Nichijou

This is a show about normal kids living an ordinary life. It centers on 3 high school girls, Yuko Aioi, who never seems to get her homework done, and constantly tries to make her days more interesting (but often times for the worse); Mio Naganohara, whose hair trigger temper and hidden yaoi obsessions often create conflict between her and Yuko; and Mai Minakami, quiet and unemotional but with a very strange sense of humor (which frequently has her pranking Yuko). There is also a side group involved, including an 8 year old genius inventor named Hakase, her creation Nano Shinonome (an android that looks like a teenage girl, who desperately wants to have Hakase remove the wind up key from her back), and Sakamoto, a cat who is able to talk due to a translating scarf Hakase made (and having to put up with her shenanigans). Also there is an ultra posh student who rides a goat, a girl who has a crush on him but hides it with high caliber Tsudereness (no really, she freaking pulls out rocket launchers to hide her embarrassment), a student who started a Go-Soccer Club (combining Soccer with the traditional Japanese board game of Go), a voodoo practicing vice principal, an epic battle with a deer and… You know what, forget the first sentence, there is NOTHING ordinary about this show! Nichijou (often subtitled My Ordinary Life) is an absurd, off the wall comedy that will have you questioning what is happening, FREQUENTLY. While not all the episodes are equally funny, they are all very strange and it adds to the distinct tone of the show. What also is to be praised is that the animation on display is utterly unique, where, while the art itself is fairly simple, it has a lot of fluid motion to it. There are some scenes where the animation becomes amazingly animated and it is impressive what they can pull off, oftentimes helping to highlight the absurdity of the situation at hand. Given that this was made by the magicians at Kyoto Animation (who never fail in producing beautiful and fluid animation), I am not the least bit surprised. So if you want to check something wacky, surreal and in many ways beautiful, go check out Nichijou. At the very least, it is far from ordinary.