Azumanga daiô

My teen watches, breaths and lives Anime and Manga. And after hearing about Japanese animation NON-STOP for some time, I thought I'd give it a whirl several years back. As a kid, Japanese animation was synonymous with lousy production values and dull plots. Often this was not the fault of the original production company, but due to American companies cutting the shows to pieces and splicing it all back together in an awful and confusing mess. SPEED RACER is the best example of this. So, despite my predisposition to hate it, I did agree to try some Anime once again.

Some Anime, not matter how much I try, I cannot and never will enjoy--particularly ones featuring exploding giant robots ("mecha" anime)--I'm just not particularly interested in this style. And some I have enjoyed mildly (such as DEATH NOTE), but of all the anime I have tried, by far my favorite is AZUMANGA DAIO. Regardless of where it was made, it is just wonderful entertainment. What I particularly like is that unlike so much of the super-fanciful anime, this is about a bunch of high school girls--and most of their adventures are very mundane--no explosions, no Pokemon battles and no life or death struggles. It's so good because the characters are all so well made and endearing--you really come to love them. Unlike many other Animes I have watched, the girls on the show seem almost like real people (except 'Osaka'--who is just plain weird!). This really surprised me--I thought Anime was pretty boring up until I watched this series! I am a high school teacher and apparently this series is pretty popular among my students as well. For teens and adults not 100% "gung-ho" about anime, this is an excellent series that will surely entertain. If you don't enjoy it, then there really is no hope for you coming to appreciate Anime.

Now, this is what I've been waiting for! An anime series without spells, heartless villains and destroyed world. Not that I don't like these either but it was about time to watch a simple, beautiful and amazingly funny story like Azumanga Daioh. There is no plot in this show, instead we get to see the everyday life of six girls with different characters throughout their three high-school years. Sounds boring but believe me, it's not. It's so funny, it's so weird and surreal at times, it's possibly the funniest thing I've ever seen. The voice cast fits perfectly (I prefer the Japanese voices, they are so much cuter!) and it has one of the greatest music scores I 've heard. Really, the music is so unique and distinctive, cheerful harmonicas and flutes, setting a great mood. it's also very touching and sweet at certain episodes. From all the characters I would say Osaka is the best, she will make you laugh hard with her weird personality.

I really hope more anime series like this will come in the near future.

definitely 10/10

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.

this is definitely for me, for a long time, I've dwelled in complex & masterpiece anime like Bebop, Ghibi productions, Kenshin OAV, Jin Roh, Grave of Fireflies, Metropolis etc until at some point I realize these shows are "not entertaining" anymore since they make me think, they make me relate so deep into the characters, got emotionally drained even depressed.

Not in the case of azumanga daioh...

For me this show is just great, fun, gorgeous, sweet, cute, you name it. It even brings back some highschool memories, there isn't asingle episode where I can watch and not having a HUGE smile, and another smile, and another smile, and.... It sure is hard to pick any favourite character since they all make the show, but I'll go with Sakaki (the cool one with a soft spot), and the "impossible" bond setting with Kaorin is particularly sweet & hillarious heh heh

Recommended for those who want a change of atmosphere into a cute, funny, lighthearted show