ghost in the Shell, knows that’s a huge undersell for what is an extremely complex, thoughtful film. But perhaps Oshii was referring to how Patlabor the Movie ticks a […]

October 5, 2023 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. Dolls, dogs, gods, children and their relationships with neurotically self-conscious humanity come under philosophical investigation in Mamoru Oshii’s sequel to his film, Ghost in the Shell. Rendered in a blend of drawn and computer animation, the sequel’s first half looks like a sleekly beautiful variant on the future-noir aesthetic of Blade Runner, […]

March 27, 2020 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. Early in Jin-roh, a young girl who’s more child than woman slumps against a wall in a sewer, a dark limbo of brick and water. She’s been running a long time, but there’s no escape. She looks up to see a soldier watching her, with infra-red eyes in a metal helmet. The […]

April 16, 2019 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. Now streaming on Netflix, Illang: The Wolf Brigade is the new cinema live-action remake of the 1999 anime Jin-roh: The Wolf Brigade. The original will be released shortly by Anime Limited, and there’s a certain neatness to a remake appearing now. The anime Jin-roh was a successor to Ghost in the Shell, […]