Ah High School. Its one of the most monumental periods of anybodys life and whether its for the better or for the worst well never forget the time we spent there. Who doesnt remember the friends they made and the bonds that grew from them? Who could ever forget that one weird teacher who made every day a new experience? Who ever forgets their class clowns their space cadets and those really athletic kids who excelled in sports but fell behind in academics? Surely youll never forget the ten year old who skipped several grades the perverted teacher who openly admits to having the hots for young girls and the weird looking cat deity that showed up in our dreams and threatened to halfdecapitate us? Wait whats that? None of that last sentence makes sense to you? Well it makes perfect sense to the students of Azuma Public highschoolThere someone finally named the damn thing and it will strike a particular chord with the students in Miss Yukaris homeroom class who go through all of that and more as they attempt to support each other through three years at one of the weirdest high schools in Japan. With the power of their friendship theyll be ready to withstand intense rivalries bugnuts crazy dreams harrowing exams tedious study sessions intricate wordplay jokes selfdestructive diets and even the reckless driving of a teacher who may just be less mature than they are But through it all will they be able to survive each other? Yep I just did a plot summary for what has to be the most plotless anime I have ever seen. Azumanga Daioh was released way back in the year 2002 when the playing field was a lot smaller and standards on anime quality were mercifully low And yet visually it still holds up. Okay fine its animation style is dated as hell but the overall quality was so good even back then that its aged surprisingly well. JC Staff has released several rough looking shows in the past but Azumanga Daiohs slow pace and dialogueheavy story was a major boon to them in terms of budget management. Strictly speaking it doesnt take a lot of money to animate a show like this one. Despite being a comedy theres little if any action in it and the little action we get comes from the exaggerated movements of the energetic characters like Tomo Takino and Miss Yukari. Luckily the money wasnt all spent there They had more than enough resources to put intricate detail into every single move the characters make to the point that they can run spin around in place engage in a snowball fight or even just turn their heads slowly for a delayed awkwardness reaction and it all comes out just as seamlessly. Hell at one point the entire student body turns their heads toward one point on the screen and you can not tell me they didnt use cleverly integrated CGI to pull it off. But as I said these moments are few and far between. as the show is mostly dominated by static shots of the characters standing around talking to each other and overreacting to the weird or sometimes stupid things that are being said. These cheaper moments taken straight from the manga help to save money for the handful of moments where JC Staff decided to go offscript and throw frugality to the wind with a few examples being the aforementioned snowball fightand the one matrix moves that Sakaki performs in it and a bizarre sequence from the early episodes where the girls are out walking together and then out of nowhere they just start prancing on the clouds. I still havent figured out what the hell was going on there by the way. I mentioned earlier that the art style behind Azumanga Daioh was dated but I dont mean that in a bad way Its been a very long time since anything that looked like it has been released into the anime market. The style is very 2dimensional in nature and yet the characters move as if they were rendered in 3D instead. Hell there were certain moments when I could swear I could almost notice some cellshadingadmittedly I was high. The characters are drawn in a very cartoony yet still anatomically realistic fashion thats at least somewhat grounded in reality as there are plenty of big eyesthis is anime after all but theyre adorned onto believably sized heads. The character designs are highly distinct and are just as unique as the art style. You may have trouble remembering who Chihiro isand who could blame you but everyone else can and will be burned onto your memory forever. The music has a very distinctly schooltime feel to it as its mostly played with instruments you dont often hear on anime soundtracks Recorders flutes xylophone and tuba were the ingredients chosen to put together one of the most iconic anime soundtracks of all time. The most instantly recognizable would be the tune Shin Gakiof which there are several versions that suit a surprisingly versatile list of situations and the next episode tune segments of which were used for the unforgettable eyecatch music. The opening theme Soramimi Cake is like a macrocosm of the series as it showcases some of the most important running gags and interactions from the series and is just a cheerful upbeat joy to listen to. The ending theme Raspberry Heaven Defies rational description. Yeah sorry guys but all I can really say about it is that theres a damn good reason people like to jokingly call it a Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds music video. The English dub was early ADV Films and all of the old classics are here Luci Christian shines in what might be her funniest role ever as the loud pugnacious teacher Miss Yukari and Monica Rial plays her more cool downtoearth counterpart Miss KurosawaAKA Nyamo. Jessica Boone plays the mascot of the series the child prodigy ChiyoChan and while she doesnt quite sound like an actual tenyearold she does sound eerily similar to the original Japanese actress. Im normally not a fan of Nancy Novotny but Ive always believed that every voice actor has at least one