Nov 2, 2011
I imagine a lot of people wrote Nichijou off as yet another attempt to cash in on the moe craze. With other KyoAni productions (namely K-ON!), it often seems like all of the budget was blown on animation, with the story being of secondary concern. Nichijou does have the same "slice of life" style of storytelling used in K-ON! and Lucky Star, but unlike those shows, Nichijou is never overtly pandering to the otaku crowd in an attempt to move more merchandise.
The first handful of episodes led me to believe that Nichijou was going to be the style of "comedy" wherein the audience is
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expected to laugh at cute girls doing cute things. This concept in no way equates to comedy, it can be entertaining in its own way, but I wish people would stop labeling it comedy. Anyway, once the show introduces its primary characters, things really start to take off. The best parts of the show occur whenever Yukko, Mio, and Mai appear together. Each segment they appear in begins with some simple catalyst that escalates further and further until the character's reactions are no longer appropriate for the situation. Dumb, little incidents often end with shounen style shouting, fighting, running, laser shooting, etc. etc. and its hilarious every time. Near the end of the series, more attention is paid to secondary characters like Haruna, the girl with the ribbon who's catchphrase "Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhh?" always made me laugh. While not at the forefront of the story, romance plays a big part in Nichijou as well, with the two equally awkward teachers Sakurai-sensei and Takasaki-sensei always failing to get together and polar opposite students Sasahara, the rich kid, and tachibana, tsundere gun enthusiast, denying their feelings for each other. Before I move on, I should also mention Hakase, Nano, and Sakamoto. If anything, I guess these three are supposed to be our main characters, but their segments are never really as funny as the ones including Yukko, Mio, and Mai, and not as interesting as any of the number of random skits that develop the personalities of the various secondary characters.
As far as the art goes, the show has excellent animation like everything else produced by KyoAni, but the character designs are quite a bit more simple than anything seen in Haruhi, or even Lucky Star. This works in the show's favor since the focus is more on situational comedy than the idealized physical traits used to create moe characters. Because this is a slice of life/situational comedy, the characters usually are just sitting around talking, but when the hyperactive shounen aesthetics overtake the slice of life storytelling, that's when the animation team gets to really shine.
Really, the reason to watch this show is the format. Each main segment is very brief, usually something around five minutes, so if you don't like that particular segment, just hold out and a new one will be on shortly. Some of the best scenes in the show are the short, random segments (Things We Think are Cool, Love-like, Helvetica Standard, etc) that are interspersed between the ones that advance the overall story; although, Mio's dream sequences about the wooden cubes were way too long and did nothing for me personally.
Who knows if future generations of anime fans will still be inundated with what is considered moe to today's audience; maybe K-ON! will seem quaint in the future, much like Love Hina or Tenchi Muyo nowadays (and how many recent fans even know what those shows are, anyway?). As much as it may seem like I'm picking on K-On and/or its fans, I actually enjoyed watching it myself. The point I'm trying to make is that more anime should focus on great characters and storytelling rather than current trends and fads to sell their appeal. If a new anime fan starts watching Nichijou 10 years from now, it'll be because of the comedy and the memorable characters, not because it followed a trend, and that's what the industry should really be aiming for.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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