Nichijou is a comedy manga written and illustrated by Keiichi Arawi. It’s bizarre, surreal, and silly to the extreme. There’s not an overarching story (at least not in the first volume), just a series of small skits set in a school that feel similar to something like Peanuts, where there’s a bunch of wacky characters that reoccur in the stories and they’re funnier the more you get to know them. I think this would get better with each re-read.

My favourite characters are Nano and the principal. Nano is a robot who doesn’t want her classmates to learn that she’s a robot, but she has a giant key in her back. Everyone knows, and are trying to catch her out. The principal just has the worst jokes, and no one finds them funny. One of the funniest stories is when the principal fights a deer that makes it’s way onto the school site.

There’s a lot of variety in the stories, and to be honest they’re a mix bag as to whether they’re actually funny. Some of them had me laughing out loud, while others I was just waiting for them to be over. Thankfully they’re all only a couple of pages. I have seen parts of the anime version of this, which I think is a lot funnier than the manga.

Nichijou is easy reading, and something that’s best to read in short doses. You can pick up the book and read any random chapter and most of them are funny. It’s really weird, and always takes the strangest option to land the punchline. I’ll happily read more, even if I’m not in a rush to.

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