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Jul 25 2011

Categories: episodic review, nichijou
Tagged: nichijou

11 Comments »

“Swim swim swim chomp chomp SHARK!”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Best part of this episode? Itsuki as Mr. Crow! Perfect casting. Just the right amount of underhanded brown-nosing. Except he trolls more than Itsuki, since, you know, this is Troll Anime.

(Calling Nichijou a moe anime is about as accurate as calling Game of Thrones a fantasy series. Just a scoreboard check… 499 minutes of political war drama, 1 minute of fantasy. And that minute had boobs!)

Actually… the best part of the episode was once again the Takasaki-sensei/Annaka schtick. Just the perfect amount of nonsense, trolling, and despair paced to a tee. Though… wouldn’t the other teacher be arrested by now for tasing a student and now hair raping another? These are crimes in our world. Crimes!

(2/3rds through Nichijou, yep, it’s better than Azumanga at this point. Animation and sound aside, both are huge upgrades like going from a Pentium 3 to a Core i7 2600, which, by the way, are the fastest processors available when both series came out, the pacing, directing, and comedy is just better in Nichjiou. Azumanga was damn slow until about 2/3rds through, and it really just had Osaka running the show until Kimura showed up. For Nichijou, pretty much the whole cast has been effective, and the Mio/Mai/Yuko trio are hitting their stride… and their supporting cast of Annaka, Sensei, Dango-man, Fortune Teller, Sasahara, Izumi… and, of course, Professor, Nano, and Sakamoto-san. More importantly, they’re in two different genres. Azumanga is character comedy. Nichijou is troll comedy.)

(TL;DR, take off your rose-colored glasses. NANO PROFESSOR NANO PROFESSOR NANO PROFESSOR NANO PROFESSOR NANO PROFESSOR)

Enjoyed Yuko’s attempts to bring Mai to Starbucks and traumatize her with naming too. Sadly, I am drinking a Starbuck’s coffee as I write this. I just said, “Regular coffee, please.” I’m no fun, I guess.

(Also, metarating for Azumanga is 8.5 while Nichijou is 8.)

Rasslin’ hasn’t been in relevant in years. But thanks to Nichijou, a comeback is possible. Keiichi Arawi must blare Real American, Money in the Bank, and Sirius Eye in the Sky as he draws the comic. In fact, I can picture him spitting water on his assistants as The Game booms from his iPod as he hands in the newest chapter.

Fantastic segment. Just a tour de force. Comedy sans dialogue and sans physical violence is so highly undervalued these days. Just a great example of proper timing and proper character gags. Plus some awesome Mai trolling.

The same way Nokia and RIM shareholders felt during their last earnings announcements. “You mean it’s worse than expected?!”

(My favorite part of listening to RIM was how they spent so much engineering time and effort in perfecting the Blackberry’s speakerphone and how much they neglected their web browser. For some reason, this reminded of Star Driver… kiraboshi!)

Blackmail! If there’s anything that I’ve learned from anime, it’s that if you want someone to become your club adviser, blackmail is key. Or bribe with Mugi snacks. Or both.

I wonder if Mai stays up late every night thinking of new ways to troll poor Yuko. Does Mai have a Google Calender of things planned for the week, i.e. “Double glasses on Monday. Four ties on Tuesday. Eight ponytails on Wednesday.”? Or does she just come up with it in the morning? She must be planning these far in advance.

Watching this scene… makes me kinda wish Kyoto would tackle a remake of Sailor Moon. The only major genre Kyoto hasn’t dabbled in is the magical girl genre, and with Madoka being so dark and gloomy, I think a reimagined Sailor Moon would be a good counterbalance. (With more comedic interaction between the Sailor Scouts and the battle sequences abstracted out a la Game of Thrones.) And, yes, I would so love for Sakamoto-san to be Tuxedo Cat and mack on Luna. He just needs a white bow tie instead of the scarf. And a little top hat.

Best part of this scene is watching Sakamoto-san stumble around sleepy-drunk.

So much trolling. Reminds me of how Obama asks Congress to roll back Bush era tax cuts, and they keep coming back with stuff like, “Cut funding to universities” or “Double interest on student loans” or “Burn single mothers with their dragon eggs.”

I feel like the only way Discovery Channel’s Shark Week can get any better is if Nano and Professor hosted Monday night.

Three MVPS…

1. Takasaki-sensei.
2. Mr. Crow.
3. Biscuit No. 1.