Nichijou Episodes 16 and 17

The taste of defeat.

I'm finally back from my trip, which means that I'll be dishing out a bunch of lump reviews. Expect alot of these as I'll also be attending to my neglected summer homework before school starts. Anyway, on to Nichijou!
Episode 16:
Yuuko checks out a new cafe, but has know idea how to order her coffee. It's one thing to not know what a doppio is (this is the first time I've heard of the term myself), but to not know the difference between small and tall? Oh, Yuuko. The skit that follows is much funnier, with Mio owning three people and a goat in an attempt to hide her yaoi art work. Mio just keeps getting better and better.

A pre-schooler owning his poor old grandpa in baseball, you don't see that everyday...

Mio is too awesome for words.

This girl is just so fudging awesome.

The second skit is my favorite thus far, and now, Mio is my favorite character in this series. Moving on, the next skit has the girls studying in a fast food joint (no, it was not WcDonalds). The main conflict was that both Mio and Mai needed an eraser. Yuuko wouldn't lend it to them unless they guessed which one of her hands hid it. Of course, Mai figured out how to trick Yuuko into telling them which hand was right. Turns out, she had a character eraser this whole time. The punch line? Character erasers are useless. This wasn't as funny as the skit before it, but it's always nice to see Mai make a butt monkey out of Yuuko. The final skit had Yuuko and Professor meeting for the first time. And it was adorable, to say the least. Yuuko and Professor really hit it off, and the end was actually pretty touching.

The two most immature characters in the show finally meet.

This episode didn't start with one of its best skits, but what preceded after that were all genuinely enjoyable. Mio gets better and better with each episode, and Mai gets weirder and weirder (not that there's anything wrong with that). Yuuko's line at the end of the episode, though not exactly original ("Nano is Nano"), was still pretty sweet. The girls' growing friendship with Nano is also fun to watch. I also hope that Professor will get to interact with Mai and Mio soon, and that we'll see more skits with her and Yuuko together.
This episode gets:

It looks like an arrow.

Episode 17:
The first skit was pretty boring, much like the previous episode's opener, but the skit that follows was...well...Okay, first we have Minorou Shiraishi voicing Sakamoto, now we have Daisuke Ono voicing Crow?! Wow KyoAni, just, wow. Anyway, Professor catches Crow and puts Sakamoto's scarf around him. Apparently, this whole time, the scarf was what allowed Sakamoto to talk. Crow, with his smooth voice and polite personality, immediately wins over the two girls, much to Sakamoto's annoyance. He eventually leaves by the end of the day and the girls bid him a tearful farewell. Sakamoto was pretty upset with his departure too, since Crow forgot to return his scarf. Another enjoyable skit, but what really carried it was hearing Daisuke Ono charm the two girls in the form of a crow. It's no wonder why the guy usually plays the role of bishonens.

Winter already?

The next skit plays out like a silent movie, except, it wasn't in black and white. Mio, Yuuko, and Nano are all freaking out over the last two cards for their tower of cards. Mai, as usual, doesn't give a crap. Nano eventually falls asleep and Mai eventually starts trolling Mio and Yuuko. In the end, the ceiling light falls on the tower of cards. Yuuko places the last two cards on the ceiling light, cheers, and Mio just looks depressed. Mai doesn't care. Okay, this was actually pretty funny mostly thanks to Mio and Yuuko's reaction faces to all of Mai's trolling. Especially this:

It's heart-stopping.

The next skit stars Ms. Nakamura. In an attempt to capture Nano, she ends up capturing (and scarring) that poor mohawk-boy again. Meanwhile, Makoto and that one teacher that has a crush on his sister finally meet. It turns out that Makoto has a bit of a dark side behind that sweet face and  he decides to black-mail the teacher into becoming the Igo Soccer Club's adviser. Annaka comes into the picture, and its EH?!?! all over again. The episode ends with Yuuko contemplating on whether or not she should continue playing the straight man in all of Mai's eccentric actions. This proves to be an extremely hard task because this is Mai we're talking about. In the end Yuuko (unsurprisingly) gives in and decides to continue being Mai's straight man. Yuuko is satisfied and Mai is pleased. Everyone else is freaked out. I will never understand the relationship between these two. While we're on the subject, I'd also like to see Mai and Mio interact more. Not once have I ever seen a skit with just the two of them.

It's always the nice ones.

Yuuko's straight man responses stun potential crimes.

Aside from the episode's opener, the skits in this episode were all enjoyable to watch. It was nice to see some of the other students again, but the crow skit really made my day. The last skit with Yuuko and Mai seemed a little tedious at first, but it worked out in the end.
This episode gets: