My Way or the Anime – The Four Facets of Slice-of-Life

And the secret fifth facet, Minoru Shiraishi.

I’ve been doing a lot of writing for the upcoming season preview lately, and for a while it seemed like every show I was previewing was slice-of-life. I don’t know if there are more slice-of-life shows now-a-days or if I just picked every one of them to preview (which is likely), but in trying to figure out which shows to suggest to you, and for what reasons, I inadvertently came up with a framework by which to describe and/or judge slice-of-life shows. These are the four most common facets which modern slice-of-life anime and manga stories employ: atmosphere, characters, cuteness, and comedy, and a special fifth one, because I’m a cheater like that.