Why you Need Nichijou in your Life

Nichijou is an anime that I’ve probably recommended in my videos more times than any other.
It’s my go-to suggestion for people looking for comedy, and the wacky antics that are
uniquely anime.
But I never made a video on it because it's never been licensed.
It was streaming on crunchyroll for a time, before getting removed several years ago.
Coincidently in the middle of one of my watch throughs of it.
I was not impressed.
But for the longest time if you wanted to actually OWN Nichijou you had to import it.
Either from Japan, or if you wanted subtitles, from Australia.
Which I did!
Only for Funimation to announce the license a week later on a Panel at Youmacon that I
was present for.
I don’t want to claim that this was not a coincidence, but the cosmos has a weird
way of laughing at me from time to time.
But now that it’s out, in all its glory, we can finally talk about it.
Or rather get ready for me to gush about it because today Glass Reflection presents the
reasons why YOU NEED NICHIJOU IN YOUR LIFE!
Let’s Jam.
Nichijou presents itself as an ordinary story.
A normal Japanese town with your average people like you and me.
Its right there in the show’s subtitle, “My Ordinary Life”.
So OBVIOUSLY I should prep comparisons with other calming slice of life anime and call
it a day right?
But I just can’t do that.
For example: Here’s the description of a scene.
This sounds like something that could happen to anyone right?
Something could shown in a few seconds of animation.
Well……
Many of Nichijou’s situations are simple,
but the execution of them are far from that.
A lot of the time they are taken care of with the thought of “How would a fully powered
super saiyan or a stand user deal with this?”.
But despite the over the top nature of these scenes, everything still feels ordinary.
It’s almost as if what we’re witnessing is an epic retelling brought forth by the
imaginations of the characters.
and it's the consistency of these jokes and the way they
bend reality that fleshes out the personalities of the people who are a part of them.
However humor is subjective, and repeated jokes tend to get stale if you don’t change
them up once in awhile, but on the flipside if you don’t maintain jokes a certain way
then we never get a sense of what these characters are like and then there’s no reason to keep
watching.
Nichijou understands this and as such ends up trying out every kind of joke under the sun.
Some are light, some are fast, some are slow, some make no sense, some are on the nose,
some compound punchline after punchline after punchline and some are a whole lot of build-up
to absolutely nothing.
Most of these “skits” only last a few minutes, and this quick turnaround makes it
so that even if a joke fails to land there’s very little wait until the next one comes around.
The comedy tends to be as simple as the situations themselves, but they are cleverly structured
and intermingled in ways you may not expect.
The people of this town ultimately live their own lives and although the randomness of the
humour is what often catches us off-guard, certain characters end up developing the humour
just by running into each other in an organic way.
That said of course, after a while we can start to figure out the structure of how jokes
get told in Nichijou.
The 5 steps to making a joke in Nichijou goes something like this:
1) Reach the Point where the joke should logically stop.
2) Don’t stop
3) DON’T YOU DARE STOP
4) Profit! and 5) NEVER question the consequences.
And when in doubt, cut to something completely different.
The show really loves to take breaks for itself, either focusing on some one-off characters
we never see again, or occasionally some quick cool thing to keep you on your toes.
Like, it makes no sense from a narrative perspective but hey, don’t we all need an occasional
break from what’s in front of us in life?
Not that Nichijou is always about the gags.
Many scenes are about relatable, but very tense, situations made more difficult by the
insane rules of the world our characters live in.
But there are also other times that focus on the other characters like Nano and Hakase,
where we see far more emphasis on compassion and family love.
Themes that Kyoto Animation would eventually continue with Maid Dragon down the line.
The general art style of the show helps with these kinds of moments a lot.
Even if this style is not to your taste, you’d have to admit that there is nothing that looks
poorly rendered.
I think this show might have the lowest line-count per character out of anything the studio’s
done, and the simple standard of the designs keep things focused, and only when they feel
like it do they kick things into overdrive.
But they still have that old standard to fall back on.
Now, because they are so comfortable with that standard they have the ability to both
experiment and put detail in places that they otherwise wouldn't need to.
There are many a time in the show, when between gags, any given episode has this static shot
that it keeps going back to.
Like a back alleyway with a moving box, or near the side of a river with someone trying
to paint.
There’s nothing especially humorous or exciting happening in these scenes, but as is usually
the case, the impressive things are in the details.
These short clips have extremely photo-realistic lighting and what ends up happening in these
scenes are just slight changes here and there.
Just some detail in the mundane.
That’s a line that describes the whole show really, “Details in the mundane”.
You could argue that description fits basically any Kyoto Animation production, as they pride
themselves on visual fluidity and subtlety.
But I’ve noticed that a lot of their recent stuff focuses on some mythical future of the
characters.
Stories telling, in grandiose fashion, that the characters need to find out who they are
and decide what they are passionate about.
And that’s great and all, and if you resonate with it then you can learn a lot from it,
but Nichijou only ever looks at the world one day at a time, and to ordinary people
like us, that’s honestly inspiring.
This belief that life, all life, is full of an assortment of captivating sensations that
fill our day to day activities.
Our day to day ordinary lives.
Today could be bad, today could be horrible, with the world crashing down on your feet.
But you can count on tomorrow to be a new day.
So we need only to adapt.
Like how Nichijou adapts it humor, making sure that each new scene is fresh while being
not afraid to change things up when it’s time to move on.
For you see gentle viewers, we live in a world full of surprises.
The kind beyond our wildest imaginations lurking just around the next corner.
If only we had the time to savor and appreciate them.
Nichijou is a series that moves one skit at a time, the fleeting spectacle of one gag
finishes all too soon, and the only way to hold on to these moments of joy is to cherish
them.
To improve from one day to the next.
So go out there!
Leave your rooms your basements!
Enjoy the world presented before you and live your ordinary life!
Be all you can be from this day, until the next day and beyond!
Or you know, just say home and watch anime.
that works too.
As so it is my great pleasure that I present Nichijou with the recommendation of Certified Frosty.
A rating for only the best of the best and those show too important to ignore.
There are links down in the description as usual so you can watch Nichijou!
At least that’s what I normally say.
As I mentioned before Crunchyroll used to have it, but several years back it left their
library and hasn’t returned.
Also despite being available from Funimation on DVD and Blu-Ray is seems unavailable from
their streaming service.
Which kind of sucks actually.
SO Alternate anime recommendations!
Well the obvious ones I have being Azumanga Daioh and Lucky Star still apply but it seems
that I bring those ones up in recommendations about as often as I do Nichijou so let’s
add another that I haven’t before and recommend My Neighbors the Yamadas.
It’s not as off the wall as Nichijou, so it’s a bit more relaxed of an ordinary life
but it’s still another humorous take on the concept that still keeps some of the
absurd situations that we love Nichijou for.
So between those you should find something hopefully to your liking.
And that’s it from me, a very special thanks to all my patrons, including Robert Chumsae,
Hedrel Leon, Bing Theo, Calhoonboy, Siri Yamako, Viktor Ekmark, and Joshua Garcia you
are all especially awesome.
Until next time, ladies gentlemen and others!
Stay Frosty!

Why you Need Nichijou in your Life | GR Anime Review

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