Michiko e Hatchin – 21



Short Synopsis: Michiko tries to find Hatchin as she’s chased by the police.
Episode Rating: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
Oh, how I love this series. Why must there be only one episode left!?

In any case, this episode was very much about the dark side of Michiko e Hatchin as it prepared for the final episode… and finishes off Satoshi’s storyline. I must say that his time together with Hatchin made a lot of impact on me. Hatchin is such an awesome damsel in distress: while she pretty much got dragged along by Satoshi, she constantly tried to argue with him and run away. Even going as far as trying to throw rocks at the guy when he had his gun pointed at her.

Satoshi’s end was… amazing, but not in the usual way. His development in the end was so incredibly subtle. There was no “zomg look here I did something nice for a change”. She came to him at a time in which he was in trouble and alone as well, there was just his time hanging out with Hatchin, his constant arguing with her, and this one line in which he acknowledged her (when she tried to throw that rock to him). With that, his sacrifice made perfect sense. Anime has a bad track record of making bad-ass punks like him turn soft in an overly cheesy way, but there was no cheese whatsoever in Satoshi’s death. His demise was brutal, there was no crying, overacted sadness or anything. Just a couple of smiling punks that grinned as they finished him off. It’s been a while since I’ve seen such a cold death from one of my favourite characters.

The past two episodes were really about the Hatchin vs. Satoshi, but at the same time Michiko did enough to keep her side of the story busy. Hatchin really has a lot of influence on the people she meets, and the creators did such a wonderful job on making this assumable. Michiko, a woman who is supposed to be on the run instead of hiding focuses on trying to get Hatchin back, throwing herself onto the lions. We’ve seen thus far that the police are not exactly perfect in this series but you don’t want to be walking right into them or you’ll be screwed.

The new policemen also felt like they were supposed to be introduced at this point, not like Samurai Champloo which needed a bunch of villains for its action-packed finale. And oh boy, speaking of which: I was so sure that the creators were going to wait till the next episode to show Hiroshi, and yet the bugger already popped up right now.

The next episode… it really promises to become an amazing one. I love endings which don’t revolve around two extremely powerful people going at it against each other (after all, it’s just too predictable, we’ve seen those things many times before), and in the end it’s going to be a combination of a cat-and-mouse game with the police and that loser of a Hiroshi trying to justify himself in front of his daughter. The interesting thing is of course going to be that Hatchin really doesn’t care about whether she can meet her father or not, but she is essentially trying to find him for Michiko. With Fuu, her journey was pretty much over when she met her father, but for Michiko and Hatchin, there’s a whole more dimension between them and Hiroshi.

At this point, I’d definitely label this series at the top of the season, even above Casshern Sins which in the end didn’t live up to its expectations. Michiko e Hatchin more than did, and I’m SO looking forward to that final episode, and at the same time I’d just wish it were longer. You can pretty much consider me a Manglobe-fanboy at this point. Samurai Champloo and Ergo Proxy already were incredibly good, but Michiko e Hatchin far surpassed them.

10 thoughts on “Michiko e Hatchin – 21

  1. A great show, but surpassing Ergo Proxy? In terms of cohesiveness/straightforwardness of plot, yeah, but definitely no in the characterization/thematic departments.

    And thats not even counting the fact that Ergo Proxy had freakin’ Paranoid Android as its ED. Nothing can top that really. 🙂

  2. Thanks for blogging MeH. Each ep in the series seems to serve a purpose and the pacing is definitely tighter than Samurai Champloo and Ergo Proxy (both series I also enjoyed, flaws and all). But for sheer fun and edge of your seat I-gotta-see-the-next-ep-to-see-what-happens, MeH has them all beat. A shame it’s ending so soon. But MeH appears to be a show that knows how to use its time wisely and doesn’t overstay its welcome or rush things at the last moment.

  3. I hate Paranoid Android. It’s the worst track on Ergo Proxy’s OST and just about ruins it. The music in Michiko e Hatchin is presumedly fitting the setting but I don’t think I really like its soundtrack stand-alone. Though I liked the BGM during the last action scene in this episode. I appreciate that they don’t go for replacable stereotypical music like rock tracks for action scenes and classic orchestra for epic ones which I find utterly uncreative. So the BGM is really outstanding by emphasizing not just the atmosphere but also the setting that is the location but the time as well, even if this style of music is not particularly to my liking, at least most of it. You can really hear that the plot happens about now and not 30 years in the past or future.

  4. Michiko is 24 episodes, it even says it on the official site. i’m not sure where everyone got the that 22 number from.

  5. Where exactly did you read that there were going to be 24 episodes? Everywhere I look seems to confirm that it’s only going to last for 22 episodes, even animenewsnetwork seems to suggest that.

  6. This series is full of interesting references, for instance in this episode the kids dancing on the street are a nice salute to Black Orpheous from Vinicious de Morais, in fact that is the closing scene of the movie.

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