Spoilers for Patlabor TV I enjoyed this entire fight and im shocked its not on youtube, until now. I went edit and re-edited the subs, fixed spelling mistakes and gave it a nostalgic color. Enjoy!
"I don't want a good fight" gets me. Noa isn't a policewoman to have giant mech fights for kicks. She does it to help people, and to keep them safe. Putting up a good fight doesn't mean squat if at the end of the day, the people threatening the safety of the public are still at large. She's failed, and her crisis of confidence and inconsolability is so extremely relatable. She bounces back of course, but I really love that reality hits her as hard as it should sometimes, even though she's normally upbeat and optimistic.
I love how the labors aren’t treated as indestructible or near-indestructible machines, but actively take on damage, from small to massive, in the line of duty. Just look at Alfonse’s hand at 10:05, from punching against another big machine so hard.
All done by hand. But let's not pretend that the animators had it easy even back when Japan was the 2nd largest economy especially when it was the 1980s.
