This show is like if there was a 3-hour action movie about filling out your tax return. Over the 24-ish episodes of Nichijou our main cast accomplishes next to nothing while the animators blow their budget every few frames making their boring daily routines look like a shounen finale. Normally this tryhard brand of humor would suck and not be funny, but the sheer amount of resources dumped into giving this show its relentless energy transforms this cheap formula into comedy gold. What really helps is that this show is dumb and it knows it. Don't come here expecting a plot, a theme, or a deeper meaning. All the diehards in the reviews waxing poetic about slice of life tropes are just trying to justify having rewatched this show 50 times. Honestly, the best way to experience this show (and the way most people discover it) is through YouTube clips. Treat it like Family Guy Funny Moments, except the moments are actually funny. Watch a few a day, or binge them all! While every clip is a riot, for those of us watching the show in full, the joke barrages you see in the clips are balanced out by calmer, more subtly amusing sequences.
I remember one scene where Yuuko, Mio, and Mai are at a set of stairs, playing a game where you say a word, and however many syllables are in that word is the amount of steps you go up. Mio goes first: pi-n-e-ap-pl-e. 6 steps. Yuuko goes next. She gets two syllables in before realizing that she totally screwed herself. She pauses, then does what any of us would do and starts adding random crap onto the end of the word. Mio's like "no you can't do that" and Yuuko's all like "uh, you didn't say I can't" and then they're both like "Mai, settle this argument for us" and she just shrugs so they just blankly stare back at her. Mai's up next. She gets a few in, then she keeps going. One after another, robotically half-singing a major scale, Mio and Yuuko stare stunned back at her. She caps it off with a "to" on the top step, at the top of the scale, just as the background music hits its last note. "The Incantation of Resurrection". Later, we find out that it's just a cheat code from some NES game. You can watch the clip on YouTube, look up "nichijou stairs game". It's got just under 1000 views, other clips have a few million. Not sure why I remember it, but it's stuck with me.
Just like in real life, it's the little things that mean the most. The reason so many people connect so strongly to this stupid show is that it comes the closest to capturing the simple pleasure of everyday life. The emotional highs and lows, the overreactions and underreactions, the irony and accidental symbolism of random events. Life has no plot, no theme, no deeper meaning, but we find these things anyway. As the story of our life goes by, as days, indistinguishable, bleed into years, we still find excitement in the everyday. Nichijou.
Overall, funny show, everyone's funny except the cat, everyone agrees that the cat is not funny, when he appears on screen make sure to NOT laugh
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