*note: the word “nichijou” means “daily life”
It took me almost two years to watch Nichijou in its entirety, and for once I would not have it any other way. Marathons are great ways to compact a good story into one straight showing, allowing a sense of continuity and seamless storytelling. Nichijou has no story to tell, even less so than other slice-of-life shows, which have a clearly defined starting point or a destination in mind. The show is not moving the characters slowly towards graduation, although short scenes towards the end indicate that they are all contemplating their futures after high school. There is no match to be won, holiday to prepare for, or anything else. The characters simply are living out their daily lives, just as the title says. And so for me, the only way to watch Nichijou was one episode every few weeks, just when I was feeling like I needed a random episode of hilarious comedy to pick me up with no obligation to watch more. And it delivered on every level, being one of the most consistently hilarious shows I have ever had the privilege to watch.
In some ways, the setting is more abnormal than any other well-known high school show, save perhaps Cromartie. There are robots, a Go-soccer club, mohawks, goats, wooden cubes of destiny, and a complete spectrum of personality types. Typical tsundere gets taken to the extreme as one girl fires an arsenal of rockets and assorted guns when acting out the “tsun”. Instead of being in class 1-C or 1-F like in any normal high school, our protagonists all share class 1-Q, and they are every bit as odd as their class number. Classic pieces of Japanese comedy such as tsukkomi and reaction are prevalent throughout the episodes, and even they get taken to crazy extremes. One episode devoted itself almost entirely to the idea of using tsukkomi in class, and some reactions can take as long as a minute, due to elongated pauses, filtered replays, and yells that break the sound barrier and destroy nearby planets. If there was ever a show for high-tension jokes, this would be it, hands down.
And yet for all its outlandish situations, every character is flushed out well, to the point that they feel like the kinds of friends you could have really had back in high school. Everyone is connected through one series of associations or another, allowing for almost any set of characters to be paired up for a sketch. The central recurring group is the three girls who sit in the back of class 1-Q, comprised of Yuuko, a hyperactive dunce, Mio, a calmer studious girl who likes drawing BL, and Mai, a completely silent bookworm who intentionally sets up tons of gags and tsukkomi targets. They play off of each other very well, with their different personalities setting up a dynamic only for an irregular circumstance to evoke some ridiculous reaction from their group. One particularly amusing recurring skit shows a blimp in the sky with some series of life-or-death events for the passengers (almost entirely comprised of generic male figures wearing numbered hats to differentiate them), only for the skit to end with some defining feature of Mio—from her blue twintails to the wooden cubes she uses to tie her hair—dropped onto earth from above, at which point Yuuko bolts upright in the middle of class to reveal that the whole thing was a dream sequence as she is sent into the hallway for interrupting the lesson. This kind of creative sketch shows how their friendships create these various elements of comedy, even without any actual interaction taking place. Seeing them hang out is reminiscent of Azumanga Daioh, where after one or two episodes they already feel like friends that we have known for a very long time.
The other recurring group is the inhabitants of the Shinonome Research Lab, who perhaps exist to show just how odd the world of Nichijou really is. We have the professor, a tiny girl around 9 or 10 years old, Nano, the diligent but empathetic robot she created, and Sakamoto, a normal cat that can speak thanks to a scarf the professor invented. Here we get a slightly more relaxed, less situational type of humor, usually revolving around the professor’s childish tendencies and Nano’s efforts to act as her caretaker. Admittedly, for as much as I like these characters in concept, I found their scenes to be much weaker than the rest of the show. Maybe it was just how irritatingly childish the professor is, or how many situations seemed to be repetitive. It was mostly their scenes that discouraged me from marathoning the show all at once, given that a good portion of every episode would be the same bits. With enough space between episodes, they were entertaining enough, and certainly the jokes revolving around the different functions hidden all around Nano’s body were quite entertaining.
Also, around the middle of the show Nano is allowed to go to school, where she befriends the three girls in 1-Q. While Nano definitely feels out of place in this group, from her formal speech to her lack of setting up gags, and especially that she never gives the reaction or high tension that resolves any scene, being part of the group sets the girls up to meet the professor and Sakamoto, and it almost serves as the cue for all the different groups in the show to start blending. The science professor chases Nano around to capture her for experimentation, one teacher develops a crush on another before getting involved in the Go Soccer club that had only appeared in short throwaway scenes during the first half of the show, the tsundere girl interacts with Mio’s older sister, and so on and so forth. It definitely brings a new element of unpredictability to the show, as well as more personality matches, more types of gags, and altogether much more fun.
The structure of Nichijou, while distinctly 4-koma, is unlike high school shows in that most episodes have up to 10 different scenes, all properly separated by title cards, as well as running bits that share some sort of common theme. My favorite had to be “Short Thoughts”, where a scene would go for about 15 seconds before some sort of poem or poignant message appears, supposedly revealing the moral of the scene. The message, of course, is anything but poetic, and shows how good writing can make for great meta humor in almost no time.
Another bit was “Love-like”, where a short scene would play between either nameless characters or the characters from the show, mimicking the motions of a typical budding high school anime romance. Often there was a punch line by one of the characters mocking these motions, but sometimes the bit stood out by taking these actions completely seriously, as a small gesture of love or affection. It gave a nice human quality to the show, which often used the potential romances it set up solely for the sake of humor. And especially in the last few episodes, there were lots of scenes that gave some sense of progression to their lives, above and beyond daily life. It treated these scenes carefully, not focusing on them, as they run counter to the show’s goal of comedy and portraying daily life. It was tactful, and in doing so it felt more significant than the drama that usually comes with high school slice of life, because in giving us their daily lives we bond with them much more than if we only get dramatic scenes that occur once in their lives. The style of short scenes, too, helps us appreciate their lives as a series of mundane but enjoyable events, rather than define them by major occurrences. Like The Daily Lives of High School Boys, few shows more deserve to have the word “nichijou” in the title.
Really, with all the praise I have for Nichijou, I find myself surprised that I do not rate it higher than a 7. It comes down to my inability to enjoy it as an entire show. I may have enjoyed this show much more when it was airing, waiting each week for another 24 minutes of entertainment before another seven day hiatus. And I do not think that shows that should be spaced out for proper enjoyment are necessarily worse than other shows. The issue here is that rather than not watching it all at once, I could not watch it all at once. In some sense, the whole show could be boiled down to half its length of unique material, or maybe even less. The only real advantage to having 26 episodes is that repeated material makes our peek into their lives feel more consistent, which really sells the idea that this is daily life for them. That, and when spaced out a week at a time, Nichijou is 26 weeks of pure fun.