Short Synopsis: Hatchin meets a boy of her age at a local bookstore.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
It’s the episodes like this one that make this series so deceptive. One episode tells a cute love story between a bunch of kids, and yet the next one can focus on the incredibly dark Michiko-storyline. This really is a very varied show. Perhaps not the most balanced one, but you’ll never know what you’re going to get with every episode.
This episode definitely focused on the cute side of this show. while Hatchin’s stories generally lack a part in the overall storyline of this series, her character more than makes up for it. In this episode she also for the first time gets to find out what it means to have a crush on someone, ,though she more shies away from it. Especially the final shot of this episode made some impact. You could see that Michiko felt Hatchin’s sadness because it didn’t work out with the boy, and yet it was done with some great subtlety so that it didn’t turn out into an endless angst-fest.
And some more random comments: nice Ergo Proxy-reference with Vincent Law the author (he seems to have written quite a few books, they were really all over the bookstore ^^;). This episode also showed that it’s got a very talented musical producer: the background music never really stood out, but it was very varied and subtle, and overall it added really well to the different scenes.
Oh, and in this episode something finally happened that made Michiko and Hatchin sound like mother and daughter: Michiko wanted to have something, (a book in this case), and asked Michiko for permission to get it. That was definitely the sign (even more than the hug at the end of this episode) that they’re growing closer together. Oh, and next week should prove to be fun: another double-episode. Woo!