Nichijou - Episode 15

Now that Nano is regularly attending school, they key in her back inevitably continues to attract attention, particular from Yuuko - cue a decidedly amusing opening sketch to this fifteenth episode of Nichijou that sees her try (and fail) to get her to out her robotic ways before missing a dead give-away as her attention wanders elsewhere.

It seems that Yuuko isn't the only one with an interest in Nano however, with this episode also introducing a science teacher with a rather overbearing curiosity about this new student and her mechanical ways... although she also happens to be absolutely terrible at capturing her prey to find out more.  Indeed, it's Nano who stands out as the centre of attention through much of this episode, from the aforementioned incidents through to her constant pleadings to the Professor to take out the key in her back only for it to be revealed that she's been outfitted with even more odd (and occasionally delicious) pieces of hardware in the meantime.

Throughout all of this we're treated to more of the same visual flourishes and insane over-reactions as ever, which can be tiring much of the time but occasionally works excellently - one teacher-student conversation in particular takes these reaction shots and outbursts so far that it actually becomes pretty funny when backed up with a decent one-liner or two.

Thanks to moments like that and the continuing focus on Nano, who somehow manages to keep Nichijou grounded when it needs to be, this second half of the series is keeping its proverbial dander up so far - not to the point of offering up frequently hilarity, but it seems to have a more easy-going manner in terms of entertainment value right now whereas its previously felt like it was trying too hard quite a lot of the time.  Whether this will continue once the novelty of Nano attending school wears off remains to be seen but hey, after so many dull episodes we have to take what we can get from this series.