NieA_7, pronounced like 'knee-uh under seven', is a 13 episode long comedy series about a hard-working girl struggling to get by in life and her relationship with the alien that lives in her closet. Comedy has never been my favorite genre when it comes to anime. My experience with it has mainly been series that have chosen to forgo plot, character development, and worldbuilding, aspects of media I hold dear, for the sake of a few jokes I usually don't find funny. However, I saw that NieA_7 was partially made by Yoshitoshi ABe, the man who made my favorite series of all time, Haibane Remei. (Please watch that show, it's amazing.) Because of this, I thought that I'd give the anime a shot; maybe it could change my mind about comedies. Unfortunately, the first three episodes reaffirmed my viewpoint. There isn't really a rhyme or reason to these episodes. Things just happen to happen. The energy was cranked up to 100, everything was super loud, the art style was all over the place, and jokes were being pumped out one after the other, each failing to make me so much as chuckle. It was at this point that I had had enough and decided to drop the series. Luckily, boredom is quite the motivator. Having literally nothing else to do, I continued the series and was pleasantly surprised with the rest of the episodes. The show slowly becomes less of a straight comedy and more of a drama with comedic elements. This is when NieA_7 reveals what it's truly about: the passage of time and the impermanence of life.

These slower episodes are the anime at its best. Not only does its style change almost completely from the earlier episodes, but the series feels as if it has gained a sense of purpose. The story and themes are a lot clearer and the characters magically become better written. They don’t talk as much as they did previously, but a lot is conveyed in their silence; especially with the main character, Mayuko. Her transformation was amazing to watch. NieA, the alien, is a little less deep but she still has her moments. She’s the one making most of the noise in this series as it seems that her sole purpose in life is to annoy everyone else. But, every now and then she’ll get real quiet and that’s when her true character shines through.

But NieA_7 is still a comedy, right? So, what is the humor like? The characters in the show are super expressive, their faces often contorting, stretching, etc. This is probably due to the REALLY simple art style. It allows the animators to go wild with what they can do to them. The weird faces and art are a big part of the comedy and this show. If it was just that, it’d be one thing, but it’s also coupled with some pretty annoying sound effects. These are the sound effects you’d hear in old slapstick skits like Tom and Jerry, Looney Tunes, and a bit of The Flinstones. Even though this anime aired in 2000, those effects still had to be dated. Some of the humor is a bit dated as well but that’s to be expected. It gives the entire anime this extremely low-budget feel. I also feel like when the jokes are spread out, they land more often. In the first three episodes, which are basically only jokes, their bombardment gets old pretty quick. On the topic of art, there are also a few different art styles used in this show. Some of the jokes have a very different style to them. And the title cards remind me a lot of the show Crashbox. Seeing these different styles is cool because it also is another avenue for the animators to be even more creative.

Even though I’ve been praising the second half of the series, I still have a few problems with it. Due to the anime’s initial focus on comedy, when it becomes more of a drama, there isn’t really enough time to flesh out the world or even some elements of the plot. This leaves the viewer with a lot of unanswered questions. Some are more trivial but others are larger problems. The point could be that we don’t need all of our questions answered, that we don’t need to know everything. There’s that whole ‘impermanence of life’ thing after all. But it still feels award to not address some of the things that come up. In my opinion, it makes the series feel slightly incomplete.

And finally, the music and characters. The music in this show is really low-key. I feel like a lot of the time people might not even notice there’s music playing. In some scenes, it is so quiet and in the background that I thought that it was coming from somewhere else in the building. The music isn’t bad, however, just extremely chill and relaxing, albeit, a tad bit simple. Some of the characters receive a lot more attention than others. A few of them feel like they’re only there for the comedic part of the show like Karna. She really doesn’t add anything to the plot; she’s kinda just there to be annoying. When the show takes its characters seriously, however, they are very fun to watch. Mayuko, Kotomi, Genzo, and Chie were always a blast to have on-screen. The story could have gone a little bit further to explore their relationships with each other though.

So, should you watch NieA_7? I’d recommend it. My sense of humor is very strange so there’s a big chance you may find the comedy in this show fine when I didn’t. There are other anime that tackle the more serious topics in this show better but NieA_7 doesn’t do a bad job at it. If you liked these serious elements, I’d recommend Haibane Renmei and Kino’s Journey.