A couple of months ago I first learned of the existence of “Azumanga Daioh” on a thread here. And I am so glad! This is now one of my top two favorite anime series. Thanks to everybody who started that thread!

Since we have people who are interested in anime around here, I thought I’d try posting reviews to the show. For those who don’t already know, “Azumanga Daioh: The Animation” is a limited series based on a manga about a group of classmates at a Tokyo high school. The 26 episodes follow them through all three years to graduation. It’s a nicely-animated series, with lots of surreal humor and vivid characters.

So…here goes the first review.

Miss Yukari The classmates and their teachers meet on the first day of school.

Miss Yukari (Yukari-sensei—literally “Teacher Yukari”) is the gang’s homeroom teacher. She teaches English, though she doesn’t speak it too fluently. From what I’ve read elsewhere, that’s about par for the course for many Japanese English teachers. She makes a vivid first impression, what with swiping a student’s bike because she’s running late, arriving late for the first day anyway, trying to flirt with the boys in the class, and only then learning that she’s in the wrong room.

The first student we meet is Chiyo, a ten-year-old prodigy who has been promoted five grades (!). Chiyo-chan (Means something like “Little Miss Chiyo”, nearly as I can tell—“chan” is an honorific used of young children, and also a term of endearment among older friends) looks and sounds even younger than ten.

Then there is Tomo, the self-described “wildcat girl” with the personality of a hyperactive boy. Tomo’s bespectacled friend Yomi is much more down-to-earth; it’s hard to tell how and why she tolerates Tomo’s company. Next we have Miss Sakai (Sakaki-san), a tall, aloof-looking girl whose given name we never hear. Other students either think she’s too cool for words or see her as a rival. Actually the viewer soon learns that she seems aloof because she is painfully shy. Finally there’s Osaka, of whom more later. We’ll be meeting or describing several others later as well.

Highlights include Tomo’s self-introduction (She's boundlessly confident--for no readily apparent reason) and Chiyo-chan’s rather out-of-left-field cooking song.

I always thought it odd that she asks her students to refer to her as Yukari-sensei (instead of Tanazaki-sensei), since Tanazaki is her family name. It would be like calling your teacher "Miss Daphne," which seems disrespectful. But Yukari is often an example of inappropriate behavior.

She's nothing if not an example of inappropriate behavior!

I've noticed that some of the girls even occasionally call her "Yukari-chan". Which seems like it would be most irregular, from what I understand about these things.

Osaka's Day A visit to the peculiar world of Ayumu Kasuga, a.k.a. Osaka.

Ayumu got her nickname because she transferred from a school in the city of Osaka, where they apparently speak with a distinctive accent. Listen to the Japanese soundtrack and you can tell that she does indeed sound different from the others. English-dubbed Osaka has a Southern accent as a dynamic equivalent. Osakans have a reputation as loud and aggressive. Osaka's not that way at all.

Sometimes described as "spacey", Osaka often makes odd observations, makes jokes and puns that others don't necessarily get, and frequently daydreams or dozes off in class. She is also a hopelessly uncoordinated klutz and the worst athlete in class (Little Chiyo-chan outruns her!). All this--except the part about falling asleep in class--hits rather close to home for this reviewer. It's like a mirror has been held up to my school-age self. Yikes, that even sounds like something Osaka might say!

Osaka spends much of the episode experiencing an afternoon-long bout of hiccups. She suffers much from the others' assorted old-wives'-tale remedies. Tomo is downright brutal!

Episode highlights include Tomo's efforts, heedless of collateral damage to classmates or school property, to kill a bug in class. Also don't miss the P.E. class, in which things get more dangerous than you'd normally expect a girls' volleyball game to get.

One of the most interesting things about Osaka (Ayumu Kasuga, that is... not the city of Osaka), is that she usually ends up in first place in polls about who is your favorite character from Azumanga Daioh. Who'd have thunk?

Come on--how can you NOT love that face?

...without a nose?

Jimbo's just mad because he's never been able to find the rare "Azumanga Daioh - Character Songs OST 3 : Osaka-san" CD

Now I want one.

Nyamo An introduction to the school's coolest teacher--and it's not Yukari!

