Struggling college student Midori Nagumo lives in an ordinary city filled with not-quite-ordinary people. As this reckless girl runs about, she sets the city in motion. Midori is in a bit of a bind--she's deep in debt, and her landlady is trying to shake her down for unpaid rent. Her best friend Ayumu Niikura refuses to loan her cash since she's wised up to her tricks. Maybe some bullying would help. Or a bit of petty theft. Neither is sustainable. Maybe getting a job would settle things... But working means less time for fun adventures in the big city...

Nichijou is one of those quietly perfect pieces of media that feels like it's always existed. I'm 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 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, I dunno, insert any culturally significant work here. Intellectually, everyone knows that these works didn't exist for most of human history, 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 KyoAni's anime adaptation of CITY, a manga from the same creator as Nichijou, began to play on my TV. CITY The Animation is so utterly charming and completely itself that I now have a hard time remembering a world where IT never existed. Needless to say, it's already proven itself to be a worthy successor to Nichijou and is well on its way to being, dare I say it, even better.

To begin my next several paragraphs of praise, CITY looks incredible and unlike anything else in anime right now. The combination of a simplistic art direction with bold, bright colours that have little to no shadows or shading makes every scene incredibly vivid. While feeling like a natural evolution of the art direction in Nichijou, th visuals evoke digital pop art, possessing an almost overwhelming number of distinct colours in any given shot and thick lines preventing any colour bleed. The character designs are also adorable in a youthful kind of way, like a children's book capturing the random people a kid would 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 and go "Oh!" 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 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 everyday locales make it feel like these hijinks are happening in places you could stumble into yourself. Most of the jokes 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 favourite sketches from the show so far include a restaurant owner and new employee covering up spilling yakisoba into a customer's bag only to end up doing it a second time, a girl dealing with several shoulder devils and losing her mind over the lack of an angel after finding 500 yen right next to a police 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 too 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 first three episodes, only jokes that aren't as good as 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 aren't just vehicles for gags, and they all have enough depth to make them relatable and their (usually exaggerated) actions and reactions feel motivated. By the first three episodes, the main trio of Midori Nagumo, Ayumu Niikura and Wako Izumi are all living together (with Wako, sort of the Osaka of this cast, living in the other two's bedroom closet) and have pretty defined personalities and relationships. Niikura gravitated towards Nagumo when they were in highschool, as the latter was a savant who succeeded at everything she tried. However, like many gifted and talented kids, her natural talent left Nagumo directionless as a young adult, leaving her hard up for cash and so overconfident that she's always leaping into ridiculous situations. This makes Niikura the more mature and grounded of the two, though she's still firmly stuck in Nagumo's orbit and pulled into these situations with her. Wako, meanwhile, is a photographer who quickly becomes obsessed with anything she finds interesting and joins in on, and even exacerbates Nagumo and Niikura'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. While CITY is firmly a comedy, it's also willing to bridge into some more upsetting topics in these relationships. For instance, the middleschool-aged duo of Matsuri and Ecchan has the strongest improv comedy team energy of any combination of characters and are so in sync that they feel like they share the same brain cell. However, in the second episode, we learn that Ecchan and her family will be moving away and she hasn't told Matsuri yet. 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, and this admission never came.

These tinges of depressing situations or real disappointments make the world of CITY 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 kinda want to. Especially when the 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 VAs working right now, in terms of both talent and overall behaviour if I'm being totally honest, but Erica Lindbeck in particular brings the exact right combination of confidence, mischievousness and dumbassery to Nagumo, and the rest of the cast understood their assignment equally well.

These first three episodes 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. CITY The Animation seems destined to just keep getting better and better!