Nichijou - My Ordinary Life
Surreal slice of life by Keiichi Arawi
Plot: Extremely normal stories about the daily lives of three schoolgirls, Yuuko Aioi, Mio Naganohara and Mai Minakami, and genius 8-year old scientist Professor (Hakase), Nano, the robot caretaker she built, and Sakamoto, their cat with a scarf that allows him to talk, and everyone that surrounds them.
Thoughts: Ah, nonsense that gets suggested to me via YouTube, part of the thing that drives this joint, even if they're particularly hard to write about. I mean, it's very funny, production values are outstanding... what else is there to say? Alright, let's look at some dynamics. It's pretty much a sketch show built around three high school girls - Yuuko, the genki girl of the group, a bit dumb and often forgetting her homework, and accepts that, until she doesn't and just explodes, Mio, the normal one and aspiring yaoi manga author who will beat the shit out of everyone that might find that out, even the police, and Mai, the quiet one who really proves those are often the worst, as she will prank and mess with the other two just for her own amusement. The rest of the school isn't much more normal - Sakurai-sensei, their homeroom teacher is constantly flustered at the minimum thing and fails to uphold any order, Sasahara, the son of a farmer who acts like a nobleman (cravat and butler included, also going to school on a goat for some reason), Misato, who shows her affection and annoyance towards him with a wide variety of heavy weaponry or the the adventures of the Go-Soccer club.
Then, we also have the Professor, who just stays at home all day eating snacks and drawing sharks, since she's a genius at 8 and already built Nano and a scarf that lets Sakamoto talk. Nano ends up being her caretaker, having to deal with her constant tantrums, and her requests to remove the big wind-up key on her back removed so she can pass more easily as a normal girl and go to school denied. Professor also keeps fiddling with her, like adding machine gun that shoots beans on her arm or a sweet bread tray that pops off from her forehead. In the middle of all this, Sakamoto, a stray, tries often to be the voice of reason as after all, he's the oldest (in cat years) but is still a cat and is usually blamed for the Professor's antics. Nano later joins the school, and Yuuko quickly picks up she's a robot (you know, because of the giant key), and befriends them, ignoring how odd the situation is. At the school, Nano meets her nemesis, science teacher Nakamura, who wants to kidnap her and learn how she works. By attempting stunts like drugging the coffee, and then sipping from the overflowing mug. As the students point out, she passes out very often.
Some sketches are in the single seconds (including the separators like Professor and Nano doing a dance and playing rock-paper-scissors, with something happening to the later's hand), and some longer sketches. It was a bit surprising to learn this turned out to be a money pit for Kadokawa and it generally got meh reviews at the time because... I don't think it does anything wrong, and visually, there's no reason why a sketch anime needs to look *this* good - I wonder if that's related to the "money pit" thing. Lucky Star, also by Kyoto Animation, is mostly a very simple-looking anime, but here the animation holds nothing back, particularly on action scenes. I was quite a bit unsure on which rating to give it, but the high level of the animation kinda justifies being along Konata and her friends. Timoteeeeeei.
While it's almost certainly not getting picked up again, the good news is that Arawi's other manga, City, is getting an animation due to start in a few weeks, and from the preview trailer: yes.
Really goes out of the way to be weird and never boring
It is a sketch show, so you know some bits are not as good as others
