Common Name: Hakomei to Mikochi
Alternative Names: Tiny Little Life in the Woods: Hakumei and Mikochi
Score: 6/10, 4/5
Length: 12 Episodes
Genre: Slice of life, Comedy, Supernatural
Summary: In the woodsy outskirts of Makinata city, two young girls no more than a few inches tall always find a way to make their days fun and interesting. Just because they have fun most days and live in a prosperous city doesn't mean life is particularly easy for Hakumei and Mikochi. Living in Makinata means working in Makinata, and that means find a way to get along with and support all the various peoples and animals that call the quirky little city their home. With Hakumei's dedication to large-scale construction and craftsmanship as well as Mikochi's numerous homecraft skills, there's little doubt that they'll find a way to manage and make a few friends along the way.
Review: Laid-back and easygoing shows have always been a favorite for me. You can just kinda sit back, relax, and watch a whole world or group of friends happen in front of you without too much thought. Unfortunately, as much as I love these shows, there's always a rarely considered risk to them, one that Hakumei to Mikochi, unfortunately, falls into, and that is the risk of being so laid-back and carefree that you become underwhelming. This is an easy problem to avoid in more personal-centered shows where just getting the characters to interact in a believably weird way will instantly snap people back to attention so they can enjoy the show's comedy. Hakumei to Mikochi, on the other hand, falls into the vein of shows where this issue is more prevalent. While still a very personal show when rarely it wants to be, Hakumei to Mikochi is one of those shows that just kinda zens out as it portrays the tiny, minute details of a world and considers how those things influence the people who live in said world.
Though it is a very humble and down-to-earth show, the sheer amount of detail and thought crafted into this world is nothing short of staggering.
Fun and entertaining as all those details might be at the start, it becomes clear that the details are pretty much all there is to this show. Even then, though, the details rarely work together to form any kind of cohesive whole. Were I to summarize it simply and plainly, I'd call this show "flighty." It zips from one idea to another, giving us a brilliant and stunning glimpse of that thing, but zipping on to the next thing before we ever get to really know the first thing. The zippiness itself is so fast and sudden that it's even difficult to connect how each of these things might connect to each other. So, by the show's end, we are left with a lot of disconnected dots with no threads, no greater pattern to them to bring the whole work together. To put it in lengthier, more artistic terms, this show is like a night sky filled with stars. It's beautiful to look at and it's easy to revel in the possibilities that inherently lie in each of those pin-prick motes of light. Few of us will ever get the change to fully know or understand what those possibilities are though and how they connect to the greater universe, assuming that breadth and depth of knowledge is possible in the first place.
So, I suppose it can be said that this show isn't so much a "slice of life" since the best we ever really get are crumbs.
Coming back down from that artistic high, this issue of there being a lack of depth and focus to Hakumei to Mikochi is felt most plainly with the lives of the main characters themselves, the titular Hakumei and Mikochi. We understand, first and foremost, the functional nature of Hakumei and Mikochi, their general demeanor, attitudes, eccentricities, and hobbies, because that's easy to show in a single moment. Though the depth of their relationship is left fairly vague, it is undeniable that they are a perfect pair that can do anything they put their minds to. Hakumei, for example, brings a lot of straightforward grit, gut, and purpose to their relationship. Determined to almost a fault, Hekumei is the bedrock that can and knows how to weather any hardship that might come their way. Beyond this foundation of a character, though, very little is said or known about who she is beyond her connection to Mikochi and the passion and dedication she brings to her work as a craftsman (carpentry, tooling, and construction). In fact, it's not until the very last episode of the show that we get any kind of detail into what her life was like before coming to Makinata. In fact, the best we ever got before that moment was a simple explanatory statement on why she's so skilled at survival and living in the outdoors, one that claims that Hakumei was homeless at some point.
Still, with as little information as we get, it's easy to like the hard working Hakumei.
Too bad liking her only makes me want to know more about her.
