Welcome everyone, to another week of Michiko & Hatchin! This is going to be a weird week since I will be attending a wedding when this goes up. Maybe it will mean that this actually goes up on time this time though, who knows. Anyways, without further ado lets dive into the episodes!
Starting off, this week I want to take the opportunity to talk about Michiko & Hatchin’s OST. I haven’t had the opportunity to go through it in full yet, I tend to save that for the final review. But this week definitely served to bring it to my attention, with tracks like “Desencanto” and, I believe, “Gagorra“. Now for those of you who read my Megalo Box: Nomad review this should come as no surprise, but I absolutely love Latin music. There’s a rustic passion to it I feel, a beautiful simplicity that speaks to the heart that a lot of more modern, urban music just doesn’t for me. So tracks like this, or what little I heard of “Temporada das frutas” before I turned back to avoid spoilers, are right up my alley. Hopefully Michiko & Hatchin can keep delivering on them moving forward, because I love it.
Getting into the actual episodes, first up is episode 7, “The Rain that Falls in Monotone”. Overall I quite liked this episode. My big complaint last week was that the conflict between Michiko and Hatchin hadn’t gotten the attention it deserved. That their relationship was fraying at the edges, from Hatchin’s distaste for Michiko’s actions and Michiko for not believing Hatchin tough enough to help, only for the show to just force them together again by the end without actually resolving anything. Luckily, Michiko & Hatchin seems to know that to and seeks to resolve it this week by making it the center of the entire episode. With their bike stuck in a shop for repair, the duo is stuck in a small, slow-moving river town with almost no one for company but each other. This, inevitably, brings out the worst in each of them.
For Michiko, this was not a kind episode. Always fighting with Hatchin, physically slapping/abusing her, being a generally neglectful parental figure. I actually got legitimately angry at her a few times for her attitude towards Hatchin. This doesn’t mean I hate her, in fact it’s quite the opposite. Remember way back in my first post where I praised Michiko & Hatchin for making it clear Michiko wasn’t a good person? That she didn’t have a heart of gold? Well we are seeing that again here. How, despite her clear care for Hatchin, Michiko has no idea how to properly care for a child. Most likely treating her how she was treated growing up, thinking it will make her strong when all it will do is make Hatchin resent her. Hopefully Michiko can outgrow this as the series progresses, giving her a clear parental arc throughout the series.
That’s not the only arc Michiko & Hatchin has made available to her though. We also see just how lonely Michiko is as she lusts for Bruno. I don’t know if this is commitment issues, or a lingering desire to love and be loved in a way only a non-criminal like Hiroshi can provide. But it’s clear that Michiko is starting to waver a bit from their quest the longer it goes on. That the more she experiences the world outside of prison, meets new people and tastes her freedom, the more she loses interest in finding Hiroshi. Is she losing hope that he’s actually still alive? Or is her resolve just that fragile? This could also have just been a moment of weakness as she considers staying here with Bruno, I don’t know. But these issues make Michiko a way more interesting, and damaged, character in my opinion.
Meanwhile the other half of the episode is all about Hatchin slowly growing more and more used to the streets. She still doesn’t know how to defend herself, falling prey to another kids street gang. But this time she doesn’t back down and, even in defeat, stands defiant. And it is in doing so that she appears to earn their respect. Unlike Michiko though, Hatchin’s brand of street respect has a more honorable base. She challenged them in a fair competition, betting everything she had. No tricks, no fights, no adults. And in doing so, in establishing her own honorable sort of brand, she seems to bring that honor out of them as well. As even though she won, those kids didn’t have to save her. Or drop her off at the hotel. Or give her back her shoes and the cape. But they did. Because they respected her.
It kind of makes me wonder what Hatchin’s final destination in this show is. Are they going to switch sides? Michiko ending up with Hiroshi in a pleasant suburban life, away from crime, while Hatchin becomes some sort of honorable underworld boss? I could see it. They seem to be drifting more and more into each others worlds, and Hatchin is quickly defining her own brand like I said. The more she interacts with the underworld, gets her name out there and builds her reputation, she could become something this country sorely lacks: Stability. A stable, non-randomly-violent underground. Enforcing the rules on her streets. It’s wistful thinking, she’s a child and I doubt Michiko & Hatchin will have a timeskip. But I really do like the thought of Hatchin growing into this criminal world in her quest to find her father.
