Michiko & Hatchin
(Reviewed on 04/08/2009)
The Traveling in Style ROSSMAN
It was about goddamn time that I found an anime series that actually tried something different for a change, and actually succeeded... Well, it succeeded on some levels at least. The absolute beauty of Michiko & Hatchin is that it takes place in a Central/South American world where poor barrios are everywhere, desert highways stretch on forever, Latina musica fills your aural senses, and where the leading lady (Michiko Malandro) is so damn hot and saucy that she's known as "The Brown Sugar Outlaw." The show made those ideas work and a few others... but it failed in the ways of characterization, fulfilling plot, and telling a story in a satisfactory manner. But man is Michiko one saucy puta!
The gist of the show is that there's this woman (Michiko) who's been in prison for the past 12 years, but one night she finally breaks free (well, for the 4th or 5th time, but this time she gets away for good) in spectacular fashion and begins her quest to find her old boy toy, Hiroshi. But instead of first going into hiding and evading the law (like a smart person would) she heads over to a preacher's house where a 9 year-old blonde girl is being fostered. And by "fostered" I mean "regularly beaten up, humiliated, mocked, and made to be the preacher's family's personal slave for the paltry government check the family gets to supposedly care for her." Truly, the first episode is very difficult to watch as Hana's (the blonde girl in question) "sister" and "brother" trip her, punch her, burn her, kick the crap out of her, etc... And she just takes the torment and never really fights back. The absolute HELL that even the preacher and his wife put Hana through is just so very painful to stomach, but I digress. Michiko comes bursting through their window one day and lands with her motorcycle/Vespa right on their dinner table. She then offers to take Hana away from it all, and Hana agrees, figuring "how the fuck can hanging out with this scary lady be any worse?"
So Michiko is searching for Hiroshi — the man she loves who she swears is also 9 year-old Hana's real daddy who died in a bus explosion 12 years ago (Figure that one out you math geniuses you). Michiko and Hatchin (what Michiko calls Hana because The Brown Sugar Outlaw is SASSY!) also share the same tattoo on their stomachs which raises some questions (like when we see in pictures that Hatchin had said tattoo since she was a baby, the main question I had is WHO THE FUCK WOULD TATTOO A FUCKING BABY'S STOMACH), but also seems to make the blonde girl trust the jailbird a bit more, despite her penchant for picking fights with armed hoodlums, getting drunk at every possible occasion, and smoking like an industrial chimney in Blade Runner.
Truly, Michiko & Hatchin is a really fucking awesome show... for about 5-6 episodes. Then it starts to run out of ideas and has a few filler eps — which as I watched them I thought "Hey! Even with this new direction this show is still kicking ass!"... But then I took a step back and realized that each filler episode was just the same shit: Michiko makes little Hatchin mad by being the stupid, self-centered, annoying (but hot) bitch that she is, they have a fight, one of the two girls meets a new character who we'll never see again after the episode is over, they realize that this new person isn't as cool or great as their travel buddy, and the two title characters get back together for happy driving time in the last few minutes. This happens so many goddamn times in this small, 22 episode series. Really, this thing would have been much better off as a 13-part show instead; it would have been nothing but fantastic the whole way through, up till the end. But, whatever.
Okay, so the lady and a half are hunting down Hiroshi (the emo-pussy who Michiko loves and who she swears is Hatchin's father, despite the fact that everybody thinks he's dead), and into the mix comes Atsuko Jackson (the most bad-ass lady cop with a giant blonde afro you've ever seen, who's leading the continental hunt for fugitive Michiko and her pint-sized accomplice), and Satoshi (Hiroshi's childhood friend and gang leader of the group known as Monstro). These two add some much needed spice to the tale, and every episode they're in really cruises like a catamaran across the blue Caribbean Sea at sunset, with a beautiful orgy going on on the main deck. Tanned and oiled, writhing bodies everywhere..... Um, so Atsuko used to be Michiko's friend at their old orphanage, but she chose a different path in life once she saw she'd just be Michiko's whipping girl and decoy in her crimes if she stuck with her, and Satoshi is just one bad motherfucker who, thanks to Michiko, finds that his criminal empire is starting to come crumbling down around him faster than you can say "Aye caramba!" and shake some maracas around to a festive beat. The chapters that revolved around Atsuko and Satoshi really made this series, and the ones devoid of them just dragged. But whatever. Now to talk about Hiroshi (aka Rock Morena).
