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.
