Short Synopsis: Michiko screws up while trying to get some passports and Hatchin meets a bunch of weirdos.
Episode Rating: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
Awesome to see that both installments of Michiko e Hatchin hit the mark exactly this week. This episode combines the dark parts of the Michiko-stories with the adorable parts of the Hatchin-story-lines. So what does that mean? A bunch of cross-dressers, of course!
Hatchin, while lost and searching for Michiko (who got herself into trouble yet again (nice restaurant, by the way: every table had a live canary on it) meets a guy who is willing to offer her a place to stay. He turns out to have a very kind daughter, and at first there seems nothing wrong with them… until it becomes clear that the guy is a stage cross-dresser performer, and his “daughter” is actually an ill-mannered boy. It was just adorable to see how much this boy looked up to his father: he behaved like an angel in front of him, and when he was alone with Hatchin he just kept bragging about how good and awesome his father was (which in a way was true: at the end of the episode he managed to get Michiko out of a tight spot while placing his life on the line for her).
I also like the subtlety in which some of the more negative sides of Brazil were highlighted, with the mother who simply used her baby as a beggar in order to get some money. I like how it got its point across without being overly preachy or moralistic about it.
We also see the guy with the weird hairdo back in this episode, and he’s shaping up to be not just a threat to Michiko, but Satoshi as well, making friends with the guys who caused Michiko problems in this episode. Since the creators didn’t use them at all in this episode, my guess would be that they’re going to play a major part in this episode. And in that aspect, I think that this series beats Samurai Champloo. while the action is less stylized, in SC the major antagonists really came from out of nowhere at the last possible moment, while here they appear every once in a while too do something.
Also, Michiko has a very strange sense of Rock Paper Scissors… And was it me, or was this episode obsessed with food? Seriously, the most detailed shots came from the various dishes that passed the screen…
I have to agree that I’m enjoying MeH far more than SC, which had some cool eps and neat characters in its own right, but its plot wasn’t nearly as engaging or cohesive as MeH. MeH is also far more endearing in its characters’ emotional development and, of course, feels more “real.” Sure, mixing hip-hop with samurai-chambara-style action might seem good on paper and it made for some cool gimmicks, but it kinda lacked direction story-wise and the anarchronisms started to get jarring after a while (beat-boxing samurai, wth?).
Scenery and culture in this episodes wasn’t brazilian it was kowloon, one of the most mysterious and wild cities on earth
weird hairdo guy’s name is “Shinsuke”
I’m fairly sure they were still in South America. Like Canada and the USA, there are Asian-town communities in a few major South American cities, with Chinese, Japanese, and Korean expatriates and their descendants living there still.
I think one of the main points of the show is that this fact that are people of Asian descent in Latin America is so little known throughout most of the rest of the world (it’s also how things like Brazilian jujitsu, originally a Japanese import, are developed). And yea, the shots of the food this ep made me really hungry and homesick for Chinese cooking! We Chinese (and Chinese-Americans) take our food very seriously. 🙂
And a very cute (and cool) ep. Hana has this habit of meeting these eccentric weirdos who are really the heart of the show, while Michiko always runs into the criminal element to bring a little crazy action. I liked the Guan Yu references too.