Nichijou

Conventional wisdom has always taught us that more is usually better. We think that the more expensive car should have more completely unrelated features, the better ice-cream sundae should have a bigger pile of fresh fruit on top, and the better statistics report should be able to pull more numbers out of it’s arse. We compare phones by the multitude of apps it can run, our enjoyment of horror films is based on how many different ways the various victims die, and we often rate anime by how many story arcs, characters, subplots and themes it can cram into it’s 26 episode season.

As the modern entertainment sector continues to emphasize excess and surplus, Nichijou is a much welcome, and frankly much needed throwback to a more old-school approach to entertainment. Nichijou’s frugal yet distinct style reminds us that something is perfect, not because there’s nothing more to add to it, but because there is nothing more to take away.

Nichijou brings to us a fusion of gag, moe, slice-of-life and slapstick comedy. It’s humor is very reminiscent of Azumanga Diaoh while it’s art style borrows heavily from the distinctly colorful palette of Lucky Star. Nichijou adopts a very light-hearted approach with it’s tone; it’s jokes are played fast and loose, and while there is a constant shift of pacing throughout each episode, Nichijou never seems to take itself very seriously.

Perhaps the most noteworthy thing about Nichijou is it’s production value. Frankly speaking, Nichijou is GORGEOUS to look at; it’s animation so incredibly fluid and it’s art so crisp and vivid that it actually puts other supposedly competent studios to shame. The artwork selects it’s palette very sparingly, with a result that is both vibrant yet easy on the eyes. This gentle tone is then frequently punctuated by segments of metaphorical (and in some cases literal) animation explosions, showcasing KyoAni’s talent with a huge variety of styles from gritty realism to crayon slapstick.

One can’t help but wonder if KyoAni isn’t deliberately showing off their workmanship with this anime. Many originally very short panels from the manga are translated into incredibly imaginative and stunning sequences of animation that simply scream “because we can.” Show off or not, Nichijou’s cinematography is nothing short of outstanding; it’s liberal interpretation of the original source material has really allowed the creativity of director Ishihara Tatsuya and the KyoAni animators to shine through like nothing we’ve ever seen before.

Special mention to Nichijou’s OP and ED songs, which are creative shorts (incredibly well sync’d I might mention) in their own right. As a fun fact, both of Nichijou’s OPs are sung by Hyadain, who is ONE guy. No female backing vocals at all, he does it all himself. Seriously I’m not joking, go look it up.

The aforementioned dynamic pacing forms the basis of Nichijou’s entertainment value. Each episode tackles it’s structure with a large degree of unpredictability. You never know what’s going to happen next, be it a humorous dialogue scene, a fast paced action sequence, an amusing random still image or a hilarious but completely unrelated skit. Despite this seemingly chaotic approach, Nichijou still manages to find a good balance between all it’s various styles so that no episode feels too weighted. While such a haphazard approach may seem counter-intuitive for a slice-of-life anime, this style ends up working greatly in Nichijou’s favor, adding another layer to it’s texture of absurdity.

The humor itself is very simplistic, almost to a fault, and one would normally attribute this as one of Nichijou’s flaws. That is of course until you remember that “Nichijou” translates to “My Ordinary Life” and as such, the simplicity of the jokes are a fitting homage to the show’s title and premise. Many of the jokes are simply exaggerated normal events like missing the train or a waiter forgetting your order, relying on witty dialogue delivery and clever timings to get the humor across. Some may consider this a hit-or-miss sort of comedy, which is only a fair judgement. All the same, you don’t necessarily have to laugh at jokes like these to appreciate them, which is one of the main reasons why slice-of-life can have such a widespread appeal (remember K-On?)

The characters are very likable, despite the obvious utilization of moe in many of their design. If you can shed that manly exterior and look past the few excessively “cute” scenes, there’s actually an abundance of things to enjoy about Nichijou’s characters. Conventional archetypes are few and far between in this anime, and all the characters harbor their own quirky habits and flaws that you’ll quickly grow fond of.

The best thing about Nichijou’s characters however, isn’t their individuality, but how they interact with each other. The personalities of various character groups clash, contrast and complement each other in extremely interesting ways; the conversations and activities of the two golden trios of Nichijou: Yuuko/Mio/Mai and Hakase/Nano/Sakamoto make up the abundance of material in each episode and just their hilarious adventures by themselves could probably carry an entire show. This is furthered by the great voice acting that the Nichijou provides; Nichijou is one of the rare shows where the seiyuus genuinely sound like they’re enjoying themselves. Dialogues are delivered with copious amounts of enthusiasm which really helps sell the spirited relationships that the various characters enjoy with each other.

