I think my opinion of Nichijou (My Ordinary Life) has improved over the course of the series. Two of the main characters seem more likeable. Yukko isn’t really a jerk. She’s a screw-up, sure, but she’s really trying her best. And the Professor may be a brat but she’s an adorable brat.

The material is as random at the end as it is in the beginning but it is often pretty funny. There is an underlying theme that is made explicit at the end. Life can be incredibly frustrating but it’s the incredibly frustrating things that are the best part. Because (at this point all experienced anime fans will chant in unison) you experience them with your friends!

OK, maybe that’s not very deep, but what do you expect from a gag manga?

Nevertheless, this is the third adaptation that Kyoto Animation has done of a gag manga about high school girls (or the fourth if you count the second season of K-ON.) I think it is high time they did something different. (Preferably not another adaptation of a visual novel by Jun Maeda.)

This isn’t even the best of their high-school-girl-gag-manga adaptations. I like it better than the inane moe-blobery of K-ON, but it doesn’t match Lucky Star which was equally random but had more memorable characters in Konata and Kagami. And none of them are at the level of Azumanga Daio, the granddaddy of the genre.

KyoAni has established itself as a company with great production values and a shortage of good ideas. Here’s hoping that they hire some good writers and surprise us.