Meta Fanfiction on Nichijou

It was the usual chatter at the club. Saturday night, in the lower levels of some monolithic, imposing institution of academia, nerds are having fun.

“So why do you like Nichijou so much?”

“It’s not that funny, yeah, do tell.”

“What are you saying? It’s second to Azumanga Daioh.”

The scheduler, at the mention of the club’s time-honored comedy anime meme, turns around to exlaim.

“Really, now.”

Our protagonist, the guy in the corner lounging on one of the portable tables at the back of the room, started to doodle on the white board that he was leaning against. Seemingly unaware of the discussion going on, it was suddenly Shark Week on the white board, with several sharks slowly morphing into existence at the tip of water-based markers.

The discussion, meanwhile, heated up. Some people raised the whole meta-on-meta aspect of Nichijou. Others simply said it was boring. The simplicity of the accusation seems to do more to incite than the accusation itself. Defenders gonna defend. Some enjoyed the trolling, others the hyper-reactions. But detractors just didn’t find it funny. Thankfully, the arguments are on good faith; the fact the club scheduler is interested in the discussion meant it was serious. The nerds all hailed the scheduler as, in other words, the emcee of the night. The curator, the provider, the weekly club meeting is where the members partake in the choice sampling put together by the scheduler. If the schedule provided a screening of Omoide Poroporo, it would mean the same 5 people would sit through the scheduler’s favorite, and everyone would have to go home and fight the raging crowd of drunk frat boys and what else going on at the campus on a Saturday night. If the scheduler provided your latest dose of moe anime, people would have only bear with it in 30-minute doses.

“See, this is a shark. And this is another shark. And they are all sharks.” Remarked the protagonist, quietly. The club president was sitting next to him, along with a couple lone wolves. Already somewhat amused by the sharks, they paid attention as the protag-man started to doodle out the kanji for shark underneath one of them.

鮫

Now one of those majestic, terrible creatures, is verbally identified. There are two other unlabeled sharks on the whiteboard, in which the protagonist now writes:

SAME

Under them. The club president’s eyes lit up, but he remained quiet.

“You see, the joke is, they are the SAME. But they are also SAME. If you find this joke funny, then you will probably like Nichijou. If not, you probably won’t.”

The discussion continued, but seemingly elsewhere, far away. And unimportant.