Azumanga daiô

This anime is a very significant and unique show. In other words, cool. I loved it. It featured a bunch of laughable and lovable school girls (and a few teachers) and with an anime with school girls, you'd expect romance, drama, and even that magical girl stuff from Sailormoon. Well. This one doesn't have any of those which is a good thing. That's what makes it great. Even though the episodes were kinda of short, it was so great and funny, that you'd want to see it over and over again. Recommended for anime fans, non-anime fans, and for those who are sick of Magical girl or harem shounen anime. Watch it. You know you wannna. I like that Chiyo and Sakaki and even that reckless yet cool driving Yukari-sensei.

I saw a trailer for Azumanga daioh and thought it was going to be childish nonsense. Admitedly the trailer only showed a modified version of the show's introduction sequence, rather than real footage from the show. Shame on the makers of the trailer, I say! Then I watched an episode of the show and was instantly hooked. This is probably one of the best comedy animes I've seen so far. While shows like Abenobashi or Excel Saga are funny in a zany way, Azumanga is funny in a more realistic way. As other reviewers have noted, there is no plot as such - it's more like a sitcom.

The characters seem very likable and all have their own characteristics. Some of the teachers also feature, and I think this gives the show an interesting perspective as you see that they just as quirky as the kids. (OK, perhaps MORE quirky than some of the kids).

One of the reasons this show has hooked me is that it is consistently funny. Some other shows I've seen have had a few episodes that were hilarious and a few that barely raised a smile. I think every episode of Azumanga has had me laughing out loud.

If you haven't seen this show because the trailer put you off, don't panic! Yes, there's a certain amount of cuteness (especially Chiyo), but the show is a lot of fun. But the Muppets demonstrated that cuteness doesn't mean it's only for kids.

Azumanga may not be suitable for young children because of some cuss words and slightly teenage/adult content (although children see that on TV before the watershed these days). Teenagers aren't likely to be too worried by any of that though.

This 37-year-old male gives Azumanga daioh 5 stars out of 5!

See, there can be a situation comedy basically about nothing but doesn't harp on dating relationships and sex! It's so uproariously funny in many places I got both the manga and the 5 DVD anime.

No one save the lecherous Kimura has a significant other. There's too many American TV shows depicting singles whether there be teen or adult as being perpetually seeking love. In the course of this too short series none of the girl students date. There's only one episode in this series that deals with teachers dating--These characters present us with other concerns to laugh about--Pet Obsessions, hero worship, who is the smarter teacher, petty jealousy, catching a cold, etc. "Daioh" stands out even among it's anime fellow no magical quests, no titanic battles of universal good versus universal evil. The only universal elements is the day to day progress of life and for those who can find humor it's in the characters' a tickling the funny bone.

I usually try to avoid hyperbole - I've studied enough English to know how overdone it can be. And in this case I will avoid hyperbole as well. I can quite honestly say that Azumanga Daioh is the best anime I've ever seen, and probably the best show.

Scratch that, actually. The number of *things* of any form which can match Azumanga can be counted on the fingers of both hands.

In every single episode, I found myself laughing out loud, going "Awwww, sooo cute!", and smiling with just... happiness. This is an idiosyncratic show, but also an incredibly poignant and touching one. I can think of nothing else which touches me so deeply that it makes me cry a tenth as often as And does. In that sense, it is the best feel-good panacea I have ever come across, or heard of. It's possible I am forgetting a Norse myth which spoke of something better, but I doubt it.

The show is also, of course, incredibly funny. Whilst there is the occasional joke lost in translation, or which benefits from a little knowledge of Japanese culture, the vast majority of the humor is accessible to anybody who cares to watch it. It has more classic lines than anything except perhaps Monty Python.

Put simply, this show has everything necessary to be a classic. It is for Azumanga Daioh that anime and television and efficient, modern distribution methods exist. If you have any soul, any joy in your body, I cannot recommend this enough. Import it, track it down in stores, do whatever you can to get a hold of it. Well, anything except theft. Everyone involved with the creation of this masterpiece deserves every penny they are paid, and several edifices to their greatness besides.

I could not possibly have the power of words to describe the levels of cute this precious series soars to. I've watched the entire series in fansubs, and when I see it, I smile, and smile, and smile.

Azumanga Daioh covers the lives of six (or seven, if you count Kaorin) girls and three of their teachers as they make their way through high school in modern Japan. Originally adapted from a four-panel comic strip, the series runs for 26 episodes and spans the entire three years for the students.

Possibly made from the sweetest mix of Pixie Stix sugar, the series was made to be kawaii-cute, and it knows it, but it never quite divulges in it (well, the Chiyo-chan penguin skit maybe), rather taking it as just another fact of the series and building deep characters around its premise. There's Chiyo, a privileged girl who entered high school at ten years old and is therefore insanely small comparitively, but is the cutest character from the series. There's Osaka, who is not really named Osaka but came *from* Osaka, and so was named that way; she's a little slow, but charming nonetheless. There's Sakaki, the tall, reticent girl who is fantastic at sports but wants nothing else than to be surrounded by fuzzy kittens all day (but has horrible luck with a homicidal cat), Kaorin, the girl who has an enormous crush on Sakaki but is instead stalked by the creepy Kimura-sensei, the classics teacher with roaming eyes and a continuously slacked jaw, and Kagura, the insanely competitive rival-but-friend of Sakaki and perhaps the most outspokenly athletic one of the group. There's Yomi, sensible and calm but self-conscious about her weight, and Tomo, the overambitious girl who has gone to school with Yomi all her life. And then there are Yukari-sensei and Minami-sensei, the two old schoolmates-turned teachers who lead (or sometimes just provoke) the group.

The episodes mainly just delight in exploring the characters' personalities and seeing what happens. It's very Seinfeld-esque in the way that the show never quite focuses on one theme or storyline as its central plot device; rather, we just catch snippets of the years and watch the girls grow up. I was very sad that there were only 26 episodes... I even found myself getting a little teary-eyed near the end of the last episode. I wish there were more shows like this.