This one lowers your heart rate. Seventy-eight episodes of a fourth grader named Tomoo Kinoshita doing absolutely nothing of consequence in a concrete housing block, and somehow you keep showing up week after week. The danchi is the real lead: the stairwells, the shared courtyard, the neighbors whose business is everyone's business, the specific texture of a kid whose whole world fits inside one apartment complex. The art is deliberately homely, squat little figures with no gloss on them, because prettiness would ruin the joke and the tenderness both. The comedy is pure elementary-school nonsense, and then a scene lands sideways and you're thinking about your own childhood block. If you grew up somewhere small and loud and slightly shabby, Tomoo already knows your name.

Tomoo Kinoshita is an elementary school boy, and this 2013 TV comedy centers on him across 78 episodes. The humor runs from heartwarming to outright nonsense, pairing a gentle, good-natured tone with bursts of silliness. Viewers who enjoy a light comedy built around one ordinary kid will find plenty of episodes to settle into.