This anime is obscure. It's a comedy that's observing the quirks of Nagoya's culture compared both to its neighbouring towns and prefectures and to the rest of Japan in general. They include dialect words, weird local food, sports teams, etc. Tomoko has been surprised in the past by the fact that England doesn't really have local food, for instance. We have Yorkshire puddings, Eccles cakes, etc. but they tend to get nicked by the rest of the UK and sold anywhere and everywhere, just as mince pies and hot cross buns can these days appear in supermarkets at any time of year. In Japan, though, cities and even towns might indeed have their own local delicacies that you genuinely can't buy anywhere else.

Its cast is fine, but not that important. One's a lesbian who fancies Yatogame-chan for unsubtle comedy, but that doesn't matter and you'd usually struggle even to remember it. An average episode of this show is a stand-up comedy routine in anime form, talking about the local quirks of Nagoya and its environs. I couldn't recommend this show to anyone who doesn't speak Japanese and hasn't lived in Japan, but I used to live in Nagoya itself and so I never missed an episode. Often, I'd even pause and rewind to finish reading the online text and absorb new oddities.

None of Tomoko's friends speak Nagoya dialect, incidentally, and she usually avoids it at home since she wants the children to use standard Japanese. Young people rarely have a Nagoya accent and it's not regarded as sounding attractive. Personally, I like it. I like Japanese accents in general, although some of them are hard to understand because they tend to be more about vocabulary than pronunciation. Even Japanese people will struggle with, say, Okinawan, although technically that's a separate language rather than a dialect.

Also, we should all follow Nagoya in preferring red to white miso.

Distressing opinions about Nagoya Castle. I like Nagoya Castle!

The Port of Nagoya Public Aquarium is even more awesome than I'd thought. It's a classic date spot and has the biggest tank capacity of any Japanese aquarium, being one of only two with killer whales.

There are rivals for the title of Japan's #3 City. Tokyo and Osaka have the first two places, obviously... but what about Kyoto? It was the capital city for over 1000 years! Anyway, I'd never known about this unobtrusive rivalry, but I'd point out that Nagoya's bigger than the others.

...don't matter, as I said, but it's worth glancing at them. Characters work when they're in tune with what the show's talking about. Jin's sister isn't particularly interesting when being scared of random Nagoya things, for instance, because she's misunderstood something. She's more entertaining in S2 ep.7 when getting excited about Nagoya's local idols.

Yatogame-chan herself was more interesting in Season 1. Season 2 doesn't innovate, but Season 3 introduces new characters I quite liked. There's a character from Osaka who comments on Nagoya stereotypes (although the show doesn't explain the Osaka ones it's comparing them with, expecting you to know those already). Probably best of all is a middle-schooler who looks down on Nagoya and idolises Tokyo. She could be funny, e.g. being thunderstruck on realising that one of her favourite things is a Nagoya speciality.

Season 4 spends quite a lot of time with the school student council. They're okay. The show's running out of non-food things to talk about, but I laughed at ep.5 and Yatogame-chan's withdrawal symptoms from not eating enough chicken wings. Ep.7 also teaches us a weird Nagoya equivalent of trick-or-treat.

There's lots of regional rivalry, because every character is from a slightly different geographical area. They'll get overexcited discussing the differences between Nagoya, Mie, Gify and Saitama. (NOTE: everyone should watch Fly Me to the Saitama, which I can't believe still hasn't had an English-language DVD release.)

This show isn't conventionally good. Its comedy is lop-sided, its characters are of secondary importance and it's deeply invested in specialised subject matter. I didn't post individual reviews for each season after the first because the show's too light and throwaway for that. This meant I sat on this review for ages to make sure that another season wouldn't come out and trip me up. You'll only enjoy this show if you love learning obscure facts about Nagoya... but that's me.