Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Week in Review. I’ve got a varied assortment of new properties to explore with you today, including a genuine anime classic, along with films ranging from the ludicrously terrible to the actually pretty good. It turns out self-quarantining also gives you a whole lot of time for videogames, so I’ve also got some initial thoughts on Nioh 2, the latest Soulsborne-style release from Team Ninja. I’ve got plenty to say and this article is late enough as it is, so let’s not waste any more time on throat clearing, and dive right into the Week in Review!

I finally got around to watching the second Patlabor film this week, after writing about the first film last year. I genuinely loved the first Patlabor movie, and had pretty much universally been told that the second film is far superior to the first, which made me excited to check out this one – and very surprised when I ended up finding it far weaker than its predecessor.

There are definitely many outstanding elements of the second Patlabor film. The film’s greatest sequence is likely its extended, sobering depiction of Tokyo under martial law, as soldiers and tanks are illuminated against the glimmering lights of an emptied city, or blanketed beneath an unexpected snowfall. Mamoru Oshii is brilliant when it comes to tonal sequences like this, and I felt strong echoes of Angel’s Egg in this contrast of architectural solemnity and mechanical violence, much like the first Patlabor film echoed Angel’s Egg’s decaying domestic scenes and voyeuristic framing.

I also enjoyed how clear it was in this film that the “golden age” of Patlabors had truly ended. Tokyo’s major construction projects have concluded, the cast is scattered to the winds, and the increasing distribution of Labor usage has increased Labor crime, making the once-exceptional into the tired and mundane. The biting, unspoken subtext of Patlabor is that history moves on with or without us; in spite of the heroic theatrics of individual patrol officers, and all the words spent reflecting on the shifting nature of Tokyo’s and Japan’s identity, the future is forever inevitable.

But while I loved this film’s cinematography, and enjoy the generally subdued, generationally grounded tone of Patlabor’s reflections on human nature, the actual narrative felt barely integrated with any of that. Patlabor 2’s plot concerns a former JSDF leader attempting to incite a schism between the JSDF and police forces, hopefully provoking something approaching a civil war, and perhaps even inciting US intervention. Just as the first film reflected on Japanese generational changes from the first post-war generation through the youth of the ‘80s, Patlabor 2 reflects on Japan’s history and identity in a more global sense, pointing out how Japan’s peace is a product of global unrest, and wondering precisely how far Japan has moved from essentially being an American territory.

These are fascinating questions, but they are not questions explored by the actual narrative of Patlabor 2 – instead, they’re mostly articulated through a series of idle debates between Gotoh and various other characters, with the actual “villain” of this film barely having any presence at all. In the meantime, the moment-to-moment action of Patlabor 2 is focused largely on the same bureaucratic manipulations Patlabor has always celebrated, with the actual human drama of the story always feeling far away. Though it has plenty of evocative imagery, Patlabor 2 also feels like a striking demonstration of the weaknesses of telling rather than showing – its interesting thematic arguments are never grounded in genuine human conflicts, and largely exist apart from the on-screen action of the story.

As a result, Patlabor 2 feels like several films at once, with only a tangential relationship between them. And since we’re given no context for relationships like, say, the apparently burning love between section chief Shinobu and the film’s villain, the film offers basically no emotional throughline; a massive dramatic step down from the first film, which used Gotoh’s relationships with both the older and younger generations, as well as Asuma’s familial connection to the film’s thematic heart, to ground its thematic argument in clear human emotions. The ability to ground philosophical questions in human emotions, thereby illustrating the shades of human complexity that make dry arguments into messy lived experiences, is essentially the power that separates narrative art from straightforward essays. Lacking this connective tissue, Patlabor 2 often felt like an essay stapled to an evocative tone piece.

