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numahachi · 5 years ago

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On Chapter 178

or, “A Trilogy In Four Parts”

Nichijou chapter 178, where Nano chases down her stolen ‘fry’, never really made sense to me. Maybe that’s the point and it’s just supposed to be extra bizarre, or maybe the odd things can be explained away in various ways. But I always felt like there was something more to it. Then when I rewatched the anime a few months later, something clicked and I ended up with a pretty fun theory.

The first odd thing is Nano’s behaviour. She spends most of the chapter using her robot functions to their full extent – intentionally, for the most part.

Now maybe this can be explained by character development, since by the end of the anime Nano had become more accepting of her robot nature. I’m not convinced this fully justifies such a radical change though. Would Nano really display her robot nature so openly to a complete stranger and anyone else who happened to witness the fight? Would she really intentionally use her powers to attack someone, even if they’d stolen something important to her? No other scene in Nichijou has really come close to this. It seems like something’s different in chapter 178.

The second anomaly is the thief who stole Nano’s menma (translated as “bamboo shoot” in the English release), mistakenly believing it to be a french fry. This character, who identifies himself in the chapter as “KP3”, is the long-awaited appearance of Kaze no Potesaburou-shishou, who was previously mentioned in volume 7 during Tanabo & Sumika’s encounter with Yukko. Throughout the chapter he converses on the phone with “IP1” – Idaho Poteichi-sensei, also mentioned in volume 7 – about their “Master”’s haemorrhoids. (In the English release this connection is less clear since they had previously translated those characters’ names as “Master Pota-three of the Wind” and “Professor Idaho Pota-two”, but then in chapter 178 changed KP3 to “PP3” and left IP1 unchanged for some reason.)

What’s strange is how those characters have changed. When they were first mentioned in volume 7, it was established that they were often seen alongside Double Cheeseburgirl. Given that Double Cheeseburgirl was later confirmed to be some kind of celebrity entertainer or performance artist, it seemed likely that they were all part of the same trio, maybe with ‘Double’ Cheeseburgirl slotting in between IP1 and KP3.

But in chapter 178, they’re portrayed more as subordinates to their unseen “Master”. Maybe the implication is that they were always just Double Cheeseburgirl’s assistants or something, but even then it seems odd that KP3 would randomly try to steal a schoolgirl’s lunch in broad daylight.

Additionally, KP3 apparently got his jetpack / potato sprout gun from Nakamura-sensei (or at least, she helps him maintain it). Admittedly it ends up breaking, but it still seems unlikely that Nakamura would be capable of engineering something that holds up for that long against Nano, and would provide it to this random shady guy.

So overall the chapter feels quite different to the rest of Nichijou … and this brings us to what I noticed when rewatching the anime. It turns out KP3 and IP1 aren’t the only parts of the chapter that have been referenced previously. During the third and final part of Yukko’s dream, in which Mio confronts the Fey Kingdom soldiers, the Scholar consults his “Demon World Dictionary” for information about the wood cubes. One of the nearby entries in this dictionary is actually for menma:

The implication is that, in this world, menma is considered to have some kind of magical power – like Mio’s wood cubes, though to a lesser extent.

What if chapter 178 actually takes place in that same dream world? The menma connection alone is by no means conclusive, but if you think about it this would actually explain the oddities in the chapter quite nicely. For one thing, while Nano’s behaviour might not match up very well with the rest of Nichijou, it’s absolutely consistent with where Yukko’s mind would wander in a dream. And remember Yukko has a very incomplete picture of who Double Cheeseburgirl actually is, so KP3 and IP1 could easily be based on her hazy assumptions about them. Similarly Yukko may be aware of Nakamura’s experiments to some extent, but wouldn’t fully understand their limits or Nakamura’s motivations.

Maybe it’s all a coincidence and chapter 178 really is just another normal Nichijou story … but it’s nice to think that, even after the conclusion of the Fey Kingdom trilogy, Yukko’s dream world lives on.

#nichijou #nichijou volume 10 #nichijou chapter 178

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