Originally written 2017
Hello there. Have you seen Haruhi? Do you like Nichijou? If so, then you should watch The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi-chan.
It’s a series of short skits set in the Haruhi universe, but stylistically it’s the closest thing to Nichijou I’ve encountered thus far in my anime watching. Haruhi-chan is 25 episodes long with episodes ranging from 2:30-5:00 long on average. So all up it ends up feeling like one or two Haruhi themed episodes of Nichijou.
If you liked Nichijou’s art-style, sense of humour and skit format then you’re in luck because Haruhi-chan is the closest thing I’ve found so far. Nichijou is my favourite comedy anime and one of my favourite series of all time, so finding Haruhi-chan was like a blessing. It really just feels like more Nichijou to me.
Obviously I can’t show you the similarities in comedy from images alone, but here’s some to compare art-style;
It’s worth noting that Nichijou and Haruhi-chan share their character designer Futoshi Nishiya, and the director Yasuhiro Takemoto did some work on Nichijou as well, which explains their stylistic similarities. Unlike the other spinoff The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan, Haruhi-chan is still produced by Kyoto Animation like the main series and Nichijou were.
All of the characters from the main series show up, but the new additions are:
Chibi housesitter Asakura who generally spends her time being a goof. She acts pretty similar to Hakase from Nichijou
Kimidori-san – A sentient balloon animal that shows up halfway during the series. He’s literally just a balloon version of Sakamoto from Nichijou (they even share the same voice actor).
Just a heads-up, the first few episodes are cgi, and not particulary good cgi at that. However, it quickly abandons that decision in episode 5 and switches to regular 2D animation that I think looks pretty similar to Nichijou so tough it out, it’s only a few minutes. I also found that after the animation shift the comedy starts to get stronger as well.
It was originally released on Youtube by Kyoani, and then later on DVD. Though it can still be found on Youtube thanks to questionable reuploads.
Begin here and follow the Up Next for all 25 episodes
Now then, I hear you asking “wait, I see there’s another Haruhi shorts spinoff, should I watch Nyoro-n Churuya-san as well?” The answer to that is no. Tsuruya-san is bad and nothing like Haruhi-chan. Tsuruya-san basically revolves around chibi-Tsuruya trying to have fun but then other members of the SOS Brigade show up (all with the same cgi face) and get in her way ending with her making the sound “nyoronn~”. Rinse and repeat.
EDIT: There’s been a couple comments mentioning that they found Churuya-san pretty funny, so if you’re curious then give it a go. Personally I remember not being too enthralled by it but if others enjoyed it then I think that’s worth considering too. However I just rewatched episode 2 and thought that was pretty funny so maybe I’d have a different opinion after a full rewatch.
skapbadoa 
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