Nichijou is the story about a group of highschool girls surviving everyday life and the various antics they get up to. What makes this series particularly special is the way they emphasize simple actions such as catching food as it falls or running. Like my Yamishibai series, this review is rather short because the series is sketch based and the series doesn’t have a story line. The series is available on DVD but I’ve only ever found it available in Australia (See here: https://www.madman.com.au/series/home/16590).
First off I’ll discuss the animation style. As you can see from the GIF down below, the series alternates between a fairly simple coloured style to something you’d see in a black & white manga. The coloured style you see for most of the series is fairly simple compared to similar series. The character designs are fairly flat and don’t have any of the fancy shading or lighting effects to make it seem 3D. However don’t take this as me saying this is bad. This simple style helps make some of the best reaction faces in anime. It’s difficult to explain what I mean by that. If you watch some EPs or Google the series, you’ll see some examples. The simple style was probably chosen to make the transition between the styles easier. Also, the simplicity of the style works really well in the action sequences.
The black and white style is one of the reasons that makes this series unique. It’s their primary tool in making otherwise simple scenes extremely comical. However, I personally found the rapid transitions between the two styles harsh on the eyes. This made watching several EPs in a row very difficult and forms the only criticism I’d give to the series.
Now I’ll move onto the sense of humour of the series. One of the reasons I really enjoyed this series is how they turn simple actions into dramatic sequences. This makes for some truly comical moments. If you’re not a fan of these types of series because most of the jokes are directed at specific aspects of Japanese culture and you don’t know enough to understand them, give this series a try. The jokes focus on things that aren’t specific to a culture or are specific to something within a series. For example, one of the characters is a robot (revealed in the first couple of EPs, so not a spoiler) and its creator like to store objects and food inside the robot’s limbs without it knowing.
I’d give this series 3.9/5. The series is great to watch with it’s fantastic sense of humour and way if turning everyday actions into dramatic sequences. However the animation styles and how it transitions between them did make it difficult to marathon.
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