Anime: Nichijou

Fun, Fun, Fun - That seems to be what this anime is about. And gives a lot of surprises. Its a little like FLCL in its absurdities and like Full Metal Panic in its crazy action jokes, but doesn't have any greater plan to it, so we can watch casually. It does not quite move your heart like Natsume's Book of Friends. What you get is what you can expect from a 7.8 rated anime.

Animation:
This is a modern anime so we get that crisp HD effect which I really enjoy. It is not detailed like a Ghibli anime, but this anime is not meant to be, as its too fast paced.

Sound:
The sound tracks, OP & ED were all nice. Nothing spectacular, but modern.

Story:
Its a Slice of Life anime, so there isn't a specific story line. Its the life of some really fun girls. The little romance there is, is more for fun than serious. I was actually quite happy to see that they didn't try to sexualize the girls (animes nowadays are doing it so much that it has become really unappealing).

Character:
Its a bunch of those regular characters - The hyper active silly stupid girl, the creative girl, the quiet and strange girl, a scientist girl, a robot girl, etc. But I never felt it was too cliched.

Value and Enjoyment
7.8 (the rating here at anidb) - That is exactly what you get. This is not an anime that you feel like rewatching or recommend 'strongly' to a friend. I saw this anime because I found that I have already finished watching all the best anime.

Recommendation - These slice of animes (I feel) are better than this, so please check them out for more enjoyment, before you see this:

(in decreasing enjoyment value)
Natsume's Book of Friends
Mushishi
Usagi Drop
GTO
Aria
Full Metal Panic
One Week Friends
Silver Spoon
Fruits Basket (its rating is low but its very sweet and innocent)
School Rumble

This was my first ever review. Hope I have been of some help. :-)....

There are a lot of mixed opinions about this series. And rightfully so because it relies heavily on quirky, even absurd humour that's definitely not to everyone's liking. You could say the show is similar to Azumanga Daioh except the similarities are pretty superficial, and if you liked Azumanga Daioh (or say, Lucky Star) you might like this too, or you might not.

Nichijou has its own different episode structure as well as content. It aired as 26 episodes but it isn't actually structured as such, actually being a series of 100+ gags and jokes focusing on the main characters (they're numbered throughout the show), "mini-episodes" of a spin-off series sprinkled here and there, and mute comedy or animation comedy - short clips where something "odd" happens to say, an ordinary object - without any dialogue and often without any characters, all packed up together into episodes and aired that way. Perhaps it would've worked better as a net animation, but in the end I liked it and I don't think the way everything is packed together makes much difference to one's enjoyment of the show. Some of the jokes rely on blatant exaggerations of day-to-day things, others on traditional Japanese comedy or popular comedy gags, non-sequiturs and puns. The puns especially are a hit-or-miss because you have to know Japanese to get them and even if you do get the point you might not find it funny.

I liked the characters (especially the Professor, Nano and Sakamoto) and their interactions a lot. There are a lot of characters here that fill a certain expected role or stereotype but each and everyone of them has enough uniqueness and their own quirks that I didn't mind it much. Any form of real character development is absent though and in my opinion you shouldn't even expect it from this show as it's not the kind of series that relies on fleshing out its cast. All the characters are pretty much "the guy/girl/thing that does X, Y and Z". After a while you will pretty much know the style in which a certain character reacts to an event (as that is the character), what keeps them interesting is how that character reacts, what they'll do next. Think about "characters" in jokes like "a cat, a dinosaur and my grandma walk into a bar...". That's the kind of characters this show revolves around, albeit with a little more complexity than your average two-liner+punchline jokes.

There's absolutely no story to talk about here because Nichijou doesn't rely on any overarching narrative. Perhaps it could've been better with one, or at the very least perhaps that way more people would've enjoyed it. That being said, the show does fine and is very enjoyable even without one. This is something of a slice-of-life series (mostly) about ordinary high-school students doing their thing... if you ignore the tsundere who packs enough firepower in her pockets to sink a battleship , the robot made by a 5 year old girl, the talking cat, the guy who's hair grows naturally like a mohawk etc.

