Nichijou(2011)

Mio and Yuko Mackerel fight The Shrine Incident
Nichijou is simply a masterpiece of comedy. Bizarre and completely random because anything can and will happen in the community of people who inhabit this little world. Really and truly this anime is one blindingly beautiful creation and with a heart of purest gold. One reason many enjoy anime is because of the characters. Japanese storytelling invests heavily in its characters. Unlike Western storytelling where plot drives character, in anime, character drives plot. If your characters are fleshed fully out and developed as real people, of course real people will do as they will. For all the wacked out things which happen in Nichijou, at its core is a very sweet, and rather deep understanding of human beings and human nature. These are wonderful human beings which you would like to be with, to spend time with, for whimsy and wistfulness are part and parcel of their true character. The heart of Kyoto Animation strikes again. Nichijou is also an abject lesson in why animation is so much more important than live action movies. First animation is art, and in Nichijou the art is magnificent. You never know what will happen next or what it will look like. But secondarily, is a fact that human beings have a vast array of emotional feels which cannot be shown on a real human face, but can be shown in art or animation.

There is a wonderful sketch in the Mackerel fight between Mio and Yuko who buys Mio Mackerel for lunch rather than the Buckwheat noodles which she wanted. In the Japanese this is play upon words because as Yuko tells Mio, the two words are only separated by one letter. The anger escalates into a bitter fight and then segues into unexpected sweetness in the land of delight. If only all human conflict could likewise be resolved. But the point here is that it is physically impossible for a live actor to display the full range of emotions, that Mio and Yuko express in this little vignette. Our faces cannot express the emotional range which anime can display and this is utilized as a foundational motif throughout Nichijou. By the end of the series, you will be introduced to feels you never even thought existed, because the animation hyper-hypes it all. This is depth psychology of the highest order, and Nichijou is a masterpiece because of it. After all when a scream of pain pierces all nine or eight planets,

you will immediately laugh at the truth of the reality of all the shades of feels involved in a painful moment, the realization that you have very deep feels for which there are no words, and for which there are no physical facial/body language. Nichijou will take you on a journey of discovery in land of your own lonely emotions. Nichijou is simply a masterpiece of emotional discovery and exploration.











Pywackett himself, deeply loves this wonderful anime series. Nothing lifts his spirits
quite like Nichijou. Simply impossible to get down with such an up message.
Simple, yet wonderful, in the fullness of its range and the little stories it tells.
Highly recommended, especially if you have a case of the blues. You will see your
better self in here and become friends with some decidedly eccentric but warm hearted,
people and that is what counts!!

Folcwine P. Pywackett