Two anime for the price of one!

In this incredibly surreal comedy from Kyoto Animation, the gloves of comedy are off! On one side of town, there is a seemingly normal high school attended by Mio and her best friends Mai and Yuko. Filling their daily lives with insanity, within the first 13 episodes there will be deer wrestling, a plot to overthrow a king, a camping trip from hell and the more mundane forgetting of homework, fights with friends and keeping BL manga drawings a secret at all costs.

On the other side of town lies the Shinonome Laboratory where a loli professor has invented her own robot Nano. Constantly fitting her with new and consistently pointless updates and features, the pair live together with their talking cat Sakamoto dealing with every day situations including the consequences of the professor’s inventions, snacking and how to kill a bug trapped under a cup.

Good and the Bad

I had such a difficult time when it came to write the story synopsis for this series because really, how are you supposed to describe this one? In the latest outing from Kyoto Animation, the gods of comedy are smiling gracefully on this series as every episodes pulls out the stops and unleashes a tidal wave of sight gags, overreactions and set ups that will last for entire minutes on end just to get the audience laughing. From where I’m sitting, they’ve succeeded.

What I found so hilarious about My Ordinary Life is its willingness to go the extra mile to get the laugh. To be a fan of this series, audiences are going to have to get used to one thing very quickly and that is incredibly long set ups. Ranging anywhere from 30 seconds to 8 minutes, most of this series is when its in a period of setting up whatever joke its going for. Once you get to that moment however, sometimes you’re going to find that your moment is actually just an illusion that was never coming to begin with. The absence of a punch line is the punch line and I couldn’t help but laugh every time.

When this series is on its mark however (particularly throughout the Hakese/Nano scenes), the comedy in this series is a rain of gold down upon your brain. Going to extreme lengths, My Ordinary Life will never stop with the incredible reaction gags and physical comedy which pits woman on man, man on psychic medium or even principal on deer.

Music

What shocked me the most about My Ordinary Life is the incredibly strong musical score that goes along with this series. From deep dramatic tones to more whimsical horns, the orchestra behind this series really does an amazing job of playing up each scene to epic proportions and when you have incredible reaction gags like this series does, having a background score that can play it up to 11 is always a good thing.

Overall

This is the surreal comedy of the year that should have everyone laughing. While a good sense of patience is required for this one, there is little else standing in the way of anyone having a good time with this series. This is another comedy gem!

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