Patlabor MiniPato – A precious gem of a score.

Since I’m not too deep into collecting anime scores, I considered it appropriate to talk about a hopelessly good and, alas, pretty EXPENSIVE one:

Patlabor MiniPato by Kenji Kawai.

The MiniPato-short movies accompanied the release of the last (at least for now) Patlabor-movie PATLABOR WXIII back in 2002.

To get a bit more out of it, the producers decided to ROTATE the short movie up front so if you wanted to see all three of them you had to watch WXIII three times in a row in the cinema! Bugger!

Fortunately, the Pioneer DVD-release includes all three short movies (and a TON of extras).

What’s so special about them you may ask?

Well, basically compressing a ton of dialogue, fun and hilarious animation into three minutes!

MiniPato is/are a must see for all Patlabor-fans.

And since the franchise is very dead indeed these days, you can take your pretty time in watching the rest of the OAV, movies and tv-series.

Now, regarding the music: the composer had to compress as much "narrative" music as possible into a very short amount of time without losing coherence.

And Kenji Kawai does so with absolute perfection!

There is an enormous feeling of nostalgia once you see scenes from the series/movies "quoted" in the somewhat strange and silly animation of MiniPato – accompanied by a perfect rendition of a (very similar sounding) theme!

This sometimes also works in an ironic sense, but since Kawai respects his older work, it’s also fascinating to hear variations of themes you (as a fan) know already quite well.

On the other hand the short format doesn’t allow too much time for a further development and sometimes the composer just follows the slapstick and crazy antics onscreen with his music.

Once I started watching the MiniPato-documentary on the Pioneer boxset I realised that it had the score of MiniPato as background music. Very nice!

Back then (late 2005), I had not too much hope in getting the CD. Or even believing that one would exist. Only by accident I came across a fellow collector who pointed me to some Japanese websites.

Already priced at 40-50$ US back then (for some approx. 20 minutes of music) I considered this to be way too expensive.

Fortunately, a good friend borrowed me his CD once he returned from Japan some three years ago. He got it for some 10$ US used from a shop. Lucky guy.

Regards,
Patcher.