Out of all the shows to air this season, this is the one I was anticipating the most. The brand new show by Manglobe with the same crew who worked behind Champloo, who all were taken from Cowboy Bebop in the first place! So yeah, I was really expecting something good.
Right from the off you can see, and more importantly hear, the style from Bebop and Champloo. Michiko does her whole prison break scene, complete with crawling through air ducts and finishing off with a helicopter chase through a wind farm. Pretty awesome stuff
Then we get the opening, which is pretty much class personified. Not the best opening of the season, I think I’d still give that award to Kurozuka, but classy Latino music certainly suits this show more than some heavy metal music would anyway
And that will be the last we see of Michiko for a while, for the rest of this episode focuses on Hatchin, our little fostered girl. It’s clear what the director is trying to do here. He’s trying to get us to feel as much sympathy as we can for little Hatchin.
Hatchin is made cook for her evil step-parents, who promptly go and toss the food on the floor because it’s burned. Ok, so her parents hate her, we’ve gotten that.
Hatchin is also bullied by her mean foster brother and sister. Hatchin doesn’t complain because this house is like Privet Drive and nobody listens to Hatchin and nobody cares.
Just in case we hadn’t gotten it by now, we get to see Hatchin getting bullied again.
And again.
And some more
By this stage we’ve gotten slightly into overkill mode. I know that Hatchin leads a sorry life, but please, move on with the plot!
But oh no! We’re not done. Hatchin is made throw away Snowball the cat and then is made take the blame for it. Oh poor Hatchin etc.
This time we’re using a red-hot iron, a noose and some cleaning spray.
By this stage I’m afraid I’m just bored and slightly depressed. We’ve basically been treated to 15 minutes of Hatchin abuse and it’s just gotten boring. I kinda knew by this stage that she’s badly treated, I didn’t necessarily need it in this much detail. You could’ve left it to my imagination or at least some shorter clips. Each torture scene lasted about 2-3 minutes each.
However I have a theory why this lasted so long. They wanted to end on this…
Kinda like Hagrid in that wizard book. Except instead of a giant hairy man we get a large-breasted prison escapee. They even both have the motorbikes
A pick me up after the boredom of the rest of the episode, this was quite an amazing scene. Apparently Michiko is Hatchin’s mum, although I’m not so sure if that is the case. Michiko claims to be, but something makes me think she isn’t the most trustworthy.
And we finish up with the two of them on their never-ending journey! Hopefully as far away from that fecking family anyway. Possibly to meet up with some more hot Brazilian women.
Impressions:
A bit unimpressed. That episode could have been cut in half and it would’ve been far more enjoyable. The show certainly has style, but a bad script writing will make it’s style irrelevant. But things should really pick up from here. If you were thinking about not watching the next episode, I’d tell you to look at all the screencaps I’ve taken. Now compare the colour scheme in the last 2 compared to all the rest. Notice something?
In short, now that
is out of the picture,
should get more screentime and the show as a whole will improve. Hopefully
The Cart Driver 
They really overdid the child abuse part eh?
I got to nitpick on the part where the helicopter and michiko have to bitch to each other on how they will owned each other. Come on, both of them have guns. Just let the guns do the talking! Jeez.
I agree. The child abuse part really made me feel for Hana. Somehow I was relieved when she got to punch her evil sister out cold.
For starters, I was impressed by the animation quality and the story setting though there was not much to point out about artstyle. The plot didn’t convinced me much but I’ll keep an eye to this one and wait how things will develop later on. Worst still, it may turn out into another Bonnie and Clyde.
Hatchin’s story did las a lot longer than I thought, but like Brian said, I was really impressed by the art and animation more than the storyline. It reminded me of living in Texas and I really appreciated the fact that they used so much detail in the spanish/Brazilian/portuguese culture. I know sometimes japanese don’t always get it right so i might be a mix of all latin or spanish cultures. I’m not sure…