Minamo Kurasawa, nicknamed Nyamo, appeared in the previous episodes, but is properly introduced here. She is the girls' P.E. teacher and has known Yukari since college. Yukari imposes on Nyamo outrageously--inviting herself over to commandeer Nyamo's bed when her own apartment has a problem, wrecking a package Nyamo gets from a relative, getting roaring drunk when the two go out to eat and obligating Nyamo to haul her sorry drunken carcass home, and more. Why Nyamo consents to have anything to do with her is a complete mystery.

For her part Nyamo is level-headed, good-natured, and generous. She's obviously popular with students. Indeed, Yukari gets jealous of her popularity, yet seems entirely clueless about how she earned it by being a nice person. Nyamo presumably knows all kinds of juicy stories to tell on Yukari--unfortunately Yukari apparently has something on Nyamo too....

We learn in this episode that students Yomi and Tomo have also known each other for years. There's a clear parallel drawn between the two sets of friends, one stable and levelheaded, the other wild and disruptive (and often very funny). One wonders whether Tomo isn't going to grow up to be like Yukari. What a terrible fate that would be! There's a hint, though, that Yukari gets to be too much even for Tomo sometimes.

Miss Kurosawa's family name of course brings to mind the famed Japanese movie director Akira Kurosawa, best known for his "Seven Samurai". Nothing is ever made of this in the series, so I suppose Kurosawa is just a common name.

By coincidence, I recently had a chance to watch Kurosawa's movie "Kagemusha" on video. Personally I found it more engaging than "Seven Samurai", if still overlong. The plot involves a condemned criminal in 16th-century Japan who is spared to serve as a double for warlord Shingen Takeda, to prevent enemies from learning that Shingen has died of a wound. Shingen was a real historical character; the story of the double in the movie is apparently not an actual legend.

I believe that Yukari and Nyamo were high school students together in the school where they currently teach.



And, yes, both Nyamo and Yomi are paragons of tolerance.

Pool pool pool The girls' P.E. swim class is complicated by the presence of two teachers too many.

Here the viewer is introduced to classical literature teacher Mr. Kimura. He resembles nothing so much as one of the walking dead in the way he shambles around with his mouth hanging open most of the time. His appearance is far less creepy than his free admission that he became a high school teacher because he wanted to stay around teenage girls. Naturally he invades the school's pool area while the girls are having swim class--until Nyamo boots him out. The boys think Kimura's attraction to their classmates is pretty funny, since they share it. The girls are seriously creeped out by it. I know I would be in their position!

Kimura is never shown actually harming anybody, but the way he harrasses and unnerves the girls is just too close to certain things that sometimes happen in real life to be funny. He gives the impression that he's crazy enough to really try something. Incidentally, Chiyo-chan's repeated near-drownings in the episode go beyond the boundaries of good taste as well.

As if Kimura wasn't enough, poor Nyamo also has to deal with Yukari crashing the class and challenging her to an impromptu swim meet. Like Tomo, Yukari comes across as hypercompetitive. Also like Tomo, her confidence in her own abilities proves entirely unjustified. She's not even adept at cheating! Note Yukari's form when she dives into the pool--a belly-flop so hard she leaves a momentary outline of herself in the water.

The girls, as girls are sometimes known to do, comment about each others' appearance. Tomo accuses Yomi of being fat, and gets a "double chop" across the head for her trouble. Osaka says of the unusually bosomy Sakaki "There's an American among us!" In her Memoirs of a Gaijin, based on experiences living in Japan around the time this show first aired, authentic American Erin Neff Peters confirms that those who deviate from the Japanese norm in this respect do indeed tend to become the subject of unwelcome conversation.

Belly flop!



And that was only the first one.

I recently took three of those silly on-line "Which Azumanga Daioh Character Are You?" quizzes.

One of the questions was:

Which are you*?
1) American
2) Hawaiian
3) Japanese
*Note: This question does not refer to nationality.

Incidentally, I got three different answers from the three different quizzes, claiming that I was most like Osaka, Sakaki, and Yomi... so their predictive capability is questionable.

I've always regarded you as more of a Sakaki.

