Nichijou Review

There is no plot and no arc, only a small town, a handful of students, an eight year old professor and the robot she built, and a run of sketches that end whenever Arawi decides they are finished. What separates it from every other short form comedy is the drawing and the timing. Arawi will spend a full page on a single silent reaction, break the panel grid to let a gag physically escalate, and then cut back to a flat conversation as though nothing had happened.

That control of rhythm is the craft, and it is why so much of the humour survives translation intact where reference heavy comedy does not. The backgrounds are precise and almost pastoral, which gives the nonsense somewhere to happen. It is uneven and admits as much, since some strips exist to fill a page and a few recurring bits go stale. There is no reason to read it quickly. Taken a chapter at a time it is among the funniest books in the medium, and the animated version was faithful to something genuinely hard to adapt.