A spiritual successor to two of my favorite anime sketch comedies of all time (Azumanga Daioh and Pani Poni Dash), Nichijou delivers the comedy 110% percent. Based on the manga of the same name, this is a perfect example of how a situational/sketch comedy should be made.
Anyone trying to find some objective story to this will ultimately blow their minds in front of their faces, as there is none. Hence Situational comedy, because its basically a group of people in high school and we’re there to watch the hilarity ensue. Typically things like this center themselves around a few main characters, but this series lends itself to a few dozen characters. For anime novices, I would recommend not to watch this sort of stuff considering, the sheer amount of Japanese popular culture references will make anyone’s head spin. But if you know what an Arikawe Prize or yakasoba or Japanese word games, this show makes learning about J-culture fun and entertaining.
As many series tend to steer towards fanservice central, this series bumps the moe factor from a 10 to a 11. Even so much as putting little 5-10 second spots having Nano and Hakase dance around or play kids games. Nothing but a white background and them just having fun. This pretty much sums up this whole series in my opinion. The sheer power of how these characters can emit so many emotions and enjoyment out of the viewer is something to behold. I highly suggest watching only a few episodes at a time as you will probably laugh so hard you’ll soon run out of laughter, which CAN happen. Among the normal high school comedy that is Nichijou there are little sketch segments called Small thoughts, Helvetica Standard, and Igo Soccer Club. Each type have their own little charm and feel right at home in this series. It’s hard to really hate this series.
Normally comedy series have very average to poor production value, in which they rely on the characters and the comedy to carry the series to popularity (Gagyu Biyori Manga). In a rare event, this series easily has the highest production value of any Slice of life sitcom. The HD quality really shines; each sketch segment has their own style and just really made my jaw drop at the quality I was looking at. I mean I found myself wondering many times how long it took them to draw a broken melon bread still in its package or how they managed to properly draw a Blue popsicle run over by a bicycle. It’s crazy how many man hours this 26 episode series took. I wouldn’t be surprised if they spent 1-2 million yen per episode as its quality is comparable to Gunsligner Girls (1st season episodes were worth roughly 1million yen each)
I’m glad that I can finally see an anime sitcom of high quality that also has a high quality production value. I can’t bring myself to say this is better than Lucky Star as that series holds something special in my heart (on a personal level) but I can easily say its ranked between #1 and #2 as my favorite comedy of all time. Please please PLEASE, make more like this Kyoto Animation.
