After watching Azumanga Daioh, I really itched to watch something familiar to that show, but I didn't know where to start. This was one of the series that was mentioned, it looked interesting, so I started watching. At first, I didn't get it. Nothing made sense. It was all chaos, and they instantly throw you in the middle of it. I didn't feel like the characters got any proper introductions. The humor was random, it felt like random for the sake of being random. But as I watched more and more of this series, I suddenly grew more and more attached to it's world, the characters, the visual style, music, and even the humor.
I once thought the randomness of this show was a negative, but now? It is one of the show's strengths in my opinion. Obviously, the humor is still random, either because our foreign minds can't comprehend the Japanese thought process, or because it is just random for the sake of being random, but that type of humor also has the potential to be funny. There's a lot of random silly gags thrown at the wall here that you're eventually going to get a chuckle out of them, yes, it is throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks, but honestly, 90% of the time it does stick. So, this series is a great comedy, but what makes it special is how the comedy works in tandem with the show's other elements.
The show has one of the biggest casts of an anime I've ever seen, and each one of them is still super interesting and unique in their own way. Everyone's go-to is obviously Yuuko. She's the character that gets the most screentime, and is the butt of a lot of the jokes. She's presented as someone emotionally varied and upbeat, but stupid. Her most notable classmates are Mio, who's presented as way more intelligent but has some interesting tastes in manga creation, a lot of which is also the source of much of the humor, especially around Yuuko. And also Mai, the troll master, whose only existence is to torment poor Yuuko by her jokes. And those are not even all the main characters yet. There's also Nano, a robot who wants herself to be seen by others as just an ordinary girl, but the giant key on the back makes that a problem for her, and the worst is that her creator doesn't wanna remove it. Now, who's her creator? Of course, it's an 8 year old brat. Hakase is a very shockingly accurate representation of the average child, whiny, kind of a brat, and all that stuff. In one of the earliest conflicts between Hakase and Nano, a cat gets given a red scarf which allows him to talk, now known as Sakamoto, who views himself as the wisest of the family, much to the disbelief of Hakase and Nano. And those are just the main characters, there's a lot of different faces across town, even an entire fantasy world that Yuuko dreamt up by herself. The characters in the series are really something else.
I'm lumping in both of these together because I feel like they have a lot of the same strengths, I'm of course talking about the animation and music. Nichijou's anime adaptation was produced by the studio Kyoto Animation, one of the most beloved studios in the industry, known having a staff with a fixed salary, compared to most other studios in the anime industry which hire freelancers, that leads to a very healthy working environment and consistently amazing animation. They also have a track record of producing slice of life anime, which is why the rights holder to Nichijou, Kadokawa chose them as the studio for Nichijou, and with that context in mind, it makes sense how flawlessly they hit it out of the park with the visual style and animation. This is one of the best animated series of all time and I'm not exaggerating, the huge galactic gags from the manga get faithfully translated into the anime with animation on par with the best of Shonen, I love the usage of smear frames, they're presented as little lines and they really make an impact. This animation of course works in tandem with the music. The two openings by Hyadain are fantastic representations of the entire show, and the background music also fits the show really well, there's some really memorable tracks here like any track for the Helvetica Standard segments, among others which I don't know their names, but they're stuck in my head forever. Honestly, if the anime were to be made by any other studio than KyoAni with a different music staff, I feel like it wouldn't have hit the same.
This leads me to an issue I have with a lot of other slice of life anime, that being their source material being completely overshadowed by the anime adaptation, I feel that especially with Azumanga Daioh and K-On (not that those manga don't have their own merit btw) but I don't think the anime has this problem. It's not overshadowing Keiichi Arawi's original manga, but rather enhancing it. Obviously, an average viewer would take the anime over the manga any day, but the manga still sits on it's own merit, which I thinks says a lot about this series' quality. It's fantastic.
There are some other factors as to why I think Nichijou is a genius series, one of them is the episode structure. Each episode has 3/4 main segments and other smaller segments to fill in the time, the most iconic of which being of course, Helvetica Standard, taken from the manga of the same name. This gives the anime a lot more variety than it already has. The other is how this anime feels like a western cartoon. I'm a huge cartoon fan, I watched cartoon network all the time as a kid, and this felt right at home for me, the most interesting part is that how Keiichi Arawi had never pulled any inspiration from any western media for Nichijou at all, which just goes to show how genius the show truly is.
I'm so happy to have taken the time to write this review, it perfectly expresses my love for Nichijou and why I'm such a huge fan of it, it's truly my favorite anime of all time and it will probably stay that way until the upcoming anime adaptation of Keiichi Arawi's other manga "CITY" also done by Kyoto Animation, finally releases in 2025. I couldn't be more excited, considering how much I gushed about Nichijou. Anyways, peace.
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