First Look: Nichijou

Title: Nichijou Genre: Comedy

Summary: While the title suggests a story of simple, everyday school life, the contents are more the opposite. The setting is a strange school where you may see the principal wrestle a deer or a robot’s arm hide a rollcake. However there are still normal stories, like making a card castle or taking a test you didn’t study for.

First Look: Nichijou is one of those standard, random humor comedies. While it doesn’t have any sense of story or character development, there is is  still something appealing about it. Of course as a comedy it comes with the obvious risks: poor material, repeated material, loss of comedic appeal. Then of course there are other comedies that attempt to have a story and fail miserably. What surprised me the most about the anime wasn’t actually the art, characters, comedy, or any of the other usual stuff. It was the episode count. Nichijou is set to have 26 episodes which for a comedy is a lot. Many comedies die out after eight or so episodes, barely holding my interest the whole 12. I’m curious to see how Nichijou will try to keep up their humor.

So far the anime has been pretty good (five episodes in). I would say that is one of the anime I look forward to each week. The comedy is pretty interesting and I kind of like the complete overreactions the characters have to the littlest things. Overall I would say that the characters are enjoyable and they work well together. Each has their own little quirk which makes them fun to watch. So far there have only been a good seven or so repeated characters, but that seems to be plenty. The comedy is still making me laugh pretty hard, but that’s because the show itself is just ridiculous. The jokes aren’t witty, they’re just weird. Actually “weird” is probably the best way to describe the anime. Probably what makes it work is the art. The art adds so much to the anime in terms of comedy. While the drawings may seem simply they do a lot with what they have. Hilarious expressions and overly epic scenes really bring everything together.

So far I would say that the anime is keeping up quite well for a comedy. With five episodes in they still keep things interesting. I’m sure some of the skits I don’t fully get because I don’t speak Japanese, but they still give me a chuckle. For now it tickles my funny bone, but I’m not sure how long that will last. Call me a pessimist if you must, but I have rarely scene an anime keep my interest for longer than eight episodes and still give me a good laugh. With 26 it might not be worth watching in the end.

Final statements: Still I will keep this one on watch for the season because it seems to be doing well so far. I don’t know if I would pick it up just yet because there are a lot of series out this season. I’m probably going to get a good idea about the rating fifteen to sixteen episodes in.