This brings us to episode 8, “Black Noise and a Dope Game”, where we get an even deeper look into Michiko’s past. Once again we meet one of her old acquaintances from the underground, this one being the Monstro Lieutenant, Shinsuke. More than that though, we see the difference between the sort of street level underground, represented by the fake “Satoshi” Davi, and the real underground, with Shinsuke. It’s kind of crazy the difference between the two, and how we have just scratched the surface so far. Where the Davi and Rico’s of the world are clearly dangerous, willing to kill you at the drop of a hat, Shinsuke and co are clearly more terrifying. Not only in their sheer reach but their willingness and ability to do whatever they want, anywhere they want, even in public. It’s like the difference between a rabid dog and a trained hound.
On Shinsuke specifically, I actually quite liked him. His design, the VA work by Jun Murakami, just how chill he is about everything and everyone, including the guy he was supposed to kill/scare off. He reminded me of a light version of the Joker in a way, in that for him how he got a job done was just as important as the job itself. Like none of this is personal for him, he has no stake in it beyond having some fun. He has no reason to hurt random civilians, but if they happen to be in the way? Well wrong place wrong time. However Michiko & Hatchin makes it very clear that he isn’t actually insane, he can be reasoned with. He’s just very divorced from everyday normal reality. Hopefully we see more of him, as I’d love him to become a reoccurring character!
Meanwhile on the other end of the spectrum, this week sees Hatchin’s differences with Michiko flare up once again. To no ones surprise, Hatchin wasn’t a fan of not paying the repairman and just ditching town without paying their bills. It’s almost as if Michiko has made 0 effort to actually understand Hatchin, and that Hatchin continues to be a rather straight-laced person. So for perhaps the 3rd episode in a row, the two are fighting. Were them coming together not the entire point of the show, I would most likely be a little annoyed by now. I’d like to see some kind of attempt by them to understand each other. Luckily, it is the entire point of the show it feels like. So hopefully with Hatchin going off on her own again, this time on a train ride to another city, Michiko will finally figure all of this out.
That brings me to my only real negative with the episode: The train game. Like I said, I like Shinsuke, I think he’s fun and I enjoy the kind of terrifying underworld he represents. But the train game felt ludicrously out of place to me and just all around silly. And not the threatening silly like when Shinsuke is intimidating that local boss into telling him where Davi is, I mean the same kind of silly that ruined the Vasily storyline. Yes, it got Michiko to him, and it made it clear that he’s a bit off of his rocker. But it’s execution felt very lacking. Like… we don’t know this town, we don’t know it’s trains, so it ends up being a bunch of samey-looking streets in samey-looking train cars, all the while we have no idea where we actually are.
In some ways, maybe that’s the point. Shinsuke wants to disorient Michiko and doesn’t want her totally sure of where she’s headed. And by doing this Michiko & Hatchin imposes that same experience on the viewer. The issue with that though is that we, the viewer, have never known where we were to begin with. We’ve always been at least a little disorientated. We don’t know where these towns are in relation to each other, how far we have traveled, what their layout is, etc. Michiko & Hatchin isn’t the kind of show that cares about that kind of stuff. It’s not necessary for the show to be good either, it’s not a fantasy Isekai with an RPG world. But when you try to make use of your setting/city like this, a baseline of information is necessary for it to work. And we clearly didn’t have that.
Finally lets talk about Atsuko and her quest to find Michiko. We haven’t seen much of her since Episode 2, beyond a small flashback to their days in the orphanage at least. So I like this reminder that she’s still out there, actively hunting our protagonists. It makes it feel like they are running from something, reminding us they are on the lamb, even while they themselves are hunting Hiroshi. More than that though, this week shows us that she may not be as clean as previously thought as we see her taking tips from Satoshi, a known gang member. Maybe he’s an information, maybe she’s a dirty cop, maybe they kept up contact after their youth. We don’t know! But knowing there’s a relationship there, independent of our leads, is really cool. I like that other characters have their own relationships with each other and not just our leads.
So yeah, all in all I think these were some good episodes of Michiko & Hatchin. It’s not perfect, the found family stuff is still very up in the air as our leads continue to clash. But even when it’s struggling to bring them together, I feel like the show is moving forward. Whether it be Michiko flagging on their quest and desiring her own human connection or Hatchin refusing to be a victim, I feel like these characters are progressing. And that’s good! I like that something is always happening every episode, either the main plot or the characters. It’s a good balance and allows one to rest while the other takes over. Of course this makes it harder, as Michiko & Hatchin has more plot threads to cover in its run time. But if it can pull them off, it will be well worth the trouble.
When people say anime lacks good female characters, I will happily point them towards this show.