Then we have the diligent and more city-savvy Mikochi. Where Hakumei is the driven, straightforward, and simple to the point of being regularly mistaken for a guy, Mikochi is undoubtedly the more feminine of the two. Delicate and emotional are certainly words that describe her half of their relationship, but leaving it at that doesn't do justice to the role she plays in their dynamic. To put it in the best terms I can, Hakumei might be as straightforward and practical as an arrow but it is Mikochi that actively maintains, guides, and gives purpose to that arrow. She is the caretaker as well as the statesmen that knows just how to get society to work for them while Hakumei works for the good of that society. What this tends to mean for her character, though, is that she is typically and openly more accustomed to the fieriness of society that Hakumei is fine living without. Unlike her more spoiled city-dwelling counterpart, the songstress Anju, Mikochi is a lot more like Hakumei than you might think at first glance. In her own civilized way, Mikochi is every bit the craftsman as Hakumei, focusing more on creating things that make life fun and interesting and refreshing, like soaps and teas and seasonal confections that'll get anyone's mouth watering. Beyond these things that label her as different and similar to Hakumei, again, little is actually known about her past and how those things crafted the character we have today.
Still, it's hard not to love this show's reigning DIY queen.
Beyond these two, the level of focus and constructiveness is all but lost entirely. Frankly, the only reason I can speak to Hakumei or Mikochi's characters in such detail is because they are the focal point of the show. We get to see them interact with the world and each other in such a way that it's hard not to find and infer those details that speak to their greater personalities and glimpses at their pasts. No other character or concept in this show gets this same level of detail though. The best we get for most are one-off side stories that are meant to do little more than flesh out the down-to-earth or supernatural elements of this world. The songstress Anju, for example, is rendered as little more than a quirky professional at her best and a spoiled city brat at her worst, typically alternating between those two personas to fit her role in any given scene. Though she tries to carry herself with a similar dignity to Mikochi, she rarely appears to be anything more than a pale, blond imitation. The necromancer/musician Sen, on the other hand, serves as a kind of supernatural proxy to Hakumei. Similarly blunt, straight-faced, and dedicated to her work, Sen is something of a look into of what Hakumei might have been like if she didn't have Mikochi--just swap survival skills for proficiency in necromancy--in much the same way Anju is a portrayal of what Mikochi would have ended up like without Hakumei. To be clear, though, while these two and other characters in this show serve as glimpses of this world, statements of how its societies work, or foils to the main cast, they are all fun and interesting characters that are beautifully designed.
I have a special place in my heart for the aforementioned musical necromancer.
As I've said before, however, the longer this show goes on, the more disjointed and slapdash it feels as a whole product. There are tons of great scenes and beautiful character moments, but little investment in any one thing in the show as a whole. In many ways, it's as if this show were built from a number of beautiful puzzle pieces, yet few of those pieces belong to the same puzzle. Narai and the rest of the Carpentry Association for example, while fascinating and lovable, bear little resemblance or connection to Ryokubirou and the merchant caravan outside of the fact that they both exist in this show's world. The same goes for the show's more down-to-earth DIY elements and all the supernatural elements that are restricted almost entirely to Sen's appearances throughout the series and the couple times the tsukumogami (spirits of generations-old tools and household items) appear during the show. In one sense, these disjointed characters and ideals speak to the multicultural nature of this show, claiming that Makinata is a cultural melting pot that is all at once chaotic and unique. In a more critical sense, however, this kind of disjointed storytelling feels clumsy and poorly thought out, if not outright boring during the show's weaker segments. The best this show ever really hopes to achieve are brief moments of awe and a desire to know more that'll never be satisfied within the show itself.
What I wouldn't give to get an episode that actually went into how our main characters came to live together, let alone what led to them getting so comfortable together that they started acting like an old married couple.
Focusing on the details that make up this world are all well and good, but I think the issue this show truly suffers from is the feeling that the author or director somehow managed to forget that characters are what actually carry a show like this. Details make a work memorable, but characters that are fun and meaningful are what initially grabs an audience's interest and keeps them invested as you slowly trickle in those thoughtful details. Now, I'll admit that I might just be bitterly picking nits, but with how many nits there are to pick in this show that has just as many highs as it does lows I feel like my complaints are both fair and justified. Still, looking past those nits, this show is unarguably gorgeous. The art is both detailed and colorful in such a way that it is unique. The showmanship of the show itself had an odd way of being both simple and charming, using easy manga panel-like transitions overlaying some folksy lace-work for the show's transitions. Somehow finding to be both dignified and twangy, the show's music perfectly captures the feeling of a chaotic, artsy city surrounded on all sides by forested countryside. Were it not for the issues with the storytelling, I'd have honestly been inclined to call this work an artistic masterpiece. In the end, though, I'm content to call Hakumei to Mikochi I title I love in spite of all its flaws. After all, I don't think a show has ever made me feel such an intense, burning need to read its source material before.