Singer-songwriter Yaeji shares her favorite anime
My Favorite Anime is a column dedicated to collecting the stories of the world’s biggest celebrity anime fans, charting a path from their first encounter with Japanese animation to the series and films they love today, featuring two questions: What was your first favorite anime, and what is your favorite anime now?
Polygon spoke with Yaeji, the Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter and producer and lifelong anime fan. Her debut album, With a hammerpeaked at No. 13 on the Billboard World Albums chart last April and was mentioned The Guardian’s number 7 album of 2023.
What was your first favorite anime?
Based on the original manga written by Yasushi Akimoto and illustrated by manga author Koi Ikeno, 1995 Nurse Angel Ririka SOS is a magical girl fantasy anime that follows Ririka Moriya, a bubbly fourth grader who, on her 10th birthday, is given a magical nurse’s cap that allows her to transform into a super-powered guardian known as the Nurse Angel.
On the surface, Nurse Angel Ririka SOS seems fairly conventional in its similarities to other basic magical girl stories, such as Sailor Moon or Cardcaptor Sakura. Ririka is tasked with combating the evil plans of an alien terrorist organization known as Dark Joker, who are determined to tarnish the world through mass pollution. That’s only afterwards Nurse Angel Ririka SOS begins to show its full hand, exploring the emotional turmoil of a young child who struggles with her role as a foot soldier in an alien war and is forced to make difficult decisions, often without favorable results. Unfortunately, at the time of writing, Nurse Angel Ririka SOS is not available to stream or purchase in North America, although enterprising readers may be able to find clips of the series on YouTube.
What is your favorite anime now?
While Yaeji’s first favorite anime may be a title that flies under the radar of contemporary anime fans, her current favorite anime is one of the most celebrated anime of the 2010s. Based on the manga series by Keiichi Arawi, Nichijou is a surreal slice-of-life comedy that follows a cast of characters going about their daily lives in and around their small town. However, as is the case with Nurse Angel Ririka SOSappearance can be misleading.
Nichijou is known for its deadpan, irreverent style of humor, presenting simple and unassuming scenarios that quickly escalate into a life-or-death struggle with often explosive consequences. Look no further than the first episode, which opens with a skit of an android chasing a cat through the streets of her neighborhood after it steals a fish she was preparing for breakfast. Everything seems fairly normal, until the android accidentally collides with a young man absent-mindedly walking in her path, causing an over-the-top explosion that engulfs the entire city in a blast of blinding white light before fading to the end credits. Again, this is it literal five minutes into the first episode.
Produced by Kyoto Animation and directed by Tatsuya Ishihara (The melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Sound! Euphonium), Nichijou is widely beloved as one of the best slice-of-life anime of the 2010s, not only for its bizarre characters and memorable gags, but also for its exceptional animation that elevates minor gags into meme-worthy material.
The show’s humor is inextricably linked to the exaggerated bursts of smoothly polished animation that act as the punchline to its silly and surprising scenarios. Take for example Nichijou‘s sixth episode, featuring a skit of a principal trying to fight a deer that has somehow wandered onto the school grounds. What would otherwise be a cute aside becomes a titanic showdown on par with a WWE title match, with the director attempting to grab, suplex, and even bomb the deer into submission.
That is Nichijou in a nutshell. There’s no explanation, no concoctions of a plot, and no caveats, just crazy characters thrown headlong into even crazier situations. For all those reasons, Nichijou is a fantastic series that every anime fan should make time for at some point during their journey through the medium.
Nichijou is available to stream on Crunchyroll.