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.
