Animation teacher on Nichijou's first OP's dance

There's an incredible amount of stuff in that three seconds. Kyoto Animation does amazing work.

Once, in an animation class I was teaching, I took a couple of seconds from one of the K-On opens and showed it to the class. We then spent an hour going over all the bits of business and points of interest. The more we looked at it, the more we saw. And after a while, the students were pointing out stuff I hadn't noticed, despite having gone over the clip frame by frame the night before.

In the posted clip, there's the wonderful character, or performance, animation; Each character is alive and exhibiting individual mental processes that are evocative of the girl's personality.

Excellent overlapping action and follow through on the skirts, ribbons and hair.

Anatomically convincing with minimal distortion, within the conceit of the character designs. And outstanding designs they are too. The level of draftsmanship in K. A.'s work is simply amazing.

Then there's the choreography of the dance itself. Funny and, again loaded with individual personality. Not only in sync with the audio/music, that's a given, but dramatically meaningful as well.

Then there's the staging, starting tight and zooming out. Revealing the busy scene environment; typography and flower petals on a plain white field.

Just causally looking, I can't decide if the animation of the girls was drawn at a constant size and then scaled in an digital camera zoom, or if zoom was actually animated by the character artists. There are some subtleties in perspective that make me think that either the zoom was hand animated or maybe each girl is on a different plane for the virtual camera. Also, there is a barely perceptible "fish-eye" distortion on Yūko's head and shoulder at the beginning of the shot that flattens out as the camera pulls back and the percentage difference in each giri's head in relation to the picture plane. Again, it may be in the original animator's drawing or it could be subtle manipulation by the layout choreographer.

Then there's the comparatively simple linear perspective and depth exhibited by the flower petals. Simple perhaps, but it really sells the shot in terms of depth and the sense of an observation in real space.

And I'm not even going to go into the color styling, the use of vignetting, the pseudo optical and temporial aliasing effects. All hallmarks of that last 10% of effort that K. A. throws at their better work that makes it really pop out at the viewer.

Note there's not a hint of line scaling, perceptible blur or rasterization effects.

Just pure Kyoto Animation goodness.

And remember, none of that is there by accident or happenstance. No one "winged" it. No free rides from accidents of lighting or natural body rhythm. Every little detail, and countless others I didn't mention, were the result of careful planning, painstaking execution, and a general love of craft.

And that's just for 3 seconds out of the middle of the OP.

Edit: I can't stop looking at this clip. A few more particular observations of detail:

Despite the fact that her rhythmic performance is perfectly in sync with the music and the other two girls, Mio's attention is focused on the book until just before the end of the camera move, at which point she notices, or maybe simply acknowledges us, the viewer. This is preceded by a rapid blink. The other two girls don't blink in the clip at all, but maintain constant eye contact and attention on the viewer. (Yūko does give us a wink right at the end!)

The overlapping action and follow through on the skirts and ribbons are subtly three dimensional.

The girls are not just swaying side to side in time with the rhythm, but bobbing forward and backward as well, with subtle foreshortening. Note the attitude of the book Mio is holding and the way it slightly opening and closing with the motion of her arms, shoulders, and hands. Very nice!

Ha! I just noticed the clover in the birds mouth, with tiny, but effective spring like harmonic motion exhibited in the last few frames, produced by the bobbing of Yūko's head.

Mai's pig tails are exhibiting counter bobbing. And there's a nice bit of counter action as she dips her head right at the end.

Notice the girls' hips are not simply swaying back and forth in unison, but doing a back and forth bouncing bit of choreography that would be almost impossible to achieve in live action; and then only apparent from a very narrow point of view.

I really should stop looking at this damn thing...