The Summer 2025 Anime Preview Guide - CITY The Animation

Penniless college student Midori Nagumo lives in an ordinary city filled with not-quite-ordinary people. And as this reckless girl runs about, she sets the city in motion. Midori is in a bit of a bind. She is in debt, and her landlady is trying to shake her down for unpaid rent. Her best friend 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...

CITY The Animation is based on the CITY manga by Keiichi Arawi. The anime series is streaming on Amazon Prime Video on Sundays.

I don't want to get ahead of myself, but this might be one of the most gorgeous things I have looked at in the past couple of years. Kyoto Animation isn't an outlier when it comes to delivering high-quality animation, but to nail a very specific look for a series in style and directing is a separate conversation entirely. I have not read the source material for City, but I could tell that it is emulating the manga aesthetic seamlessly. The line shading on the shadows, the various popping colors, and even the way that different things are laid out between the foreground just scream “Manga”.

But this isn't a motion comic; this is a fluidly animated comedy series that seeks to capture the different perspectives you would expect from people living in a small town. I like how there isn't necessarily a central main character because, as the title suggests, the inhabitants of the city itself are the entertainment factor. We got high schoolers, kids, old men, irresponsible adults, we have it all! This is done by the same person who made Nichijou, and while, so far, this doesn't seem as crazy as that show yet, I can see where a lot of the DNA is. If anything, it feels like this series is emphasizing more comedic breaks through silence, which adds a lot of emphasis to how the characters react to each other.

As a comedy, your mileage on how the jokes land may vary. I wouldn't even necessarily say that a lot of the humor in this episode was laugh-out-loud for me. But even if this humor doesn't play towards your sensibilities, it's executed so perfectly that I feel like it still needs to be admired on some level. I'll be keeping an eye on this show thoroughly as it will be my gentle treat after a long week of work.

Slife-of-life anime are an institution that run a whole gamut of style and quality. Even putting aside the pedigree of Keiichi Arawi and previous creation Nichijou, CITY The Animation looked primed to stand out as one of the more distinctive examples. Kyoto Animation is back on the case, bringing a stunningly bold, thick-lined, flat-colored art style that swooshes past viewers at the start with an irreverent story about a petrified bird god that has pointedly nothing to do with the actual setting and plot. We've never been so back.

Not that City is necessarily just "More Nichijou." It does have the same short-burst ensemble-based approach to the comedy, yes. But thus far there are no robots or diminutive mad scientists, and the antics seem just a bit more grounded. Sure there are quirky women creating their own gods for good luck, as well as an odd old man apparently spying on the restaurant where much of the action takes place (he's seemingly killed in an explosion partway through), but really, I mean things are more normal. Sketches can encompass two school friends BS-ing about what counterproductive superpowers they'd have in an extremely knowable way before cutting to a Kenan & Kel-ass farce about restaurant workers trying to stop a patron from realizing they dropped some noodles into his bag.

A lot of the base delivery of this comedy does come down to that very anime style "characters react by yelling a lot" school of supposed punchlines. Some of that can be very hit or miss, like the awkward pauses between a manga author and his editor regarding struggles coming up with ideas. And the opening bit revolving around putting introductory boy Tatewaku in a skirt probably isn't going to work for everyone, but I thought it was earnestly funny enough. What elevates all this usual action is, expectedly, that artistry. KyoAni are gorgeously committing to each one of these bits, selling even the most minor of punch-lines as animation events. Even that aforementioned awkward author/editor conversation brings some lusciously animated blobby tear-drops and devolving doodly faces.

The height of this is probably that noodle-bag sketch. Just when it's hitting a fever pitch of chaos, the ultimate act of blasting a patron in the face with a champagne cork and dropping another serving of noodles into the bag is rendered with quiet, musically scored beauty that turns the physical comedy into stupid, stupid poetry. I was howling. It's backed up by the layers of other happenings (like said spying old man getting exploded as a side-effect of everything) that keeps everything feeling like it's moving and speaks to the interconnected nature all these people have as residents of this "City". This is a kind of comedy that, as long as it's been around, has been proven not to work for everyone. But if you're into it, I think coming back to it week after week to see KyoAni's spin on it will be well worth the trip.

