[ericthor]

The other night I watched the 1989 movie [Patlabor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patlabor:_The_Movie) directed by Mamoru Oshii who went on to direct Ghost in the Shell in 1995. The plot is simple and there isn't too much grand philosophy, but the movies was prescient on issues of proprietary software, Internet of Things, urban waste, and Corporate/Government complicity/inaction.

The movie doesn't read as a gritty cyberpunk or even as super cyber/futuristic. It's visually light and the public is optimistic and satisfied with the present. It resembles our present to a certain extent which makes it all the more interesting. Its main divergences from our reality is with the mechs which can be seen as bit of fun or be read as metaphor for technology that is starting to seem divine/magic to all expect for the few technically savvy enough to understand whats going on. I haven't watched the other movies or anime yet, but look forward to checking them out.

[Spoilers] The general plot is.. A genius hacker creates a proprietary operating software(HOS) for a floundering robot/mech company. The company is able to not match competitors in creating robots, but is able to corner the robot OS market. The movie opens with genius hacker committing suicide. Shortly thereafter some robots/mechs sporadically go haywire. You follow from the perspective of a police unit who try to uncover why the robots are acting up and the mystery/motivation of the hacker. A small/funny scene..the police officers are concerned about their mechs own OS fearing that they also run HOS and have been compromised, but their chief engineer reveals that he lied to the higher-ups about installing HOS and chose not to install it because he couldn't see the code inside of it.

Edit: HOS not BOS

[twic]

BOS? I remember it as HOS - the Hyper Operating System. Here's the splash screen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0_ckVWukUo