„Old busted VS New hotness” is what I first said, jokingly, when this shot came up in the Patlabor movie. However, as the scene unfolded, I came to realize that my joke was much closer to the truth than I had intended.

The old against the new is one of the central themes presented in this movie, at every turn of the way we end up running into people whose lives are all too quickly overtaken by the rapid progress of technology in this world. Old engineers unable to keep up with all the new software; detectives walking streets once familiar to them, now rebuilt in sleek, modern architecture; sons rebelling against their fathers. The fast advancement of time is one that corrupts and creates disparity in all things indiscriminately, whether it be the machines raising new cities platform-by-platform in the middle of the ocean or the very food we eat.

We are made painfully aware of the detriments created when things begin moving too quickly, but just like that, with caution thrown to the wind, a path is opened up for the H.O.S. into the 8000 labors housed within Tokyo, almost all of them, with two small exceptions.

People will often say „don’t fix what isn’t broken” but if given the option to be 30% more efficient or continue as you currently are I doubt any would choose the latter.

That is Type Zero.

That cold, calculating nature; that ruthless push for efficiency; that sleek and sharp design which makes the wind whistle as it brushes against it; that sick satisfaction you get from seeing all the numbers getting bigger and bigger; that is Type Zero.

But even so, it is missing the one thing which never changes, regardless of the advancement of technology. The people.

And that, is the conflict.

That is what '98 VS Type Zero represents, even their names evoke the feeling. '98 VS Type Zero, Revolver VS Semi-automatic, Acoustic VS Electric, Rocky Balboa VS Ivan Drago.

And after their short exchange of blows that barely lasted a minute and a half, out of the two, the winner is the one with the human touch. Ei’ichi Hoba was destined to have his plan fail the moment he threw himself into the sea, letting his program serve unfailingly.

In the battle between the two labors, it is not the model AV-98 Ingram that claims victory, it's Alphonse. Alphonse with his rounded edges, all his damage and scratches, and Izumi Noa who was lovingly piloting him, and Shige who didn’t install the H.O.S. on him, Asuma the eternal backup and all the people with the SV2 who meticulously cared for and repaired him and rose up to face the challenge that day.

It might have been a short fight, but to me it is the crystallization of the movie’s themes, and its perfect ending.