Comedy · School

Nichijou

Japanese manga series

Released: —
Platforms: —
Genres: Comedy School Slice of life
Developers: —
Publishers: —
Country: Japan

About

Nichijou (Japanese: 日常, Hepburn: Nichijō; lit. "Everyday Life") (stylized in all lowercase) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Keiichi Arawi. The manga began serialization in the December 2006 issue of Kadokawa Shoten's manga magazine Shōnen Ace, and was also serialized in Comptiq between the March 2007 and July 2008 issues. Kadokawa Shoten later published all chapters of the series' initial run in ten tankōbon volumes from July 2007 to December 2015. After a six-year hiatus, the manga began serialization again in 2021.

Set in Gunma Prefecture, Nichijou is populated by an ensemble set of characters, featuring moments from their everyday lives which alternate between the mundane and the strange, without strong focus on a narrative. A 26-episode anime television series directed by Tatsuya Ishihara and produced by Kyoto Animation was broadcast on independent television stations from April 3 to September 21, 2011, after an earlier original video animation (OVA) was released in March. The series became known in English as My Ordinary Life. A PlayStation Portable game by Vridge and Kadokawa Shoten was released on July 28, 2011, entitled Nichijou: Uchuujin.

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Story

Nichijou follows the everyday lives of various people in the town of Tokisadame, Gunma, centering on the energetic Yūko Aioi, the bright and cheerful Mio Naganohara, the quiet and deadpan Mai Minakami, the anxious android Nano Shinonome, her young creator, the Professor (Hakase), and a talking black cat named Sakamoto, along with an ensemble cast of characters. Random, outlandish events regularly occur throughout the series, mainly through the mundane situations each character goes through.

In the anime series, Nano receives the most prominent story arc out of all the characters; the first half of Nichijou involves her desire to become a student in high school, while the second half deals with her fear of being exposed as a robot while at school. Vignettes which are mostly unrelated to the main focus of the series are placed throughout each episode, some of them adapted from Helvetica Standard, another manga by Arawi.

Reception

The Nichijou manga series sold 1,005,300 tankōbon volumes in 2011, reaching 49th place in the year's best-selling manga series chart released by Oricon. The manga has continued to see success following its six-year hiatus, with its 11th volume, released on December 26, 2022, ranking 8th on the weekly Oricon manga sales chart for the week of its release.

Despite the manga's success, the Nichijou anime adaptation reportedly had low BD and DVD sales, with animation director Shunji Suzuki noting that it did not come close to meeting the break-even-line. The first DVD volume sold 924 copies in its first week of sales, while the second and fourth BD volumes sold over 2,000 copies each in their first week.