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Tuesday, 24 March 2020

Nichijou, Volume 1 by Keiichi Arawi Review


“I thought a Buddhist statue would be a good birthday present… Buddhit looks like I was wrong” - that crime against humanity joke flatly delivered by the mad principal followed by him wrestling a deer until his toupee fell off was the moment when Nichijou won me over. Up until then it was the usual demented shenanigans that I’ve come to expect from CITY creator Keiichi Arawi but that chapter had me genuinely laughing.

Unlike CITY, Nichijou: My Ordinary Life is a school-centric manga, though it’s no less hilarious or utterly silly. There’s a robot high schooler with a giant key sticking out of her back and her inventor is, of course, a little girl! Every time the robot girl tries to have her “professor” take the key out so people won’t know she’s a robot, the professor reveals secret hiding places in the robot’s body containing food items like swiss rolls, sweet buns and toast!

One girl gets a part-time job wearing a daifuku (Japanese sweet rice cake with azuki bean filling) mascot uniform but she does such a poor job the owner takes over. Then he starts dancing inappropriately and gets arrested - god, I’m laughing just typing that! It’s such a bonkers comic.

It starts off slowly so I wasn’t that taken with the early scenes - the food explosion, one character trying to figure out why another won’t talk to them - and the snooty pseudo-rich kid wasn’t funny. But the good easily outweighs the bad. And I learned a new move in Rock, Paper, Scissors - Rockersors!

I don’t know what took me so long to discover this creator’s work but I’m glad I did because dude’s a comedic jeenyus! Wacky, funny manga, thy name is Nichijou (and CITY) - you can’t go wrong with this first volume.

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