With all that has been said though, I would like to come back to that idea I mentioned when we began, that idiom of “less is more.” The thing I love most about Nichijou, isn’t the amazing artwork, the clever cinematography, the light-hearted humor or even the imaginative characters. What I love most about Nichijou is the fact that, behind all the technicalities and production values, lies a very simple ideal. Everything about Nichijou revolves around this central principle of being enjoyable. All that it does, every scene, every character, every line of dialogue alludes back to this principle. Because at the end of the day, all Nichijou wants you to do is one thing; it wants you to enjoy yourself. With Nichijou, there is no story, no subplots, no recurring themes, no character development, no product placement, no lessons to be learnt, no obscure references to pander to a niche audience, no obvious fan-service pandering or ploys to sell related merchandise.

Fun is the only thing that matters, and it's this frugality, this ingenious simplicity, that allows everything to just click together like magic.

When you finally get home after a long tiring day, the only thing Nichijou wants to do is to give you an excuse to prop your feet up after and wash that blue feeling away as it slowly puts that grin back onto your face. read more

If I had to sum up all of Nichijou in one word, it would be "beautiful." As a slice of life, this anime can't be for everyone, as most people like to have a story that is actually driven by the plot. But even if you aren't into slice of life anime, there is something in Nichijou for everyone to enjoy.

Story:
Every episode is a series of semi-random "moments" in each of the characters' lives. As far as an actual storyline goes, there is no distinct beginning or end to Nichijou. No goal, no real conflict - as to be expected of a slice of life, "storyless." However, at about the halfway point, I started to question whether all of Nichijou somewhat revolves around Nano and her dreams of leading a normal, everyday life (which is what "nichijou" roughly translates to). There are some really beautiful moments that do advance the plot, which is part of what makes Nichijou so special as a slice of life.

Art:
Stunning. Characters are distinct, cute, and thoroughly enjoyable to look at. Animation has very fluid movements, and the "camera" work, especially during the funny scenes, is just brilliant. One thing that I particularly adore about this anime is the fact that, as opposed to some anime like Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, in which the art style becomes overly-simplistic during moments of comedy, Nichijou's art style becomes vastly more serious and dramatic for almost all of the hilarious moments. Without losing an ounce of fluidity, Nichijou will abruptly switch from cute and colorful to intense, fast-paced action with over-the-top explosions and yelling. Everything about the art in this anime is something to behold.

Sound:
Hats off to Hyadain, as he did both of the OP songs and one of the ED songs, which are fun and upbeat, as expected of him. The background music is also very well-done, it's unobtrusive and mellow, allowing the characters themselves to set the mood more so than the music.

Character:
This is the glue that holds the entire thing together. The characters make up for the lack of a concrete story and then some - this anime is definitely NOT just something pretty to look at. During the few times that the plot progresses, so do the characters. They learn and grow, they have problems and they help each other. I found myself growing attached to all of the characters, I don't think there is a bad one in the bunch.

Overall, I love this anime. It is certainly beautiful in more ways than one, and it stands above many other anime in terms of being a slice of life and a comedy. If you like Lucky Star and Gintama, I can almost assure you that you'll have a blast with this anime. I know I sure did! read more

Reviews of shows that haven't finished are utterly pointless. They are only good for a couple of weeks at most, and of no use to anyone once the show is finished.

And yet I sit here, writing this review. I am fully aware that this review will become useless waste of space, it is inevitable, but having seen the series average MAL-score of 7.6, I decided to make a statetment:

Nichijou is fucking awesome.

The animation is outta this world (at least as far as slice of life is concerned) and the execution is flawless. The timing of the jokes is so, so good, and the physical nature of almost every scene really floats my boat. I love the characters, I love the voice actors, I love the music and I love that goat guy's butler. This is the show that could actually beat Azumanga Daioh at its home turf, and damn, I've longed to say that.

This score should by no means be viewed as final. It is work in progress, like the series itself (I usually don't rate unfinished shows). But at this point in time, at episode two, Nichijou has done a wonderful job of launching itself as a top dog of the 2011 spring season. Hell, maybe even the entire year! read more

So... here we are. Another review to make you decide if this anime is worth it or not. Let me tell you something, this anime is FUCKING WORTH IT! I swear to god, this anime is so funny, you'll squeal like a school girl when you see a new episode come out.