Hiroshi (or Rock Morena) is on the run from Michiko it seems... And like David Banner before him, he takes whatever job he can get in whatever new town he rolls into (though he doesn't ever Hulk-Out at any point). He's been a farmer, possibly a soap star, gate and manhole thief, etc.... But unlike David Banner and his alter-ego, Hiroshi's a complete coward and a total wuss. Honestly, Michiko's TWICE the man he is... Well, since she's already twice the man any normal man is I guess she's 5Xs the man that Hiroshi is. Hiroshi is one of the most pathetic characters I've ever seen in any entertainment medium. He's whiney, emo, and just a total vagina... But everywhere Michiko and Hatchin go they run into people who have known the loser (who's supposedly dead), and each and every one of these folks seems to think he's the cat's meow, instead of just a big blonde pussy. Perhaps the most satisfying part of this whole show is Hatchin's ending (which I will spoil a bit) wherein the two hunted girls finally track down the man (and not just the legend) Hiroshi, and Hatchin appears to be the only one who sees him for what he is. I just know that some retards will complain about this conclusion and Hiroshi's final choices... but remember that everyone who knew Hiroshi has this uber-romanticized memory of how great he was... but Hatchin, the only one who hadn't met him, is the only one who seems to have "gotten" him. That was awesome, and sad (especially after she's forced to flee with him).
Beyond the plot, the pacing of this thing was pretty good (well, when it wasn't a filler episode), and I wanted more of Satoshi's gang-related problems to be shown on screen (which when they were they were bear-shit-crazy-awesome!), and I worshipped at the feet of Atsuko Jackson... But the final episode of this thing just fizzled. Yeah, it has a definitive ending, and I really liked where Hatchin went and who she became, but she's the ONLY character with a satisfying resolution to her narrative. Satoshi is just "gone," Atsuko's tale just ends, and Michiko's final choice just doesn't seem like it came from her. Was she trying to be noble in her own stupid way? What the fuck? This was a total mixed bag of a show (like if Santa's sack became the impromptu puking bag for a motion-sick elf on December 24th). Some of the character interactions were great (fantastic even), but it really just completely forgot what it was in the end, or they simply had no fucking idea how to end things properly, and so they just threw this crap at us and hoped we wouldn't notice. Well I did, and it made me triste. Muy triste. Ahora. Mi coche es rojo. Este programa debe haber estado mucho mejor. Ay yi yiiiiiiiiiiii.
ROBOTO PEDRO
Does not compute! In a world filled with Latin American influences, jefe, how do you get off calling everybody by Japanese names? Michiko? Atsuko? Hiroshi? Satoshi? Ranma? Edogawa Conan? Kimiko? Yamato? Really? Crap. All of this is crap. I take a total robot dump on this show.
TAMMI WITH AN "i"
This show made kidnapping cute lil' girls and then takin' them on a coast to coast road trip on a motorcycle look like fun. Turns out the cops in the real world are a whole lot more persistent than those bastards in this here TV cartoon. They tracked us down in about three hours. Oh, and if you plan to do this yourself, make sure first that the girl that y'all choose to steal actually wants to go with ya. Ah had to drug the little darlin' with some leftover roofies some bubba tried to slip me a few nights ago. That got her to shut up real good. It even made it easy for the tattoo artist to give her that matchin' tat of the cat doin' that doggie that I have on mah own 6-pack. That lil' bitch should be thankin' me for broadenin' her horizons instead of testifyin' against me in court. That's alright though, sugah. I got Billy Jim Bob to pay that tattooist to sneak into that lil' plum-darlin's room and tattoo a big, curly mustache on her upper lip. You don't FUCK with Tammi!
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