Michiko & Hatchin Volume 1

“What one owes to one’s mother is never repaid.” – Basque proverb

Michiko & Hatchin is a series that has some pleasant features. Perhaps the best is that, unlike many anime set in a place that is not dominated by a white population, it actually has characters that are not white. Indeed one of the title characters is black, as is the main antagonist and a huge number of the supporting cast. Why they could do this in this anime and not in other series like, for example, Magi which is set in Arabia but has an almost exclusively white cast, is anyone’s guess. 

The series starts with a bang with convicted felon Michiko Malandro busting herself out of a supposedly inescapable prison somewhere in a fictional South American country (supposedly most akin to Brazil). Hopping on a motorbike, she goes off to look for a girl called Hana Morenos. Hana is currently being raised by an abusive family led by a priest and has to suffer all sorts of verbal and physical harm that comes her way. But then Michiko busts onto the scene to collect her, because Michiko is apparently her mother.

Thus Michiko and Hana travel across the land, with Michiko nicknaming Hana “Hatchin” because Hana wants to forget her abusive past. The ride, however, is not smooth, because, apart from being on the run, Michiko’s wild life-style is totally the opposite of sensible Hatchin’s (although she does seem to get drunk on juice).

Aside from being chased by Hatchin’s adoptive father, Michiko is also chased by Atsuko Jackson, the cop who helped to arrest Michiko some years prior to the story, and whom Michiko refers to as “Jambo” (a Portuguese word used to describe someone who is dark-skinned), a term Atsuko hates. While on the lam, Michiko is constantly trying to find a man called Satoshi Batista, a key figure in both the lives of herself and Hatchin.

Apart from being somewhat more diverse than most anime, Michiko & Hatchin has other things going for it. For starters there is the talent behind it. While this may be the directorial debut for female director Sayo Yamamoto, this series is also produced by the great Shinichiro Watanabe, the director of Cowboy Bebop. The two had also previous worked together on Samurai Champloo, and Yamamoto has since gone on to direct series like Lupin III: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine. There’s also the fact that the leads are voiced by film actresses in the original Japanese version; Michiko is voiced by Yoko Maki (The Grudge, Battle Royale II: Requiem), while Hatchin is played by Suzuka Ohgo (Memories of a Geisha). 

There are also several more extras than in many recent MVM releases. There are textless Openings and Closings, trailers, promo videos, press conference footage, episode commentaries and a talk from Monica Rial, the American voice actress who plays Michiko.

However, this is not a perfect collection. For example, in some of the episodes, Hatchin joins a circus that is mainly run by black people, which is named “Circo de Chocolate”, and I’m slightly uncomfortable with the word “chocolate” being used to describe black people. Also, in the subtitles there is the use of the word “spaz”. This is something that the Americans who subtitle these anime really ought to stop doing.

So far Michiko & Hatchin has been a fun series to watch and hopefully the concluding part will be just as entertaining.