Mars Express director Jérémie Périn shares his love of Patlabor 2

Mars Express, the new sci-fi noir thriller from French director and animator Jérémie Périn, is finally available to stream on VOD this week following its American theatrical run in May. Périn’s film is fantastic: a sophisticated, hard-boiled detective story set in a futuristic society where humans and robots live side by side that’s as indebted to Chinatown and The Long Goodbye as it is to Ghost in the Shell.

Polygon recently had a chance to connect with Périn, so we had to ask: What was your first favorite anime, and what’s your favorite anime now?

My Favorite Anime is Polygon’s column dedicated to collecting the stories of the biggest celebrity anime fans in the world, charting a path from their earliest introductions to Japanese animation to the series and films they love today. Here’s what Jérémie Périn had to say.

What was your first favorite anime?

Based on the manga by Buichi Terasawa, Space Adventure Cobra is a 1982 sci-fi adventure anime about a bored office worker who accidentally discovers that he’s a swashbuckling mercenary who erased his own memories in order to elude a deadly group of space pirates. After regaining his memories, Cobra resumes his life as a mercenary, embarking on adventures around the universe with his partner, Lady Armaroid.

While Terasawa cited Star Trek, the James Bond film series, and the animation of René Laloux as his inspirations while writing the manga, the premise of Space Adventure Cobra also bears a striking resemblance to Philip K. Dick’s 1966 short story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale,” later adapted by Paul Verhoeven as Total Recall.

The other anime Périn cited, The Rose of Versailles, is a historical drama that takes place before and during the French Revolution and follows the story of Oscar François de Jarjayes, the youngest daughter of a military general who raises her like a son so that she will one day succeed him as commander of the royal guard at the Palace of Versailles. Distraught over the plight of the French public under the ancien régime, Oscar eventually leaves the guard to fight alongside the revolutionaries with her lover, André.

While on the surface these two anime couldn’t appear further apart, they actually share one remarkable thing in common. Both Space Adventure Cobra and The Rose of Versailles were directed by Osamu Dezaki, the anime legend who directed the 1970 anime adaptation of Ashita no Joe and co-founded the Japanese animation studio Madhouse. Dezaki is considered one of the most influential anime directors of the ’70s and ’80s, known for his distinctive visual style that incorporated split-screen imagery, Dutch angle shots, and other techniques that were uncommon in anime at the time. He is also best known for his use of pastel freeze frames, called “postcard memories,” which have since become a foundational visual trope throughout the entire medium of modern anime.

What’s your favorite anime now?

Directed by Mamoru Oshii and produced by Production I.G, Patlabor 2: The Movie is a 1993 sci-fi political thriller set in an alternate 2002 where “Labors,” large-scale robots designed for heavy construction work, have revolutionized Japan’s economy. To respond to the increase in Labor-related crime, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police forms a special crime unit that deploys their own Patrol Labors (“Patlabors”) to resolve these cases.

Unlike previous anime in the Patlabor franchise, Patlabor 2: The Movie is not a police comedy, but instead an explicitly political film that touches heavily on domestic and international issues Japan was facing at the time it was produced, such as the debate over Japan’s postwar identity and the deployment of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) in U.N. peacekeeping operations in Cambodia. The plot concerns the members of the Special Vehicles Unit of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department who work to apprehend the leader of a terrorist cell conspiring to incite havoc under the pretense of a coup.

With a budget over twice that of the first Patlabor movie and an improved layout production system that saw talented animators and artists like Masahiro Ando, Satoshi Kon, and Hiroyuki Okiura working under animation director Kazuchika Kise, Patlabor 2 was lauded for its more sophisticated photorealistic animation style, a style which would later be iterated upon in Oshii’s next film: the 1995 cyberpunk action anime Ghost in the Shell.

Patlabor 2 is considered one of the best anime movies of the ’90s. Unfortunately, it’s currently unavailable to stream online. However, the film is included, along with the entire Patlabor series, in the Patlabor: The Mobile Police Ultimate Collection Blu-ray set available through the Crunchyroll Store or Sentai Filmworks.

The Rose of Versailles is available to stream on Pluto TV and Freevee with ads. Space Adventure Cobra is available to stream on Pluto TV and Retrocrush.