In essence this series seems to evoke the love-child of Azumanga and Zetsubou Sensei and as such Nichijou could probably be surmised as "cute chaos", since it seems to go for the Moe factor with its art and character design but keeping it elegantly simple without seeming childish and unapproachable, and creating a chaotic and unpredictable plot which uses facial expressions and character behaviour to exemplify the jokes. This may sound like an odd pairing and were they to present this idea to me originally I'd probably say that they mix like water and sand; it can be done but in the end you get mud and no one likes mud; but in this case they've managed to mix it together and create something totally unexpected, you could probably say that this is successful animation alchemy. The moe elements and the dark comedy mix surprisingly well and create an anime that is a lot more approachable than Zetsubou Sensei ever was (especially to foreigners).
The show has 5 main protagonists, Mio, Yuuko, Mai, Sakamoto (cat), the professor (7 year old kid) and Nano (robot created by the professor having an identity crisis). The show follows these main protagonists through their day to day lives in a format similar to Azumanga with incidental and trivial events that occur normally in every day life like dropping your favourite food item from your lunch box onto the floor and evoking the 3 second rule when you catch it just as it hits the ground, and turning them into ridiculous parodies of the real events by exaggerating the events considerably to hilarious effect.
The show's plot is deceptively simple and many of the events that occur in the series, while being ridiculously exaggerated, are reminiscent of the every day events that anyone might have experienced during their time at school. The characters are diverse and have a deceptive quality to them as they wear the mask of a common character archetype while under the surface they have a completely different take on that character for example: Mai fits into the archetype of the emotionless apathetic monotone girl that has become ever popular lately in anime comedies, while under that exterior she is a veteran prankster often taking every opportunity to pull a fast one on the people (and sometimes animals) around her.
As far as voice acting is concerned the main characters are well voiced and their behaviours and expressions as well as their outbursts and sudden accent changes truly show that they pushed the voice actors skills to the limit and produced a decent result. One thing is for certain, this show will never get an English dub, English voice actors tend to have problems expressing themselves properly when doing dub overs and this show is all expression 100% of the time. It didn't really work with Azumanga and it's level of expressive comedy was tame by comparison, thus they won't even attempt it in my opinion.
Now, let's get to the important issue at hand that many of you may well have wondered about. "If you have such high praise for it why did you drop it?", well I think it's time to draw attention to the elephant in the room. This show is good, unique, new and fresh all of which get a thumbs up from me. Where I have a problem is with the progression in the series. While the jokes and ideas in this show are good after about episode 13, they start to run out of ideas and just repeat the old ones, and the problem with Nichijou is that unlike Azumanga their jokes aren't particularly intelligent and rely heavily on the unpredictability of the events in order to be funny, and while it's funny the first time it's not really that funny the second or third or fourth time. Once you take away the surprise and unexpected qualities of this series you're left with an anime that quickly falls into repetitive monotony.
As well as this, once Nano starts going to school the show starts to take on an episodic format and abandons it's old chaotic bit by bit structure. At this point it is important to make a quick distinction; while this show much like Azumanga Daioh focuses on the lives of a group of school girls, Azumanga's comedy is almost entirely character driven whereas this show is a straight up sitcom, every comedic moment in this show is based around the characters reaction to situations; and what makes this show funny is the variety of reactions they have to situations. It ceases to be funny when the characters use the exact same reaction over and over again to different situations. As such this show is a one time thrill and should ultimately have had only 12 episodes.
While the 'my ordinary life' segments where funny the halvetica standard and short thoughts segments where not, halvetica standard in particular seemed to be trying too hard without really hitting the nail on the head. Short thoughts didn't really seem to have any comedic parts to it at all.
All in all, I really tried to get passed episode 20 but ultimately I got bored of the series repetitiveness. That does not however overshadow the brilliance of the shows first half and you should definitely see it but like I said, you can only really find it funny after watching it once and then maybe again only once you've forgotten about it, which if you have a good memory....is a sad day for you.
