Azumanga Daiou The Animation

Chiyo Mihama begins her high school career as one of the strangest students in her freshman class—a tiny, 10-year-old academic prodigy with a fondness for plush dolls and homemade cooking. But her homeroom teacher, Yukari Tanizaki, is the kind of person who would hijack a student's bike to avoid being late, so "strange" is a relative word.

There certainly isn't a shortage of peculiar girls in Yukari-sensei's homeroom class. Accompanying Chiyo are students like Tomo Takino, an energetic tomboy with more enthusiasm than brains; Koyomi Mizuhara, Tomo's best friend whose temper has a fuse shorter than Chiyo; and Sakaki, a tall, athletic beauty whose intimidating looks hide a gentle personality and a painful obsession with cats. In addition, transfer student Ayumu Kasuga, a girl with her head stuck in the clouds, fits right in with the rest of the girls—and she has a few interesting theories about Chiyo's pigtails!

Together, this lovable group of girls experience the ups and downs of school life, their many adventures filled with constant laughter, surreal absurdity, and occasionally even touching commentary on the bittersweet, temporal nature of high school.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kasuga, Ayumu Main

Matsuoka, Yuki Japanese

Sakaki Main

Asakawa, Yuu Japanese

Mihama, Chiyo Main

Kaneda, Tomoko Japanese

Takino, Tomo Main

Higuchi, Chieko Japanese

Tanizaki, Yukari Main

Hiramatsu, Akiko Japanese

Kagura Main

Kuwashima, Houko Japanese

Mizuhara, Koyomi Main

Tanaka, Rie Japanese

Kurosawa, Minamo Main

Hisakawa, Aya Japanese

Chiyo's Father Supporting

Wakamoto, Norio Japanese

Kimura Supporting

Ishii, Kouji Japanese

Matsukura, Yuuji Producer

Oosawa, Nobuhiro Producer

Ikeda, Shinichi Producer

Suzuki, Seiji Assistant Producer

Reviews

Dec 15, 2024

JJMFREAP

Recommended

Right, I have no idea how this review is going to come out, since this show is basically like getting a lobotomy. If I were to take an IQ test now, it would come back negative. So if what follows here makes no sense, now you know why.

Azumanga Daioh is one of the animes of all time. It is definitely of of the animes ever. Of all the animes to come out, this is certainly one of them. There seems to be some kind of consensus that this is some groundbreaking masterpiece and some zenith of storytelling, but I honestly can't see that and mainly ... because the story is so nonsensical on many levels. I mean, when you're so absurd that you make Asobi Asobase and Daily Lives of Highschool Boys make sense, then you're really on something. It's all over the place, it's chaotic and my brain has been fried ever since. It takes me all my mental fortitude to just form complete sentences at this point. Characters say the most random things, stuff just happens out of nowhere and after every ridiculous scenario, there are these long long pauses, as if the show itself has to buffer a bit to process what the hell just happened. The connection from scene to scene is often just a hair's breadth away from just being disjointed sketches. If this anime was a 4chan board, it would be the hidden board /trash/.But through all that, I still found it pretty funny and I definitely wasn't bored. So, it's good, but not that good.

There are some things I genuinely dislike though. The animation is really cheap, even for the era when this came out. A lot of times characters barely move, if at all. And even when they animate something semi competently, they'll be sure to use it many times over to make it worth their while. I mean, the two specials are actually better animated than the main show. If that weren't enough, the story basically loops on itself three times - three school years where the same events happen in the same order. They happen differently, but it's still the same plot threads repeated again. And not to mention, the characters basically don't change in three years, so it's not like it's some grand character arc either. Beyond that, there's some characters that are just grating (I don't even mean Tomer, her tendency to give into intrusive thoughts was always hilarious). One of them is whatever-her-name-is, the one who's sole character trait is being aggressively lesbian and crushing on Sakaki Norastuneimu. She's one beat and the joke gets old quickly. Seeing her suffer was the only redemption. The other is Kimura. I mean, I know Japan has their thing for perverted jokes that is very hit or miss, but Kimura has to be one of the worst cases. Who the fuck thought putting a literal pedophile in a show about underage girls would be funny. The scenes with him are always stilted and annoying. And no, having a kid and picking up litter on occasion doesn't excuse being a literal kiddie diddler. Don't make me rev up the woodchipper! Oh, and to top it off, I don't know what kind of cognitohazard the opening theme is, but the lyrics make what remains of my brain ooze out of my ear canals and it instantly makes me want to cosplay as a chandelier. Ending theme was alright though.

Now, I bitch a lot, but I'm trying to be honest here. Plus, as you can see, I still recommend this one. It's completely moronic on many levels, but I was laughing my ass off basically all the way through. Now, I don't know if I'm laughing for the reasons the creators expect me too, I don't know if I'm laughing with the show or at it, but the point stays that I was entertained. At the end of the day, falling ass backwards into something fun is far far better than being painfully uninteresting like most slice of life tends to be (to me at least, I'm sure the bread slicing arc was fire, SOL-bros). It was the brainrot of its time and we have to praise it for still feeling fresh and unpredictable even today. The way it's constructed gives it a kind of timelessness that makes it endearing no matter how old it is. Plus it kind of captures the microcosm of the dawn of the new millennium in a charming kind of way. I don't know about you, but I think that if you go into the series not expecting some awesome poignant story but instead just to giggle like a moron at stupid shit, it works awesome. It's great show to watch drunk. Or high as a kite. Not that I would know anything about that.