good role and one bad role and she is perfect for the role of the cynical straightman character Yomi. Kira Vincent Davis plays one of her two most famous roles The other being Lucy in Elfen Lied In the role of Ayumu Kasuga otherwise known as the space cadet Osaka a nickname she earned for being a transfer student from Osaka. She speaks in a slow clueless southern drawl which is much better adaptive choice than what the manga did having her speak in a clunky and entirely inconsistent Brooklyn accent. Kira plays this off with a lot of lovable charm always sounding natural with it and never overthetop. Andy McAvin in the role of scary teacher Mr. Kimura is Well perfect for all the wrong reasons and lets just leave it at that. Christine Auten is a little harder to talk about since her role as Sakakisan is very strong and silent in nature but she does a great job. Alison Sumral plays what I consider to be one of the more complex characters in the series Sakakis rival Kagura and she sounds very much like the sporty yet surprisingly emotionally fragile tomboy shes supposed to be. There are no really bad actors here but if I had to pick a couple of duds in the cast theres Tiffany Grant who overacts hard in the role of Sakakis stalker KaorinWho thankfully gets phased out throughout the series and Mandy Clark in the role of Tomo who does a great job keeping up with the fasttalking pace and loudmouthed volume of her character but doesnt really have the acting chops to add anything to it. Suffice to say theres a reason she doesnt work a whole lot anymore. While the acting in this dub is really good on average Im afraid I just cant really recommend it over the subtitled version and thats mostly because of the adaptive writing. Azumanga Daioh is a Japanese comedy and of course it uses a lot of really culturally impenetrable Japanese jokes Jokes that dont really have an equivalent in English. You might think it would be impossible to change these jokes to make them more serviceable to an English speaking audience but lo and behold the official translated manga did just that swapping out the more traditional Japanese humor with jokes and tongue twisters that are way easier to enjoy while still retaining the general spirit of the original. The dub didnt even bother trying to do that instead just translating pretty much every joke wordforword. Im sorry but if youre going to have to sit through a ton of jokes that make no sense to your own local sensibilities it just feels a lot less jarring to hear them in their native tongue from people who understand what theyre saying. I still have no idea how a characters bust size makes them either American Hawaiian or Japanese. So Azumanga Daioh is one of the many anime that Ive been hesitating to review for a long time. Unlike Heroic Age I wasnt hesitating because I didnt know how to put my anger into words but to be more accurate I was worried that I wouldnt be able to express just how mixed my feelings on it are. I do of course consider it to be one of the most important anime ever made but at the same time I honestly think its a little overrated. And since the series itself takes such a directionless approach to its story Ive decided to go into this review without writing out the outline beforehand. Im going completely offbook with this. To start with the negative aspects I feel like its kind of a clumsy adaptation. This is one of the few anime that I was able to watch AFTER having completed the manga and even upon my first viewing I could tell that it was going through a lot of the vignettes from the series out of order which you might not think would be noticeable in such a plotless show But it is noticeable as several changes had to be made for the sake of preserving continuity. Some scenes that originally contained references to other scenes had to have those references either removed or replaced to compensate the new ordering. Scenes that were supposed to take place before Kagura joined the main cast are suspiciously absent of her after she joined it and scenes she was supposed to be involved in later in the series will be shown early on with other characters acting out of character to replace her. And thats not even mentioning the flourishes from the manga being added to the anime at random like pictures detailing the height of Sakaki and Kagura and one of the characters saying Oh between vignettes apropos of nothing. While most episodes are able to group the vignettes into coherent stories there are a handful of episodes Two of which are unfortunately the first two Where a lot of the scenes feel like they were arbitrarily added in just for the sake of inclusion. Its not as noticeable when a joke lands but they dont always do that. Another problem I had And I know a lot of people will argue with me on this Is the character of Classic Lit teacher Mr. Kimura. People are going to have different reactions to him but personally I found him downright unsettling. Hes a paid full time teacher who claims loudly and proudly that he became a teacher because he loves high school girls he develops a stalkerish crush on one of his students late in the series and the story is constantly trying to confuse us about his character by showing how happy his family is and how generous he is to charity only to have him barge in on the girls during swimming class and wonder aloud about how much hed enjoy watching them change their clothes. And the worst thing is that everyone just tolerates this and doesnt make a big deal about it. I dont know how Japan handles the idea of ephebophilia but in America hed at least lose his job and hell a home investigation might even land him n jail faster than you can say Jared Fogle. I get why he exists of course Hes there to act like a total creep during scenes where the girls are wearing school swimsuits or gym uniforms in order to directly lampoon any viewers who may otherwise