Buyer's remorse
December 15, 2015 | 19:27 | Written by: snake911
I really love Patlabor. I think most of it comes from the interactions between everyone at the division and how all of them have unique characteristics of not only their attitudes and emotions, but the skills they bring to the job as well, adding layers to each character. It definitely causes for some funny moments when you mix a hot head with a stern leader; a quiet and humble person with a nerd; or all of them seeking advice from a lazy leader who just goes with the flow.
When it comes to anime I, for whatever reason, prefer comedy over action. Don’t get me wrong though as I love action (my collection is mostly filled with action titles more than anything else), but comedy is something I always look for first.
Of course most shows with action have a little bit of comedy stirred in, but Patlabor flips it around by having comedy be first and action second. Well, I guess the comedy part might be more of a slice of life type with the show since the majority of each episode has the cast of characters dodiling around their workplace but then get serious when it comes to going out on field to an incident.
It took me over a course of about two years to collect the whole set of DVDs for the Patlabor TV series. I got the last set a few months back on eBay when I saw someone selling it for a good price. The series was released in three large sets where each one included four volumes. It was licensed by Central Park Media and distributed by U.S. Manga Corps in North America in the early 2000s but the company went under back in 2009, so I’ve been collecting the sets that were released back in the mid-2000s. And since they normally license odd anime shows from the ‘80s, I figured this would be the only way to get the series with English dubs because of their unique selection of titles. But I was wrong.
I never checked Amazon for Patlabor episodes. I only checked on eBay. And when I recently saw that they re-released the whole series on Blu-Ray, I was totally ticked off. Are you kidding me?! These new sets are beautiful! Look at the covers for each volume!
I was totally surprised to find out another company got the license for Patlabor and not only released the TV show but the OVA, movies, and specials as well, and each of those have gorgeous covers, too. The back cover is no slouch as they got a section on it that shows what part of the Patlabor universe that volume is for, giving a handy visual reference for every volume. The U.S. Manga Corps versions have no competition with the re-releases and I now regret spending all that money in acquiring those ones when I could have gotten the Blu-Ray versions where they take less shelf space and are uprezzed to 1080p but keeping the 4x3 aspect ratio; which is what I prefer!
I guess that’s the lesson for today: research everywhere before buying.
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