Here's a full breakdown of the release schedule for the live-action episodes for Patlabor:
Part 1: April 5, 2014
Part 2: May 31, 2014
Part 3: July 12, 2014
Part 4: August 30, 2014
Part 5: October 18, 2014
Part 6: November 29, 2014
Part 7: January 1, 2015
Each of the seven installments will receive a short theatrical run in Japanese theaters. The original Patlabor manga was created in 1988 from a group that consisted of director Mamoru Oshii, writer Kazunori Itō, mecha designer Yutaka Izubuchi, character designer Akemi Takada, and manga artist Masami Yūki (collectively known as Headgear). Oshii returns to direct the first installment of the seven episodes and will direct the full-length feature film that follows. Each episode is said to be roughly 48 minutes while the full-length film will be somewhere in the vicinity of 100 minutes.
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Patlabor also known as Mobile Police Patlabor, is a 1988 anime and manga that centered around the special robotics force of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police as they solved various cases in a then-near-future of 1998. There have been several anime films, anime series, mangas, light novels and video games to date.
The film will not be a remake of Mamoru Oshii's (Ghost in the Shell) original anime but will instead tell a completely new story. The project has been dubbed Patlabor - The Third Generation and is set in 2013, where the Tokyo Metropolitan Police force has been disbanded. The TMP has been dispersed into two separate divisions, Section 2, "police robots" Division 1 and Section 2 "barely holding on, budget cut" Division 2. Former singer Erina Mano will play the lead heroine, Akira Izumino. Rounding out the cast are Seiji Fukushi as Yūma Shiobara, Rina Oota as Ekaterina Krachevna Kankaeva, voice-actor Shigeru Chiba will play his anime character, maintenance squad chief Shigeo Shiba, and Toshio Kakei as Captain Keiji Gotōda. |