CITY The Animation

Episodes 1-3

Nichijou - My Ordinary Life is one of those quietly perfect pieces of media that feels like it's always existed. I'm acutely aware that the anime premiered in 2011, but there's such a timelessness and immediately endearing quality to Nichijou that it becomes difficult to imagine a world where you haven't seen it, much less a world where it never existed. To use more mainstream examples, imagining a world pre-Nichijou is like trying to imagine a world before the release of works like Citizen Kane, The Catcher in the Rye, or The Lion King. Intellectually, everyone knows that these works were released to the public at some point and that most of human history occurred before these stories existed, but doesn't that feel wrong? Doesn't imagining a world before these works existing make that world feel immediately strange and alien?

I begin this review with this question because I could physically feel reality shifting as the opening moments of Kyoto Animation's latest anime adaptation of one of Keiichi Arawi's manga, CITY, began to play on my TV. CITY The Animation is so utterly charming and so completely itself that I now have a hard time remembering a world where it never existed. Needless to say, CITY The Animation has already proved itself to be a worthy successor to Nichijou, and is well on its way to being an even better comedic work.

To begin, several hundred words of detailed praise: CITY The Animation looks incredible and unlike anything else in anime right now. The combination of a simplistic art direction with bold, bright colors that have little to no shadow or shading makes every scene incredibly vivid. While feeling like a natural evolution of the art direction in Nichijou, CITY The Animation's visuals evoke digital pop art; possessing an almost overwhelming number of distinct colors in any given shot and crisp, thick lines preventing any color bleed. The character designs are also adorable in a youthful kind of way, like a children's book capturing people they'd see while running errands with a parent. The many little critters tucked into the corners of scenes are a constant source of joy in the show. I can't help but point at the screen every time that white cat-rabbit thing is dozing in the corner of a shot or decides to walk in on a conversation and passively participate.

While that description might make CITY The Animation sound overly busy, these visuals add tremendously to the anime's style of humor. These designs allow the characters to be incredibly expressive, and the stylized backgrounds of familiar locals make it feel like these hijinks are happening in places you could stumble into. Most of the jokes in CITY feel improvisational in tone, where dramatic characters respond to a surprising development in a way that makes a given situation even wackier. Some of my favorite sketches from the show so far include: a restaurant owner and new employee covering up spilling noodles into a customer's bag, a woman dealing with several devils on her shoulder after finding 500 yen right next to a police lost-and-found box, a playwright convincing an acting troupe (of animals) to work with him on his latest project, and the entire city falling in love with and wanting to protect the sleepiest girl you've ever seen.

Even when a particular segment feels like it's starting to run long or isn't quite landing, a last-minute twist will always bring it home; or the visuals will be gripping enough to make up for a weaker punchline. There are no bad jokes in these three episodes of CITY, just jokes that are better than others. Though for as much as the comedy is this anime's selling point, it's the underlying characterization and heart that makes these episodes so special.

The characters in CITY aren't just vehicles for gags, and all have enough depth to make them relatable and give their (usually exaggerated) actions and reactions feel motivated. By the first three episodes, the main trio of Midori Nagumo, Niikura, and Wako Izumi are all living together and have pretty defined personalities and relationships. Nikkura gravitated towards Nagumo when they were in high school, as the latter was a savant who succeeded at everything she tried. However, like many gifted-and-talented kids, her natural talent left Nagumo pretty directionless as a young adult, leaving her hard up for cash and so confident that she's always leaping into ridiculous situations. This makes Nikkura the more mature and grounded of the two, though she's still firmly stuck in Nagumo's orbit and pulled into these wacky situations. Wako, meanwhile, is obsessed with things she finds interesting and joins in on, and even exacerbates Nagumo and Nikkura's shenanigans because she knows the two will give her new stimulations and experiences.

These kinds of fun and earnest relationships populate more and more of CITY's cast with each subsequent episode in this three-episode run. While CITY is firmly a comedy, it's also willing to bridge into some more upsetting topics in these relationships. For instance, the middle-school-aged duo of Matsuri and Ecchan has the strongest “improve comedy team” energy of any combination of characters, and are so in sync that they feel like two characters sharing one brain cell. However, in the second episode we learn that Ecchan and her family will be moving away and that she hasn't told Matsuri about this development. This left me with an underlying anxious feeling as I watched them bounce off each other in episode 3, as I kept waiting for Ecchan to tell her friend that she'd be leaving soon; this admission never came.

These tinges of depressing situations or real disappointments make the world of CITY The Animation feel much more real, even if it's still infinitely more vibrant and fun than real life. This little bit of darkness makes it feel like I actually could live in this show, which is a brilliant choice because I want to! Especially when voice actors in both the sub and dub are bringing their A game. I know this isn't much of an observation as she's quietly one of the best voice actors working right now, but Erica Lindbeck brings the exact right combination of confidence, mischievousness, and dumbassery to Nagumo; and the rest of the CITY cast understood their assignment equally well.

These first three episodes of CITY don't just make me want to watch more, they make me want to be a part of this community and interact with these characters. I think that's about the highest praise I can give any piece of art; which means I'm going to have to improve as a writer as this show goes on, as CITY The Animation only seems to be getting better and better!

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Lucas DeRuyter is the defacto Bad Boy of anime reviews (no one else was using the moniker). He rolls with ANN's This Week and Anime crew, and you can check out his coolest work in his portfolio. You can also find him sticking it to the man on his Bluesky account.

CITY The Animation is currently streaming on Prime Video.