Nichijou - Episode 17

Having entertained me a little more than its typically been capable over the past weeks, Nichijou picked a bad day to try and amuse me given that I'm not really in the best of moods.  But hey, give it your best shot...

After kicking off with the Professor catching a crow (no, I'm not sure how she managed that) and giving it Sakamoto's scarf to find that it's actually a rather polite bird, we move on to one of those moments that finds Kyoto Animation at their most experimental, via a sketch largely involving Yuuko and Mio trying to build a card pyramid - a sketch which is delivered using music alone to accompany the animation, with not a word of voice acting in sight.  If nothing else, it's nice to have Yuuko shut for once I suppose, even if the pay-off of said skit isn't all that great.

Truthfully, the only laugh this episode extracted to me is effectively a repeat of a joke from the last episode, with a ridiculous yet funny exchange between Takasaki and Annaka which becomes ever more silly and ever more quick-fire with its exclamations.  Come the end of the episode, we see Yuuko trying her best to avoid being the "straight man" to Mai's constant comedy efforts - something she not only fails to do but ends up realising that it's a role she revels in, leaving all parties to be summarily satisfied.

Overall. this is probably one of the weaker episodes of Nichijou we've seen in a while - perhaps due to the cold open and subsequent lack of full opening credits it felt like an overly long instalment that dragged on too long, and to put it more simply a lot of what we saw simply wasn't funny.  Then again, maybe I'm just being a miserable git today and I'm somehow failing to spot plenty of hidden comic gems within.  Ah well, such is the inconsistency of both life and anime comedy I suppose...