In conclusion, Azumanga Daioh exists. Should you watch this still? Yeah, sure. It's funny, an incomprehensible mix of predictable and unpredictable, it's random and nothing really compares to it. Some of the characters are pretty endearing and the stellar voice acting does a lot of the heavy lifting to compensate for the cheap animation. Storywise, I think I know what Azuma was going for here? It seems like it was meant to capture those cherished childhood moments of just goofing off with friends, entering adulthood and that dreadful moment when you graduate and not only have to cope with taking on the responsibilities of life but fear that you may never see your old friends again. But you still can of course if you put in the effort to stay in touch. But I feel this kind of message is a bit lost due to how random and nonsensical everything else is. Plus, the fact that it repeats itself three times for the three years only goes to prove another more definitive truth - how repetitive, tedious and stupid school life was. The Japanese and everyone else really need to grasp the simple fact that school was not what a lot of overly nostalgic people crack it up to be and for all intents and purposes, it's just the drawn out, overly complicated and mandatory tutorial to life, which only begins after you get out. Honestly, if you believe you peaked while you were at school, you've failed and life and need to pick yourself up ASAP and make something of yourself! If a tard like Oskar can make it work, you definitely can too!

So, uuuhhhh, yeah, it's ok I guess. Lobotomy/10

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Aug 20, 2024

ketorrum

Mixed Feelings

tbh i slept thru the whole anime since like the 7th episode so i can't really say much about it BUT

the show has a great meme potential and is funny when you watch a compilation of it on youtube but when you watch it fully... god it's boring
the budget is really low, every couple of episodes there should be a joke about repeating the same thing over and over for like a minute
and it felt pretty funny at first but on the second, the third... why
some people may like that type of humour so i won't say that the show is just outright bad, you ... should still give it a try

sakaki san is so cool

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Sep 5, 2013

Fujaku

Not Recommended

I am a huge fan of the slice-of-life genre. Something about seeing cute girls sit around and do... Stuff is somehow entertaining for me. Slice-of-life however, seems to be one of the most hated genres only second to ecchi/hentai stuff. The only expectation to this rule seems to be a few iyashikei (healing) slice-of-life shows and Azumanga Daioh. While I could rant on how the iyashikei genre isn't very good, I am instead going to rant about why Azumanga Daioh, one of the most celebrated slice-of-life anime, is one of my least favorite ones out there, as I do not like this at all.

Now, the ... most important thing in a slice-of-life shows is the characters. While I consider characters the most important part of all anime, as if you don't care about the characters, what's the point of watching them, this is especially true with slice-of-life anime, where the whole point is watching a random group of people mess around and do stuff. If these characters fall flat, then the show automatically falls flat too. A common complaint for the slice-of-life genre is that it recycles character archetypes a lot. Now, I personally consider that to be part of the genre and judge the characters not by whether we've seen their personality ten times before, but how much they add new stuff to their personality and become their own character. Now, Azumanga Daioh, being one of the first “a bunch of school girls mess around” show creating all of these archetypes we see so much in today's slice-of-life, the characters in Azumanga Daioh would be unique enough that everyone would want to rip them off, and the answer to that question is a big no.

While you don't go to slice-of-life shows looking for multi-layered characters, you can't just give them a personality and role with it, you need to flesh out the personality and add details to it and that is one thing Azumanga falls at miserably. The teacher, Yukarin, is lazy, Tomo is the energetic goofball, Chiyo is the small, cute, and smart one, Yomi is the straight man in the group, Osaka is the ditz, Sakaki is the tomboy who likes cute things, and Kagura... Is tomboyish? I guess? That's all there is to it. Nothing more. That's literally the whole show right there. These have to be some of the most one-sided characters I've seen in any slice-of-life anime.

So due to the fact we have a group of dull characters with only one or two traits to them, the comedy suffers. And there is no plot to this show, just comedy. Jokes get over-used all the time. Goofy, random stuff happens for no reason to be goofy and random, and some people might, but I do not find random humor to be that funny. Well, okay, maybe it's funny in all doses, but if I sit through a show where the whole purpose is goofy random humor, I just get used to the randomness and it isn't funny anymore. I didn't laugh once through the energetic comedy FLCL as the comedy just bounced off me as once I quickly got used to the randomness, you well, get used to the randomness and it doesn't become funny anymore. While Azumanga Daioh does try to pull out a more slow pace than other random comedies out there, in a way that's even worse as it drains whatever personality this show is trying to have even more. Not to mention that four episodes in, whatever comedy the show had quickly gets old as these are one-sided characters with nothing to them and they can't do much else besides act to their one-sided personality. Not to mention that this show reuses plots so much. Three beach episodes, 3 sport festival episodes,and 2 festivals. That means that 5 episodes in this show reuse plots from previous episodes. And stock footage too if I recall correctly.

Which brings me to my next negative on this show, the animation,which, to be honest, sucks. Characters never move while talking, the character designs are about as undetailed as you can get, with some of the cast members even looking alike as there's little variation. Backgrounds are dull and just fade in. Footage is sometimes repeated for little reason expect to save money. The voice actors are also pretty mediocre too, but who can blame them with the terrible characters they're put into. The music is rather good though, with catchy background tunes and a very memorable opening and ending theme.

Azumanga Daioh Final Consensus
Story- Comedy falls flat and relies too much on randomness-3.
Characters- A terrible, one-sided cast-3.
Art-Very poor- 4.
Sound- Dull voice actors, good music-6.5.
Comedy anime around 2004 must have all sucked if this is seen as one of the greats in the genre (and now that I think about it, the only other comedy from around that time that I ever see get recommend is Cromartie High School, so perhaps that's true). Azumanga Daioh is everything a slice-of-life anime should not be. While you cannot ignore its influence on the genre and on anime in general, I still cannot recommend this to anyone. Overall, a score of 4.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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