The CITY anime came out. Now what?

One November afternoon in 2021, a thing greeted my house: the Amazon order for CITY vol. 1 came. I sat down on the couch and read it peacefully in a go (I’m a quick reader when it comes to comics!), not without having one or two surprises (yeah actually just one in chapter 3 because I tend to stay blank most of the time).

From then on, I’d get the rest of them on special dates out of modesty. During the first half of 2022, I would look at the wiki (it used to be in Fandom and had a dark layout) and think something like “This manga is so good, shame it won’t get an anime because no one knows about its existence…”. I’d also have ideas for fanart or fanfics, yet they never got to see the light of day since my mental state was worse back then. But you know what? I’m actually glad because they were TERRIBLE (I’m ashamed of how my memory works), and if you ask about my characters, oh boy… I sure was a different person.

September 21st (yes), 2024. I came back home exhausted after an long convention day. When I opened Reddit, God rose up from the screen and said at my face:

“Change your attitude for once.”

It’s been almost a year since this happened, so was the wait worth it? Eeeeh… not everything is bad, but it unfortunately misses A LOT of things chapter wise, making it hard to watch (bias). Since I know nothing about reviews (though this isn’t my first time writing one) I’ll be dividing this review in four sections: visual aspects, auditory aspects, literary aspects, and conclusion.

Visual aspects

Animation

When talking about an anime, that obviously can’t be ignored (and can be vicious at times, if you know what I mean). This was actually the smoothest animation I’ve ever seen in a medium which tends to value aesthetic over smoothness. There are also moments that perfectly waste the entire budget, something Nichijou did too.

(From EP1)

I think this was made possible thanks to the simplicity of the

Art style

There are some cases when people don’t like their inspirations’ current styles, and I’m no stranger to that (*cough* Jhonen Vasquez- CHOKES CARLES DALMA-). Though I’m probably lucky this didn’t happen with one of my biggest influences. I prefer Arawi’s older art style manga wise, yet I have absolutely no problem at all with his newer one. In fact, it looks pretty cute! Some Nichijou fans/enjoyers might struggle to get used to it, but that’s because it became more cartoonish throughout time.

I personally think it’s a good thing since that’s what makes him stand out from other manga artists. Some sort of self-rediscovery, one would say.

Auditory aspects

Soundtrack

Just like Nichijou has a music genre that forms its identity (orchestra, made by Yuji Nomi), so does CITY THE ANIMATION. But instead of being a prolific anime composer… it’s an obscure folk band that somehow this show dragged them out of their probably almost 10 year long hiatus according to what I’ve seen on YT. I guess you can tell I was shocked when I found about this.

Last month I listened to their debut album (same name as the band) out of curiosity and I felt kind of intrigued about how they would do with composing songs for an anime. Little did I know the very first song to ever show up would captivate me. So yes, Piranhans (NOT Piranhas, NOT The Piranhans, PIRANHANS. Yes, just Piranhans) did an awesome job with making the atmospheres match with each situation! I’m looking forward to the OST release (please Time Machine give me inspiration for Our Previous Life I’m begging you).

Voice Acting

Even though the voices aren’t exactly what I expected them to sound like when I was reading the manga, they still fit with their personality! I don’t know what was with this clip though, if the VA got exhausted or the team just wanted to get an unexpected laugh from the viewer since that caught me off-guard…

when the va gets overworked

Aaanyway, I’m more of a sub person myself, but the (English, of course) dub was WAY more expressive than the original. I’ve listened to others (once again, out of curiosity) and they also did a decent job (yet still don’t beat it). Except for Castilian Spanish, it sucks d-

OP and ED

The opening probably wasn´t the best yet not the worst. A clip of the Mont Blanc Trio as kids appeared for some reason despite them canonically meeting in college BOTH in the manga and anime, but whatever. At least it has the "diversity" I expected.

The song has a pretty weird structure though. When I first saw it, I thought the first verse was cut off to fit, but after listening to the full version...

it was just like that. It was only used after the first chorus. Like I know why it´s like that, I don´t listen to Furui Riho anyway. What matters is that it didn´t make my ears bleed. (I´m having really bad flashbacks... please no...)

The ending was less odd and the stop motion clay aesthetic was quite an interesting choice.

Literary aspects

Adaptation

This is unfortunately the biggest issue here. The trailers revealed they were going to animate lots of chapters from the manga, making many people -including me- very excited, but wondering about the amount of episodes. However, a bunch of hours before it aired, it was announced that there would be 13. Some said it was because of the industry’s problems, others guessed it was KyoAni’s fear of failure since Nichijou, then there´s the production cost... yadda yadda.

When EP1 came out, it somehow skipped the intro (how the story started), which made the fanbase realize it was rushed. I mean, (almost) everything else is decent and all, but the problem is that the parts where the progress and Arawi´s trademark gags are shown were cut off.

"BuT iT´s SlIcE oF lIfE-" YES I KNOW SHUT UP. The difference is that it actually has (m)a(ny) plot(s) and character development unlike Nichijou.. And I have zero clue how this came to be by keeping in mind he was involved in the making. If I was there too, I would keep the plot important parts and add a few episodic chapters.

Conclusion

General opinion

It´s not that bad, but what I mentioned before bursted my bubble. I don´t really think this will ruin my perception of the series since I grew very close to the manga as someone who was (and still is) super pessimistic. I live and die for CITY.

Now, should you watch it?

If you read any of the two mangas or watched Nichijou, then no, because that will end in disappointment. Starting with the anime is concerningly worse.

I don´t know if this a good time, but in case anyone wanting to know what the actual hell happened, then check out this video. It explains everything of the original work PERFECTLY and the song choices for introducing each thing are so good to the point it’s sometimes diabolical.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk and letting me ruin your CITY Sundays.

Kind of unrelated but I wanted to share this: the day I started writing this I had a dream where I was watching the CITY Movie and sat next to KamaOni (lower right row, followed by Todoroki then Arama (the Editor-in-Chief just wasn´t there). He lent me his popcorn because I couldn´t do something, maybe going to the bathroom before it started (don´t ask how).