Review: “Michiko and Hatchin” Part 1 Is So Good, It’s Outlawed

Welcome to the sunny seas and shining sands of this land where escaped prisoner Michiko seeks out a girl named Hana, claiming that Hana’s father Hiroshi was once her lover. Everyone believes Hiroshi to be dead, but Michiko believes her former love is still alive. Hana is quickly nicknamed Hatchin, and joins Michiko in the quest, because finding a father that abandoned her with a possibly-crazed outlaw has to be better than being regularly beaten and abused by her adoptive family. Michiko and Hatchin brings a Tarantino and Rodriguez flair to the world of animation, but is it unloading the clip or misfiring?

Michiko and Hatchin has an amazing pedigree. The show can claim some serious heavyweight creators on the crew with Shinichirô Watanabe (Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo) as producer and Sayo Yamamoto (most recently of Lupin III: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine) as director. All of the aforementioned shows thrive on creative mishmashes that combine cultures, music, themes, and character designs from a variety of sources. Cowboy Bebop signals its mash-up right from the name, combining jazz and westerns with Japanese science fiction animation sensibilities, while Samurai Champloo mixed the era of wandering samurai with hip hop culture. Michiko and Hatchin combines the aesthetics of Brazil with the action of everything from a 1970’s blaxploitation film to the earliest films of Robert Rodriguez .

After the setup is established, the pair kicks off on a cross-country road trip to find Hiroshi. It’s bits of Dutch in the world of Desperado, but thankfully, the roles are reversed. The elder Michiko is rambunctuous riff-raff, ready to break into a vending machine for a snack without thinking of the consequences. Hatchin is very wise for her age, apparently having had any childlike innocence beaten out of her by her tormentors. They’re both women with dark pasts, and though there’s at least a decade or two between them (and even questions of a possible biological relationship), they quickly become family, and it’s a real (if slightly disturbed) family. People hate each other, hit each other, and don’t realize the actions they have on one another, but still come to each other’s rescue, even offering to sacrifice themselves for the betterment of another.

Pacing is best described akin to something like Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex or Cowboy Bebop: episodes either heavily advance the plot of the characters or stay self-sufficient. One episode may feature Michiko debating on helping a stripper in a town she’s only visiting, but then she might be facing against her old nemesis in her ever-continuing quest to find Hiroshi. It’s a balance that’s clearly worked well for many shows over the years, and it’s good to see it in full effect here, at least in the first eleven.

One of the best aspects of the show is how varied and diverse it is. The country in which the action is set in seems to be one part Brazil, one part Italy, and minimal amounts of Japan mixed into it. One episode will feature a motorcycle crashing through the wall of a Christian (theoretically, at least) family’s house that looks 16th century, while another will have our leads riding from shop to shop amidst canoes like a floating city. The fact that one of the title characters and a main antagonist both have darker skin than most characters in Japanese productions adds a visual flair to the series, and the unusual musical cues perfectly fit the show. The show definitely knows how to keep your attention, from unique cityscapes or the canonically-fake breasts of a side-character (unlike most animated series, that’s not a teenage girl with a chest the size of her head, but an adult who’s had enhancements). The dialogue is very verbose and vulgar, dropping in swears like an Adult Swim show uncensored. In fact, it’s a bit odd that this show has never aired on Adult Swim, but that’s for another article.

There’s really not much to be said about the series that could be construed as a negative. At worst, Michiko is a spoiled, selfish character, but that does not inherently make her a bad character, just a realistic one. Hatchin might be a bit too wise beyond her years, but that’s a realistic trait at times. If anything, the family she comes from might be a bit one-dimensionally evil, and the cop Michiko’s running from might be a bit too Zenigata in a series that seems to have a fair amount of Lupin influences, if only from designs (watch a car chase and see how women like Fujiko and Michiko are treated, and you’ll see how Yamamoto got his Lupin gig). However, in a show that has a rotating cast of supporting characters every episode or two, not everyone can be fully fleshed.

This set covers the first 11 episodes of the 22-episode series, coming in a hardbox that is designed to hold the separately-released latter half of the show. In this set, you have two DVDs and two Blu-rays for combo-enthusiasts. On the first two episodes of the series, you have audio commentary by the English language cast. You have the standard textless opening and closing, along with trailers. From Japan, you have both a live-action and animated promo for the series as a whole, paired with a bit of the press conference that announced the show. On the American side, Michiko: The Woman Behind It All featurette focuses on Monica Rial, voice actress for half of the duo, where she discusses her thoughts on the series, what she brings to the role, and more. It’s a light little bit, but being created and included shows that the industry has moved on from show-only releases to caring to put time into on-disc extras that add a bit of value to the purchase.

Michiko and Hatchin is off to a great set with this box set. It’s a series that’s definitely demanding of a view, being more akin to a good Hollywood hidden champion: before Pulp Fiction, there was Reservoir Dogs, and before Desperado, there was El Mariachi. This is the before.