I must reveal a secret, known only to my closest friends and people who follow me on social media: the beloved comedy series Nichijou did nothing for me. I sat through the entire first episode completely stone-faced, even as my friend cracked up next to me. Comedy is subjective, blah blah blah. Thus, I approached CITY The Animation with a sense of trepidation, even dread – would I once again be left out in the cold while everyone I cared about enjoyed warm chuckles and guffaws beside the warm glow of the TV screen?

While I've seen more adoring reviews than the one I am in the midst of writing, I did, in fact, enjoy CITY! Hooray, I get to be part of the crowd!

No small part of what made this such a pleasure to watch was the brilliant animation. I'm not the first person to connect the mood of the series to illustrations by the children's author Richard Scarry and I won't be the last; as someone who spends a significant amount of time reading books to toddlers, the comparison is too apt not to make. The titular city comes to life with vivid, even hyperreal colors, and the use of pen-and-ink lines over traditional shading methods creates a flat, picturesque feeling. Normally, I'd criticize the lack of depth, but here it just works and makes the forays into a sense of three-dimensionality all the more striking.

The sketches are more hit or miss; the first after opening is about a boy being pushed to wear a skirt. “LOL it's humiliating for boys to wear girly clothing” is just regressive in this day and age, even if the skit is also skewering astrology. It's also the weakest one of the episode, and it's too bad the episode put its worst foot forward like that. The rest range from frenetic, such as the “crunchy noodles in the bag” incident, to endearing, like the girl who lovingly describes her texture stims. The deliberately unfocused narrative makes it so I don't have much of a sense of the characters yet, or whether they'll become anything more than loosely-defined vehicles for gags. But considering it is a gag series, that's fine, and the voice actors in both languages seem to be having fun.

Nichijou may have left me cold, but CITY has enough charm that I'm willing to give it more time. And hey, maybe by the end I'll be cracking up right along with my friends.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it! Long ago, in the ancient, bygone days of around 2011 or so, Nichijou cemented its reputation as an comedy classic by marrying likeable characters, absurd humor, and an ridiculously high-quality animation that elevated the rest of the series' strengths. CITY The Animation is essentially the exact same thing, except different. We've got a different cast of characters, sure - they're in college now, instead of high school - and the setting has moved to a new, anonymous metropolis. Still, if you ever got the chance to enjoy Nichijou, then you'll be right at home in the CITY.

That's a great thing, so far as I'm concerned. Any opportunity to enjoy the talents of the crew at Kyoto Animation is a worthwhile endeavor, and a wacky sketch-comedy lets the artists cut loose and get really weird with it. It's one thing for a gag to center around the clumsy waitress Midori accidentally uncorking a champagne bottle right into a customer's face, but the gag reaches new heights in true Nichijou fashion as we watch the ballistic cork slowly penetrate the skull of the patron is gloriously detailed slow-motion. An otherwise stone-simple scene featuring two dudes freaking out over a manga in their tiny apartment becomes engrossing simply because of how much effort is being put into every deranged quiver and spasm of their faces.

The vocal cast makes sure to sell all of these bits with gusto, which is absolutely necessary considering the lunatic-yet-also-somehow-still-cozy tone that CITY is aiming for. I watched Amazon's stream of the premiere in English, and the dub capably translates the show's appeal. You hear every gasp, every sputter, every shriek, and every squeak, and it often sounds like the actors are having so much fun that they're just a fraction of a second away from breaking.

CITY The Animation might be a little too weird and zany for some, but I implore anyone who loves animation to at least check it out. The best thing about the Nichijou/CITY approach is that, even if a joke doesn't make you bust a gut laughing out loud, it will still be utterly mesmerising to look at. It is a standout testament to the skills of a team of artists in their prime, and I consider it one of the must-watch shows of the summer.