Because my hand smells like fish?

Summer Break The girls head to Chiyo-chan's summer beach house, with Nyamo and Yukari along for the ride.

Actually Nyamo and Yukari are providing the ride, via Nyamo's car and the "Yukari-mobile". The latter, borrowed from Yukari's parents, is covered with dents, thanks to you-know-who's reckless driving. The actual ride to the vacation house is left to the viewer's imagination. We see only that it leaves Osaka gibbering about how she "ain't afraid of roller coasters no more", and Chiyo-chan so shaken that she afterward exhibits signs of mild PTSD.

Chiyo-chan's family is obviously quite wealthy. We also see their primary residence, a substantial McMansion in insanely expensive Tokyo. Chiyo-chan is quite the gracious hostess. She even thoughtfully prepares hot tea for her friends when they visit.

Highlights include Osaka's efforts at telling scary stories, and Tomo's attempt at blindfolded watermelon-smashing. Apparently watermelon-smashing is something of a tradition on Japanese summer getaways (Here in Arkansas we just eat the stuff and put the rind out to attract butterflies). There's also a lovely scene of everybody outside at night, setting off fireworks. For just a moment it captures that wonderful summer holiday feel, where you're out someplace special with friends or family and wish it just wouldn't end.

The girls determine who has to risk riding in the Yukari-mobile by playing a round of jan-ken-pon--rock, paper, scissors. We were taught a Japanese song about jan-ken-pon in music class at our grade school years ago. After that you had kids in rural Arkansas playing rock,paper,scissors while chanting jan-ken-pon! IIRC I was pretty good at it. I had a knack for anticipating what my opponent was going to play and beating it. Especially when the opponent was my brother.

Well, I took three different, randomly-selected quizzes and scored as Osaka in each one. And I wasn't trying! One rated me as 53% Osaka. The next (Yomi) was only 20%.

Chiyo-chan and Osaka in the back seat of the Yukari-mobile after the traumatic ride (you'l have to imagine them shaking since this isn't animated):




The Japanese seem to like these wimpy dangling-sparkler type of firework. I've never seen them in real life:



The Japanese always talk about "going to the ocean," but in anime this is almost always translated as "going to the beach." As I recall, Azumanga Daioh was the only anime I ever saw where the dub actually said "ocean."

Sports Fest The homeroom competes in the school's annual intramural sports fest--and certain teachers have a little something riding on the outcome.

Two characters who've already been appearing in earlier episodes achieve new prominence here. The first is Kaorin (A nickname; it's a diminutive form of her given name, Kaore). Not strictly speaking a member of the main cast ensemble, Kaorin still rates at least one or two scenes in almost every episode. She's a highly emotional girl whose emotions are channeled into an unrequited crush on Sakaki. Whenever she's around anything to do with Sakaki she gets either gushy or tongue-tied, hyperventilates, or generally acts like...well, like a schoolgirl with a crush. All characters on the show have exaggerated or surreal scenes that show what they're thinking or feeling. In Kaorin's case there are lots of flowers and other manga/anime infatuation symbolism on the screen. Does all this mean that the viewer is meant to see Kaorin as gay? Hard to say for sure. Adolescents sometimes develop crush-like feelings for members of the same sex whom they admire. It could possibly be that this is a comically-exaggerated version of that. At any rate, the girl needs to calm down. All that hyperventilation can't be good for her!

We also get a proper introduction to Sakura (given name unknown), a member of the school swim team who belongs to Nyamo's homeroom class. Sakura is a fine all-around athlete whose abilities rival Sakaki's. Where Sakaki (rather improbably) manages to be a great athlete without every showing much interest in sports, Kagura is highly competitive. We'll be seeing much more of her in future episodes.

Episode highlights include Chiyo-chan and Osaka's doomed effort in the three-legged race, Osaka's goof-up in the scavenger hunt race (She failed to realize that while trying to run to the finish with the glasses she had been assigned to find she wasn't required to actually WEAR them), and Mr. Kimura's enthusiastic but rather enigmatic opening speech as executive chair of the Sports Fest Committee. We also get another insight into why Nyamo is a far more popular and beloved teacher than Yukari will ever be.