Nichijou Review

It has been a while since we did any review. So lets start now, with a review of Nichijou / My Ordinary Life. Take note our reviews are always spoiler free. As always we start with the synopsis of the anime. The series follows the lives of a group of high school students and their school. Various oddities and absurdities abound, such as a robotic girl made by a scientist who is an eight-year-old girl, a boy who rides a goat to school with his butler, a girl who can procure various guns out of thin air, a cat that can speak and a principal who has wrestled a deer. Despite its bizarre settings and characters, the students still lead normal lives.

The kind of artwork suits this anime very well. It looks simple at times but it fits in very well, while scenes that required plenty of details are, well, very detailed. I find myself to be rather amazed by the artwork at times. From your principal wrestling a random wild deer, to chasing down your best friend to retrieve a notebook that contains indecent sketches of your crush you accidentally handed over, it is all done, with the utmost ‘epic’ of animations I have ever seen in a slice of life, and given that there’s no plot, this is a strong and important point to my overall enjoyment.

9/10

I love the characters here. Yuuko as the dumb one, Mio as the sensible one always keeping Yuuko in check, and Mai as the silent one who always own Yuuko (and sometimes Mio) in whatever she does. These 3 make the perfect combination within the confines of their classroom. Outside the classroom, however, we have Hakase the childish one (literally), Nano the caretaker robot who is oft abused by Hakase, and Sakamoto the cat as the one maintaining the sensibility within the household. And not forgetting the side characters, the teacher (whose name I don’t remember) who is scared of students, the goat rider whose looks reminds me of Katsuragi Keima of The World God Only Knows, the mohawk guy, and the principal, among many others. All of these characters converge together to make one of the most entertaining animes I have ever watched.

9/10

What attracts me the most when I first watch the show was the opening song. I find it so awesome that I download their songs and put it inside my iPhone and play it all day long. I later found out that the OPs are sung by Hyadain, who is only one guy. No female backing vocals at all, he does it all himself. Seriously I’m not joking, go look it up. With such a wide cast of characters it’s gotta be hard to find good VAs for every character who can bring out their true personality and colour, but thankfully they have done it. Most characters, if not all, have VAs that have successfully portrayed their characters style and personality, while others have not gotten enough air time for me to determine that. The BGM is great too, often going well with the scene that is going at that moment.

8/10

Nichijou, which literally means “ordinary,” “regular,” or “everyday,” stays true to its name. Like most slice-of-life comedies, it doesn’t have an ongoing plot. Instead, there are several little packets of individual segments that make up the “story.” There are many reoccurring segments in the show aside from the “Nichijou” cuts, such as “Helvetica Standard” or the “Rabu-teki” (love-like) segments. There are also transitional skits which usually include the loveable characters of the Shinonome Laboratory playing Rock-Scissors-Paper or doing a little dance.

Truly, it’s a look into the everyday lives of the characters. Ordinary life, yes, but what happens in their lives may seem quite out of the ordinary for the viewer, which is the charm and heart of the anime. Normally, all the skits are self-contained, but continuity is still applied where it’s necessary, akin to western animated comedies like The Simpsons. Gag stories comes in all shapes and sizes, for better or for worse. I didn’t like too many of the short segments compared to the longer ones, but some of the longer skits are drawn out enough that it can diminish its comedic effect before the segment ends.

7/10

This anime is very very much enjoyable, but it probably is not suited for people who don’t like randomness anime, who’d rather be able to tell what’s going to happen next. This is personal preference, and as a person who watches a lot of such animes filled with randomness, I have to say it’s one of the best such animes I’ve watched. So If you want a good laugh, or more than a laugh.. If you want to “lmao”, then yup, I recommend watch this!

8.25/10