What is slice-of-life anime?

Life can be messy, busy, hectic, and demanding. It’s filled with drama and tinged with tragedy even in our best years. Douglas Adams once said: “Life is wasted on the living”. So, at the end of our long days, as we try to forget the hustle and bustle waiting just outside of our front doors, it feels strange that we often turn to media that is just as dramatic, unpredictable, and violent as the world we’re trying to escape.

In Japan, a society that’s far more demanding of its people, whose work-versus-play dynamic is skewed even further toward the former. They understand the need to truly unwind through the media they consume, to detach from their own reality; to heal.

Iyashikei is a sub-genre of Japanese media that sets out to emotionally soothe its audience, to impart a sense of calm we all struggle to find in our ordinary lives. It’s audio-visual soul food, mellow movies and TV shows that avoid drama and action, in favor of presenting a more relaxed, more grounded, and ultimately more heartwarming experience.

Slice-of-life anime is a genre that understands the importance of such media and frequently champions Iyashikei. Slice-of-life understands that life can be hard, yet it also understands that life is just a series of moments; some of which are heart-wrenchingly cruel, others wonderfully warm. It minds these snapshots of life in an effort to take us out of our own moments to explore a life far safer to invest in than our own. It’s escapism; pure and concentrated. It’s not for everyone, but maybe it’s for you. Today, we’ll be exploring some of the sub-sets or sub-genres of slice-of-life anime and talk about what makes them so special.

• Iyashikei

Iyashikei is essentially a concept that’s synonymous with terms such as soothing, comforting, and healing. These shows depict the mundane day-to-day routines of life in all its boring glory, but through the magical lens of anime manage to lend it an entirely new layer of meaning and emotional resonance. These shows put a huge emphasis on whimsical atmosphere, beautiful moments and heartwarming messages in dialogue to the point they have an almost therapeutic effect in the viewer, with narrative tension kept incredibly low.

While these shows can often wander around a series as timeline with reckless abandon, they can just often take place in real time or at least as close to real time as anime can reasonably allow. A perfect example of a day-in-the-life anime is Hidamari Sketch, in fact the episodes are literally named after days of the year. Every episode begins with Yuno (the main character) waking up while every episode ends with her winding down for bed, and she oftentimes runs into the exact same scenarios over the course of the day.

Now, you might be wondering what’s the point of watching something when you know exactly what’s going to happen, especially when that something is nothing. Well, for one thing, putting this hyper-emphasis on such minor details allows the audience to develop a believable sense of that character’s routine. You’re filling in that character’s life style and personality, a well-realized setting is an immersive setting.

Obviously, a strong audio-visual presentation is key to the success of any Iyashikei series, but equally crucial is a sense of meaning and purpose; how do you impose meaning on something as inherently chaotic as human life itself? We think that to be truly effective, an Iyashikei series needs a strong sense of ‘theming’. These shows don’t just work because they’re pretty or relaxing; they work because they’re evocative.

Anime like Non Non Biyori evokes feelings of youth and nostalgia, Aria highlights the innate beauty and the miracles of human nature, while Yokohama Shopping Log explores how cultures can be eroded by time. These ideas are communicated in a narrative level or through clunky exposition. The ideas are implicitly understood by the audience, all thanks to smart directing, clever imagery, and solid characterization. Thus, that’s what makes Iyashikei so distinct from all the other stories out there.

• Gag-driven slice-of-life

These shows are built around delivering jokes. Whether they be explosive punch lines or cheeky retorts, most scenes are framed around building up to an eventual comedic climax. The shows are typically comprised of short segments scenarios, be in the form of lazy conversations or maybe even flashbacks and is right for a whole episode to maintain a constant story. There may be something resembling an overarching narrative here and there, but for the most part, shows like this can pretty much be watched in any order.

Series like Nichijou and Azumanga Daioh are possibly the truest form of the phrase ‘slice-of-life’, literally presenting the routines and interactions of the characters in slices. What separates a show like Nichijou from a more straight-forward comedy driven series like One Punch Man or Prison School is that a good gag-driven slice-of-life isn’t always just trying to make you laugh.

A good example of what we’re talking about is Lucky Star; even though almost every scene in Lucky Star is comprised of a slow build-up to the eventual joke, the show isn’t always trying to be laugh-out-loud funny. Sometimes it’s just trying to be relatable, evocative, or straight-up weird. Obviously, the quality of the show’s actual material is extremely important. But just as valuable, is how broad the series’ sense of scope is.

Think of an old Roadrunner cartoon with Tom & Jerry. We all know what’s going to happen the moment we start watching — we’ve known for years what’s going to happen. That doesn’t mean how we get to that conclusion has to be the same every time, whether we can’t experience something interesting along the way. We think the comedy in the daily lives of high-school boys, for example, is usually really solid. Its timing, concept and execution is, for the most part, pretty great. However, it’s always the same kind of jokes, with the same kind of characters, with the same sense of humor. It makes it almost impossible for us to watch multiple episodes in a row without taking a break.

Meanwhile, shows like Watamote, Lucky Star, Nichijou, and Sakamoto Desu Ga relish the thought of being as unpredictable as possible. Humor doesn’t flourish through repetition, it’s all about catching the viewer off guard. In the second episode of Lucky Star, Tsukasa has a really beautiful moment when she’s listening to a seashell; the kind of thing you’d expect to see from the likes of Aria or Totoro, and the show could just let her have that, but of course it ends up spinning into a joke.

The scene is noteworthy not only because it’s a beautifully timed and well-executed gag, but also because of how cleverly appropriate it is. We know Tsukasa to be naive, meek, giving and overly trusting, and we also know that the surprisingly cruel world of the show loves to abuse this for comedy. The scene wouldn’t have been nearly as funny if it was happening to any old character we didn’t care about, and yet the excellent joke does nothing to take away from the beauty and serenity that the scene provided. That’s why we think the show is on another level. The ability to be melancholic, poignant or sentimental while never abandoning the framework of a jokey light-hearted sitcom is the reason why we want to see more shows alike.

That’s the more themed based slice-of-life, but there are more character driven slice-of-life which will cover in part 2. Related to that, slice-of-life genre provides you relaxing experience because it’s easy to understand and commonly related to our daily life. Othe than that, this genre also gives us enjoying and fun moment while watching its series or movie which its very worth to spend the time being relax, enjoy, and fun in busy schedule for a while. If you interested about slice of life and considering to spend time for being relax, fun, and enjoy, you can try to play Memories, a story-based game. Through Memories, you’re not only watching the story to have enjoying, relaxing, and fun time, but involving by creating you own journey. You can play and download Memories for free through this link for Android and through this link for iPhone.