Michiko to Hatchin

I was pretty excited by the first episode of Michiko and Hatchin. It began with a bang, with the tough, sexy Michiko wreaking havoc and sparring with a police detective with whom she was once friends.

But while I continued to enjoy the series, I never felt compelled to keep watching. It took me about a year to finish watching it, as I would forget all about it and then check out an episode.

I've been trying to figure out why that is. Michiko and Hana are both engaging characters, the episodes are interesting and full of intriguing characters. Why didn't I love it?

As I think about it, here's why it didn't keep me interested:

1) No mystery. A lot of anime series have some central mystery, like Samurai Champloo's samurai who smells like sunflowers. But M&H is very straightforward. Michiko wants to find a guy who left her. I never found myself wondering about him, or wondering if she'd find him, or wondering how it would turn out.

2) Michiko is a thug. Michiko is fearless and beautiful, and I liked her, but she's basically violent, self-centered, and stupid. She gets herself out of trouble, but it's always trouble she got herself into by doing something impetuous. I know that she's a balance to the more circumspect Hana, but it meant I was increasingly unsympathetic to her plight.

What kept me watching was the quality of individual episodes. Many were excellent, and there were some fascinating characters, such as a tomato-growing bisexual and Hana's little suitor. But these were all one-offs; the characters that we see more often are often less interesting, and even the interesting ones like the detective appear too sporadically to create any connection.

In short, M&H is entertaining but lacks forward momentum. I enjoyed it, and it's very well animated, but it did not resonate for me in the way of series like Cowboy Bebop or Samurai Champloo or Death Note or Stein's Gate.

Im gonna keep this short and sweet! Hana/Hatchin is one of the best characters to grace the anime format. She is a character that most of us adults could learn from. I highly recommend this anime...mostly for those that r sick of the standard everybody dying or all the massive amounts of blood. This show n that simple young character Hatchin...made my heart grow a lil bigger...n it makes me think that maybe there is other actual people out there in this world today that still thinks and acts the way she does...as silly as it sounds i have learned a lot about myself just by watching a young great hearted anime character. The show is great...trust me...any other negative reviews just don't understand or care to see the greatness or the message here.

I'm not into romance animes/movies/books. I discovered "Michiko to Hatchin" by mistake, while searching for something completely different.

First, the animation is great. For me it was as close to a movie as something can be - not talking emulation or 3D, but in terms of gestures and dialog.

The storyline - you know where it is going, you pretty much have an idea of how it will end. But this is the beauty of this particular animation: it keeps you wanting to watch it until the end. You begin to care about the characters.

Soundtrack - background music is there when it should be and it adds to the story.

I couldn't stop watching it.

I definitely recommend it.

Poor writing, poor animation, uninteresting premise with a lot of head scratching moments. Michiko and Hatchin takes subpar elements and manages to build something less than the sum of its parts. Save yourself the time and skip this one.

Michiko has to be single-handedly be the strongest, most well-written, deeply-layered, female lead character ever in anime (that's set in a normal world where there is no supernatural or fictional occurrences,,just an anime set in a normal world where normal stuff happens). She means strictly business and will not back down from a palm reading session...if the situation ever arises.

Hatchin is this cool, rebellious kid with no sense of direction in life. She lives day by day and once she meets Michiko, her new life involves tracking down her father, which she's never met, with this mysterious woman, who she claims is the love of his life...Hatchin has no idea what life on the road w/ Michiko will bring her.

It's a beautiful story about revenge, run-downs, love, the act of moving-on, friendship, action, loneliness, and of course the relationship between a confident, gorgeous, short-tempered, spiritual-inclined lady and a smart-mouthed, unapologetic, bratty kid.

It's a must-watch.