The animation is very good and has its own simplistic style. One thing that will stand out is that a lot of the scenes are drawn from a top-down isometric perspective, which I liked. It fits with the overall simplistic, geometric style of the animation. There are also transition scenes between parts that are simply there to show-off the skill of the animators, which is actually pretty good (although the show could do without these segments).

The soundtrack is not something you would've expected and features a lot of symphonic music, another thing that adds to the show's uniqueness. Personally, I liked it. The opening and ending songs are enjoyable silliness (and there are a lot of variations on them). Overall the voice-work was well done. Some standouts for me were Mio's and Sakamoto's seyuu's. (Mio has a very distinctive voice when she's annoyed, and Sakamoto's deep-voiced mature sounding actor fits his character).

All in all, I enjoyed this a lot. If comedic non-sense and dry jokes are your thing you should definitely watch this.

The choice of the title "Nichijou" is pretty much an insiders joke, as this is anything but a slice-of-life anime. This series takes slice-of-life-ness and miraculously over-dramatizes everything to such an extent that you'd either be utterly confused or rolled over in pain from laughing. While very long for a pretty-much plot-less series, the bizarre mix of characters and events kept me watching. I've never seen another series that turn something as simple as building a deck of cards or learning to high-jump into such an entertaining event. I really wonder how the series progression was planned as there is was some serious creativity (or drunkenness...) in this production.

One thing I never figured out was the intended audience for the show. Some parts are utterly hilarious while others seem ridiculously juvenile, such as random sequences of rock-scissors-paper or characters singing. Perhaps it's all part of the master plan to psych out the viewer. In any case, this will definitely be a hit and miss series as my counts of "wtf?" were just as numerous as the amount of times I've rolled over in laughter. If you can deal with the simplistic animation and make it past the first two episodes, you'll probably keep going (note: episode 0 is a very good litmus test for whether or not you'll like the series).

Animation:
I really had no expectations for this series as the characters and backgrounds look way too simplistic, or perhaps they were trying to make it feel more cartoonish. I'm sure they were going for simplistic-cute in the character design but it looks a bit overly childish to me. You also get things that look just bizarre, such as a crow that looks like a cone with legs.

Despite these flaws, the animation played a very large part in the dramatization of situations, and was in many cases creatively used in a manner that resulted in uncontrollable laughter. So despite not being all that pleasant to the eyes, it still successfully delivers its point.

Sound:
The OPs (2 of them) of this series are just as bizarre as the content of the series; they are made up of random-sounding crazy combinations of seemingly unconnected melodies. The EDs are varied and weren't very memorable. Luckily, the BGM is much more pleasant for the ears and consists of a lot of overly-upbeat symphonic tracks, as well as some that came across as very childish. Mariko Honda and Mai Aizawa were the heavy-lifters as VAs as their characters are constantly yelling at each other or otherwise making a ruckus.

Story:
Nichijou is about a lot of subplots intertwining in unexpected, bizarre, and often comical ways. Each episode is divided up into many sub parts, most of which are unrelated, like in a series of comic strips. Some of these "strips" are probably very cultural based and just went over my head (you get a feeling that it was meant to be funny, but you don't understand why). However, a decent proportion of these are indeed funny, if not for the content at least in terms of "wow I can't believe they worked this hard to try to make this normally boring subject/event funny."

There really isn't a developing plot line and the series doesn't build to any climax. It's meant as a show to just kick back to after a hard day of work/classes.

Character:
The variety of characters is quite amazing. You have a guy whose hair only grows in a Mohawk, a robot girl built by a eight-year-old genius who still somehow acts like an annoying little kid, a talking cat, a group of people starting a club to play Go Soccer (yes go as in Hikari no Go and soccer as in non-American football), etc. You might have a bit of trouble keeping track of all the characters through the madness of the series, but the important ones will eventually stick, especially with their unique personalities. There isn't a terrible amount of development of the characters, the focus is purely on their daily life interactions, that just happen to be portrayed as so far from ordinary life that it's hilarious.

Value:
The series looks like a joke, and is meant to be taken lightly. It is one of the strangest series I've seen, which just makes the title of "Nichijou" all the more humorous. It turned out to be a wild ride of a watch with lots of confused moments and hilarious moments to match. Perhaps Yuuko sums up the series best, it's "super-ultra-great-delicious-wonderful difficult to understand! (ep4)"