be enjoying such scenes for the wrong reasons which is in service to one of the strongest aspects of this show It is completely and utterly asexual. Unlike the manga which contained glamour shots of the characters between stories the series makes no attempt to sexualize any of them to the audience. None of them ever pursue love interestsaside from Kaorin nor is dating ever an issue although a joke about Tomo being undateable does come up. In terms of fanservice this may be one of the most squeakyclean anime out there and yes Im saying that despite the presence of three different beach episodes. During swimsuitheavy episodes whether on the beach or in the pool the art style changes dramatically either going as cheap as possible to make the characters appear less appealing or converting to bizarre Shaftesque angles to distract you from them. Theres no manipulative shininess on their skin no sparkles as the sunlight reflects off of water droplets and refreshingly no bath scenes. Yes its sad to say but even in the hundreds of anime that arent allowed to show nudity they will still put the girls in the bath for extended periods of time covering them up with steam or convenient censorship so they can have their cake and eat it to. Not only does Azumanga Daioh not resort to that but the closest it ever comes to nudity is when Yomis weighing herself on the scale at home. While there are a handful of culturally impenetrable jokes to get confused by theres still a lot of physical and character driven humor that viewers of any language can enjoy. Characters play jokes on each other that will leave you in stitches particularly where Tomo is involved and a lot of it still holds up over the course of multiple viewings. Despite a computer showing up in the later episodes the stories are entirely timeless with characters playing outside and hanging out with each other for fun preferring to engage in activities like going for walks visiting the wealthy Chiyos beachhouse and at one point just lain jumping rope together. There really isnt any drama to speak of as this shows highest priority seems to be staying positive and upbeat at all times but there are still a lot of quiet moments that work on a deeper level than the rest of the material which leads into what I consider the strongest element of the series by far The characters. Azumanga Daioh is plotless this is true. It has no real goals and nobody has any serious ambitions that youre expected to care about This is a character driven comedy and while it doesnt do a perfect job of translating the original mangas 4panel Charlie Brown style to film A tougher task than it sounds it still does an admirable job mostly thanks to the outstanding cast of characters that the manga gifted it with. Aside from the predatory lesbian kohai theres no character here who can easily fit into an archetype as theres a level of duality and nuance to each of them. It doesnt just have an energetic genki girl it has a genki girl who pisses everyone off and gets her comeuppance a lot. Every single archetype that you can find is similarly taken in a new direction that no other show will want to take it and it works so well with how the characters interact with each other. They feel through and through like a real group of friends plucked right from life certain circumstances aside and they make so many memories that you WILL find yourself crying the first time you see the final episode and the grand emotional sendoff this series gives to the tightly bonded characters that its spent so much time developing making it a show well worth revisiting. Azumanga Daioh was at one point available from ADV Films but not only did Funimation never rescue it but Im still not sure if Sentai still owns it under their new name. Its essentially been out of print since before 2006 and cheap copies arent easy to come by. you can generally find the entire series for between 50 and 100 dollars on Ebay but dont even bother checking places like Amazon or Rightstuf for it. You might get lucky and find it used in an anime store or an FYEwhich is where I got my copy btw but if you cant afford to pay for it third party the only real option you have left is illegal streaming. The original manga by Kiyohiko Azuma is ridiculously easy to find and I highly recommend picking it up either in quarters or in the newer omnibus format. A new supplemental portion of the manga has not been released stateside neither has the few short OVA films but you can find both pretty easily online. His followup manga Yotsuba will likely never be animated but try it out. Its available stateside and its really freaking funny. I mentioned earlier that I consider Azumanga Daioh to be one of the most important anime ever made and I dont say something like that lightly. I say that for two reasons: The first is that word I kept throwing around in this review unique. There has never been and will never be another anime like this one. It has in a very real sense become a genre of its own which leads me to my other reason: Its heavily influential and the amount of anime that have taken their cues and at some points even characters directly from Azumanga daioh is staggering. This show is the reason there are so many anime following a group of female friends through high school powered by personality alone. This show is the reason that so many high school anime make such a big deal out of aging the characters and holding a graduation on the final episode. This is a show that any selfrespecting anime fan has to have either watched or read at least once you dont have to enjoy it you just have to experience it and you may come away from it with a better understanding of slice of life anime and what if anything can make them good. Its the definition of a seminal series and for that Im willing to forgive its unfortunate flaws But not forget them. I give Azumanga Daioh an 8/10.