One of my housemates had never seen the famously terrible film The Room, so my apartment had a raucous screening of Tommy Wiseau’s accidental masterpiece. I’m normally not a person who enjoys watching terrible things to laugh at them – personally, I feel most bad art is bad in fairly similar, generally boring ways, and I don’t really get much out of tearing apart yet another stiff script or unconvincing performance. Not so for The Room, which somehow manages to delight anew in every single scene, through its combination of an utterly surreal script, consistently baffling visual decisions, and the overwhelming presence of Tommy Wiseau himself, whose garbled deliveries and raw, clumsy feelings serve as the film’s emotional and comedic heart.

The “narrative” feels mostly like an unfiltered scream of rage and betrayal by Wiseau, who casts himself as a protagonist who is nice to everyone, but betrayed by everyone because they’re so mean and don’t appreciate how nice he is. Even the film’s slow moments, like its pointless, interminable sex scenes, or its constant pans across San Francisco, feel exactly too long enough to extract maximum humor out of their inexplicable presence. And the countless moments of deadpan emotional whiplash, along with Wiseau’s bewildering performance and bizarre understanding of human performance, make any scene where two characters are trying to communicate an accidentally brilliant comedic experience. I’ve seen The Room three times now, and been struck each time by how consistent it is in its terrible beauty.

Among films you might want to watch for reasons their creators actually intended, I had a fun time with the 1982 horror classic Poltergeist, directed by Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), and written/produced by Steven Spielberg. In spite of Hooper’s directorial role, Poltergeist feels like a Spielberg film through and through, from its fascination with the anonymity of late 20th century suburbs (something also embraced by E.T., released literally a week apart from Poltergeist), as well as the playful construction of its dramatic setpieces.

There are genuinely creepy moments and lots of strong horror imagery, but the film’s big setpieces generally take the form of cleverly constructed adventure spectacles with lots of moving parts, like a particularly memorable sequence when a medium attempts to chart the dimensions of the spirit world. Like many of Spielberg’s best films, it feels like a full entertainment meal, or an entire day at the amusement park – not all that scary, but a fun and inventive ride from start to finish.

Last up, I’ve also dove right into Nioh 2, the sequel to 2017’s Dark Souls-esque action-RPG from Team Ninja. The original Nioh took Dark Souls’ punishing, precise action and general design structure, and wedded it to the more fast-paced, somewhat looser style of gameplay they’d mastered through games like Ninja Gaiden, along with a randomized loot system resembling that of Diablo or Borderlands. The result was a game that felt like an arcade-style but more replayable version of Dark Souls, with a bit less of that game’s satisfying gameplay precision, but a nearly infinite number of ways to customize your character and play style.

So far, Nioh 2 has turned out to be more of the same – in fact, it’s so close in content to the original Nioh, and seemingly so uninterested in guiding new players into its manifold systems, that I wouldn’t be surprised if this content began as DLC that got too big for the first game. What Nioh 2 adds is terrific, though; the original game’s “Guardian Spirit” special attacks have been expanded into a full demon-ified rage mode, to which you can then slot in two additional high-impact special moves, depending on your preferences and which you’ve unlocked. The result is a combat system that carries much of the appeal of balancing careful footsies and high-impact moves in fighting games, paired with creative bosses that feel like Zelda’s puzzle-solving battles, except with a genuine sense of challenge, and half a dozen potential solutions.

When all these pieces come together, Nioh 2 is a thrilling experience, and the good in it is good enough for me to recommend it to any fanatical Soulsborne fan. However, the game is also pretty darn messy. The collision detection and lock-on pathing are inconsistent, which is a pretty major flaw in a game that demands such precision of movement, and the game’s level designs are a sprawling map of spaghetti paths that wholly lack the cohesiveness and beauty of From Software’s efforts. The loot and character customization systems are also so labyrinthian that they can feel overwhelming, and the game wastes your time with a whole lot of busywork like dismantling useless loot. If your attraction to the Soulsborne style is the core style of challenging gameplay, and the inherent appeal of “how will I overcome this absurd boss,” Nioh 2 will be a great experience; but it’s not the all-in-one-package of its competitors, and on the heels of Sekiro basically redefining excellence in this space, Nioh 2 feels more than a little behind the times.