Azumanga Daioh


Genre:Comedy
Creator:GenCO
J.C. Staff
Manga/Anime/BothAnime, originally a comic strip
Seasons:1, 26 episodes

Adoogen's Rating
4
out of 5
Trigun Kitties

Summary:

Azumanga Daioh is a unique series... Originally it was a four-panel comic that has been changed into a 26 episode anime series. Each episode consists of five "mini-episodes" strung together so its comic origin is very obvious. The best part about having five-in-one is that they don't dwell on just one joke for an entire episode. Azumanga follows five girls (later six) through their high school career. Also, three teachers make appearances and some on a regular basis. Each main character has colorful and attractive personality for comic fans, such as gifted 10 years old high school girl, cool high school girl, natural high school girl, high school girl with glasses and weird older teachers. But the series is not very stereotypical, not by any means. While there is no real character development (I mean, there is some, very little) the characters are very lively and all very unique and most people can choose at least one that they like above the rest. I've seen people argue about whether this is a Shoujo anime or a Shonen. I personally think it's both, or at least, put Azumanga Daioh in it's own separate category because it is pretty different from a lot of mainstream shows. Azumanga is not for everybody. A lot of the jokes are heavily rooted in Japanese culture and language so the more you know, probably the funnier it will be. For me -who knows very little of the culture- I had to pause my episodes of Azumanga repeatedly to read the fansubber's comments to explain the jokes. If you don't like the first few episodes of Azumanga, then you won't like it later because the humor stays the same the entire way through with new jokes.


Explanation for Rating:

Adoogen:
Why did I give Azumanga the rating I did. Hmmm, well, a lot of it is based off of what I wrote in the summary. The characters are very unique and enjoyable (I personally like Osaka the best, her and their English teacher), the jokes are good, and it's different. The down part about it being five mini-episodes strung together is that there seems to be a lot of "downtime" in the anime where it just seems they need to make it longer. Like the part where Osaka imagines Chiyo-chan flying for at least five minutes...But I recommend looking at it.

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