Dhruv Sharma
Slice of Life anime may not always be for everyone but when it comes to ‘Nichijou’, it has something for everyone. It brings in a combination of moe, slapstick comedy and of course a whole lot of drama. All of this, along with some amazing visuals are just enough to make you stick to it throughout. The fluid and crisp animation come as no surprise since Kyoto Animation Studio always manages to surprise with the extent to which they can impress. Apart from its simplistic comedy and storyline, ‘Nichijou’ is also very well structured and to a large degree, very unpredictable. The characters and their designs are rather typical but the presence of each one of them is significant and unique. And as cliché as these “moe” characters may seem, it’s their interactions that give them a more distinctive appeal.
‘Nichijou’ is what I would call a very minimalist anime that relies on the simplest methods to bring in entertainment in its best form. Every aspect of the show revolves around the basic idea of just being enjoyable. To put it simply, it’s the kind of show you would love to tune into when you’ve come back home after a long day of work. The ingenious simplicity of the anime is just enough to make fall in love with it and enjoy every single moment of it.
Nichijou Season 2 Release Date: When will it premiere?
‘Nichijou’ season 1 premiered on April 3, 2011 and came to an end on September 25, 2011. During this span, the anime premiered a total of 26 episodes with each one of them being 23 minutes long. ‘Nichijou’ is actually the sequel of a one-episode OVA titled ‘Nichijou: Nichijou no O-wa’ which released on March 12, 2011. The anime was very popular soon after its release and has also been rated way above average on many platforms. But despite this, it turned out to be a retail failure.
Also, many suspect that the anime was merely a big advertisement to promote its source material. There were still some chances of getting a sequel OVA of the anime, but now that so many years have gone by since its release, we don’t think Kyoto Animation would want to go back to it. Even then, if there are any updates regarding ‘Nichijou’ season 2 release date in the future, we will surely update it here in this section.
Nichijou English Dub:
The English Dub of ‘Nichijou’ can be streamed on Funimation and Amazon Prime. Its Japanese version along with English subtitles can be streamed online on Crunchyroll.
Nichijou Plot:
The entire plot of Nichijou revolves around the town of Tokisadame and the antics of Yūko Aioi, an extremely energetic high school girl who does her best to procrastinate the work at hand. There is also the cheerful Mio Naganohara, who is extremely adamant about her desires and will stop at nothing in achieving them. One of the most important characters that we are introduced to early on in the show is Nano Shinonome who plays an extremely important role in the anime.
While the manga portrays her to be a side character, she has one of the more prominent story arcs in the anime. She is actually a robot, an android built by the Professor who wishes to attend school along with her other friends but being a robot is not able to do so. She is only one year old but looks and behaves like any other teenager and this gives her the confidence to actually attend school with Mai and Mio.
However, she is constantly under the threat of being discovered and thrown out. She fears that the authorities will one day discover the truth behind her identity and that will be the end of her days in school. This leads to some hilarious (sometimes emotional) interactions between the characters where they attempt to save her identity from others. This is basically the plot of the anime and being a comedy series, it adapts an independent episodic nature where each episode is dedicated towards any one event that takes place in their lives.
Nichijou Characters:
Yūko Aioi: Voiced by Mariko Honda, Yūko Aioi is a 16-year-old teenager who is also sometimes referred to as Yukko by her friends. Despite being extremely energetic when it comes to daily activities with her friends, she is extremely lazy when it comes to her own academic progress such as studying for exams or finishing her homework. She will simply put it off until the last possible moment often landing herself in trouble because of the same. As a result of this procrastination, we can often find her desperately copying the homework from Mio or Mai in an attempt to salvage the situation but inevitably lands herself in trouble anyway. Often easygoing in nature, she does have the uncanny ability to swing her mood around at times surprising others around her, mostly when she is insulted. However, despite her flaws, she is a very likable character mainly due to her strict moral and ethical codes in her life.
Mio Naganohara: An extremely bright and cheerful girl, Mio is also a teenager who is studying at the same school as Yūko Aioi. She can often be found painting erotic pictures of her present crush Kojiro Sasahara, often in questionable poses. She is quite good at it though and enters several contests under a male pseudonym in an attempt to land a permanent contract. However, luck is not on her side and she does not manage to win any of the competitions leading her to lose trust in her own abilities. It is here that the inner characteristics of Mio are brought into the light.
Despite being the cheerful girl in college, she often suffers from low control over her temper leading to rapid outbursts of the same. It is also revealed that she can go to great lengths to achieve her causes, even if it means hitting a police officer to retain her secrets. If she feels a situation is capable of threatening her position of humiliating her in front of others, she will go to any lengths possible to put a stop to it. She does manage to stick on to her art till the very end and also lands a contract with a publisher after winning one of those competitions but it is not revealed whether she actually does sign the same.
Mai Minakami: Voiced by Misuzu Togashi, Mai is the complete opposite of Mio and Yūko and seems much more mature than them. Quite reserved in her approaches, she is extremely talented and excels at a wide range of activities such as wrestling and fishing in addition to her academics. She is also a star student and is an inspiration to many. Having spent a childhood in Alaska, she is forced to shift to Japan and settle into a new life due to her father’s job. Despite her calm and controlled nature, she often pulls some weird pranks on her friends much to their amusement. It is quite impossible to tell what is actually going on in her mind making her one of the most of intriguing and most interesting characters of the anime.
Nano Shinonome: Nano is actually an android created by the Professor as a part of an experiment. Despite being only a year old, she is as intelligent as any other teenager and also looks and acts like any of them. As a result, she really wants to attend school along with the others but is scared of being discovered and ostracized because of her build. She is extremely sensitive to this fact and will not even acknowledge that the big wind-up metallic key on her back is a dead giveaway. She will often insist on blending in even when situations around her are dangerous if she does so, but she will not break character. Her limbs can often be found hanging from their hinges revealing to the viewers what actually went into the making of this model!
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