AZUMANGA DAIOH!

Just when you thought all anime was the same.



Review by: Richard "Kitty litter is not a sandbox!" Martin.

Length: 26 Episodes
Genre: Comedy
Watched: All, Subbed

Now this is a break from the "norm". It incorporates the popular anime style, yet does not have the popular kind of story. It has quite a straightfoward story actually, and it all centres around the lives of six high-school teenagers. Not super-powered space aliens, not combat robots, just ordinary human girls.

Plot synopsis: The story is about six girls as they go through three years of high-school, with all the trials and tribulations that they face.

Artwork: The artwork is pretty plain. Some of the time the characters in background or even the foreground ( for instance when the scene shows the teacher at her desk facing her pupils) are drawn as stick figures, like how people were defined in DiGi Charat. It's pretty consistent though; there's detail when there needs to be, usually if something is right up next to the screen in a scene.

Music: The opening and ending theme tunes weren't up to much. If the subtitles where to be believed, it seems that the opening song was constituted of random words strung together to make a song. Same for the ending.

Characters: As this is all focused on six females, you would expect there to be males right? And you'd expect there to be some sort of love interest to make the story more interesting, right? Well that's not the case here. The anime is devoid of any main male characters apart from Kimura, a teacher at the school and resident pervert. He admits himself in one episode that the only reason he became a teacher was because he likes young girls. He also has some very strange views on what the girls should wear. The six girls can be fitted in the regular stereotypes like timid girl, sporty girl, athletic girl, etc. But this doesn't harm them, as they are all likeable and develop a fair bit as the anime progresses. There are some odd scenes sexually though. There is a girl called Kaorin, the only girl who seems to have a love interest. Though as there are no main male characters except for Kimura (who develops feelings for her later on, which see never returns) she seems to have a lesbian tendency for Sasaki, who she fantasizes about frequently. Some moments of the anime can get a little spaced out; mostly they are to do with Osaka, who is always more than a bit disconnected. Mihama Chiyo is the young cutie with the above-average intelligence, Takino Tomo is the hyperactive sugar-fiend, and Sasaki is a regular reserved althelete who doesn't say much and has a great love of cats.

Plot: As the original manga of Azumanga Daioh! were just four-panel strips, it means that a lot of the content for each episode had to be built upon these strips and expanded upon to give a more developed story. The basics of the story is about six girls as they go through three years of high school. As the series spans three years, there are recurring themes like the sports day, cultural festival and summer vacation which appear three times in course of the series. Some of the episodes also have recurring themes where something in the episode is repeated more than once. In one episode an action performed by Takino on Yomi seems to go on forever.

CHICKS! Well, your spoiled for choice here, with two teachers and six students. My preference is for Osaka, even if she not completely one with the world. None of the characters in this anime are as exaggerated as you would usually expect in an anime, as they all appear to have realistic bodies and proportions. No mammoth breasts and skinny waists here (Editor's note: Damn!). Also, there is a strange lack of any kind of fan service. Even the usual pantyshots seems to be a rarity. Even with all these differences with the characters, the same stereotypes still exist, with each character being of a general type.

Overall: Azumanga Daioh! Is very different from the standard anime fare, and so might be a refreshing change for some, but it's not for everyone. Also it might be hard for people who do not have a good understanding of Japanese culture to get the jokes, as they are all related to Japanese culture. It's very different from the usual type of anime, as a lot of stereotypes are unused.

IN A NUTSHELL
+ A toned down zaniness similar to DiGi Charat + Attractive characters
- No real plot
- Has to fluff its way through most of the episodes
- Repetitiveness can get annoying
Rating: 8/10



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