So what's so special about this anime? As the name suggests, it says My everyday life, right? Guess what? Chicken butt.
...

Okay back to the guess what, it's not. As much as we were to taught to read the title to learn what the story is about, this anime is not the case. This anime is FAR BEYOND being "everyday" as much as this story can be a slice of life, it's not always. It is SO RANDOM that my "guess what" joke could be part of that anime and it would be like me saying, "Hey, I found these egg head guys playing jump rope half naked." and no one would think it was weird or random I said that.

So enough of my praising, let's go on to the review.

Story: So the story is this... nothing. Just absolutely nothing except that it's about the life of Yukko, Mai and Mio at school and everyone around them. At first you see also Nano-chan and the mini professor, but later on they are also part of the story of the three main characters. Other than that... everything is just shorts of complete and udder randomness and chaos, full of hilarity that you'll roll on the floor laughing.Sometimes even laughing your ass off.

There is also the helvitica standard shorts, which are just complete random shorts that sometimes don't make any sense, but sometimes do. They do leave you laughing and a WTF? face.

Art: The art is very simple but yet, it really meshes with the randomness. It seems like its really part of the story. You know you are in for a treat when you see the OP and EP, all mixed around and random.

Sound: The music in the OP and EP are so... in tune with the randomness of the story and the visual art of the OP and EP.

Character: What can I say about the characters? They are so random that it seems normal in their world.

Like there's this girl who always have a gun with her and blows the head off this guy, and yet no one even hears the gun shots or see them or how she even got some of the weapons or where they came from.

Another example is Mai-chan... she is as someone said in a comment below one of the videos I was watching, "A Ninja Troll" She always has a serious face, everything she does is so random and funny, you don't know if she's really just joking around or is plain serious. Not only that, she always does it to mess with one character for no reason, which makes it funnier and random. She always has some kind of weird artifact with her at school and no one says anything to her, she can get away with anything (which is also funny).

Yukko is also one that does so much random stuff, for attention as a reason, sometimes the characters ignore her (which makes her want to try harder for reactions.) or they give in to her weirdness and react. (I guess to stop her for try again. lol)

Mioi seems to be the only one who's normal, as she's the one who reacts as one would react if we saw the weird stuff all the time, but sometimes exaggerates (but her motions are so funny, you can't help but laugh at her outbursts). But at times has days were she's as equally as random as others.

As for the mini professor and Nano, they are half random and half normal.

The mini professor is so smart she made Nano (Who is a robot... to our surprise) she's very sweet and polite, but because she's a robot she has certain... malfunctions that make her random without her trying to be. (example a swiss roll coming out of her arm or a sweet coming out of her forehead.)The one thing that she wants that is always (but not always) a running gag is her trying to get the professor to take off her key from her back which she says "Makes everyone think she's a robot and she want's to be normal" and the more she hides it and says she's not the more is obvious that she is a robot.

The professor is so interesting, yet she acts like a little kid, which is funny and cute at the same time. I love her to death! She's so cute and so childish you can't help wonder if she's really acting like that or she's really smart and just acting like for some reason.Or if she's really a genius at all...

Then there's sakamoto the cat. He's a talking cat, and is very serious... but sometimes gives in to his cat-ness. Always the butt of Professor's antics and in turn a bit mean to her. Everytime she does something bad and Nano yells at her she says, "Sakamoto-san told me to do it." And he's all like, "What?" Sometimes blaming him works, sometimes both of them get blamed, other than that its funny when she does that.

Enjoyment: Ever since I seen the first episode... I have loved this series. I love the randomness, I can try to compare to azumanga diaoh but really they both seem the same but Nichijou seems more random to me. It's very funny, sometimes the jokes seem like it won't make you laugh but when you see the looks at the characters for their reactions,you can't help but laugh. I say it's a good show to have if you want a good laugh and randomness.

Overall: Watch it.... I know if you like comedy as much as I love it, you'll laugh at the randomness and the WTF? moments.

Scores:

Story: 10
Art: 10
Sound:10
Character:10

Overall:10

Edit: I'm sorry if I posted this twice, I had to edit it and it kept showing the pre-edited one. read more