Oct 9 2011 11:47 PM Nichijou is Kyoto Animation's 3rd (or rather 4th) attempt at a gag moe show with Lucky Star, K-ON! and K-ON!! being the first few.
To be frank, I didn't like Nichijou very much. I recall watch the pilot episode 0 prior to the premier of the main series earlier this year and was absolutely bored to death. Granted that the pilot ended up not being fully representative of the main show, I was still not excited about it. The gags were only funny occasionally. Cultural references or not, some of the gags were plain dumb and I often found myself enjoying the "over the top ridiculous ones", especially when Yukko was dreaming about Mio's wooden cubes. For a slice-of-life gag show though, this one just doesn't cut it. Also like many of you said, the final episode was a bit more random than normal and felt that it didn't really have a conclusion (not that daily life has a real conclusion anyways)
Animation wise, Kyoto Animation did yet another decent job. There were some things like the ED2 sequence animation that could use a bit of touch up but you could really tell that they put a lot of effort into the emotions of the characters. Very well done in this department.
Sound? Both OP themes were great and done by none other than Hyadain (aka Kenichi Maeyamada), the one artist that I know that can sing both as a girl and a guy. ED themes were okay at best. ED1 was cute and all the others were not particularly memorable as the rotation began in the second cour of the show. Seiyuu was okay, but nothing noteworthy.
Enjoyment? Like I said, I didn't really enjoy this show. I remember having a few high points in the first cour, but the second cour of the show was really bland and not really entertaining. I found fewer gags that I actually enjoyed to the fullest.
Overall, the low DVD/BD sales of this show is more or less representative of the quality of this show. Once you've seen the gag once, it's simply not worth rewatching. It's a one time thing and that's pretty much it for this show. And again, the gags aren't all that impressive in this show. There are other shows that do this much better like Hidamari Sketch and Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. Even looking at this show as a standalone, it just doesn't stand out. Not saying that this is a bad show, but it lacks anything that really makes it impressive and if you didn't know cultural references, it makes this show even less enjoyable as you'd be further limited in the number of gags that would actually impress you. All in all, it's average: not terrible, but a significant amount of room for improvement.
Preliminary Score: 6/10
Final Score: 6/10 
