Customer Reviews

Azumanga Daioh - The Animation (Vol. 1) Special Edition

5 star:		(39)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Based on the best-selling manga by Kiyohiko Azuma, the anime version of Azumanga Daioh takes the zany adventures of a group of high school girls and three of their teachers. However, the first disc does not contain all the adventures of the first manga, and there are some linking and extra scenes that don't occur in the manga. Indeed, the cute opening song about Fancy Hearing Cake, longing to hold that special someone so tight, and to hear that voice saying "I love you," opens the cheery confection of this anime.

The first five episodes are on the first disc, which introduces all the characters. There is the unconventional, zany, but often selfish and shallow Yukari Tanizaki, the home-room teacher for our heroines. In contrast, her fellow alumnus Minamo Kurosawa, the PE teacher, is popular and likeable due to her considerateness to students. She hates the nickname Yukari's given her, Nyamo, and is often on the receiving end of Yukari's antics, but Yukari does get her comeuppance, especially in a swimming relay match that's a highlight of the swimming pool episode. And then there's the classical lit teacher Mr. Kimura, who openly confesses that he became a teacher to look at the high school girls!

The students: there is the bespectacled and mature brunette Yomi, her friend, the fun-loving and energetic "wild cat girl" Tomo, who's cute and always at home taking center stage, although she's all noise and no talent. The tall, quiet, contemplative daydreamer Sakaki, Kaorin, the girl who's got a mad crush on Sakaki, the short-haired Chihiro, and the two transfer students who set things rolling.

The adorably cute, pigtailed, and bubbly redhead Chiyo Mihama, is only ten but because of her intense intelligence, has skipped five years to enter first year high school. She is also responsible, startling the students by making her own lunch, polite, and very friendly, but she's not strong in PE, as she needs a kickboard in swimming. She's rich, but generous enough to invite her friends to her seaside summer house during vacation.

The other, my personal favourite, is the cute petite, wide-eyed, soft-spoken Ayumu Kasuga. Though hailing from Osaka, she's quiet, shy, and not at all rowdy as most students expected her to be, speaking with a soft Osakan accent. Before long, Tomo gives her the nickname Osaka, much to Ayumu's chagrin, which stays with her for the duration of the series. In the episode Osaka's Half Day, we get a bigger picture of her, of how she's a bit slow and quite a space cadet, and how she gets the hiccups, with her friends trying zany and sometimes painful ways to cure them, such as drinking juice with the ears and nose plugged, being struck in solar plexus, having pressure on the eyeballs, etc. She also has the penchant of trivia, or saying things coming out of left field. But her bizarre theories about Chiyo-chan's detachable pigtails just take the cake!

Some of the happenings have taken place in the second or third manga. Osaka's hiccups took place in the second book, by which time the jock Kagura has joined them. As she has not yet been with the group in the anime, it is Tomo who strikes Osaka in the back and solar plexus, and not Kagura. And Osaka's trivia-relating episode takes place in the third manga. But Kagura appears during the swimming relay competition in Episode 4, and has a few lines in the last episode.

Of the students, the very introverted and cat-loving Sakaki has the same personality as me. She loves cats, but whenever she tries to pet them, they bite her, leaving her with bandaged hands. Even though she comes off as being standoffish, she's a repressed romantic. Initially a bit scary to Chiyo, when the latter reads the career preference questionnaire Sakaki's given her, with choices of vet, florist, and stuffed toy owner, she decides that maybe Sakaki's really a nice person after all. In later episodes, she turns out to be perhaps the gentlest of all.

One might consider this shoujo anime, for girls, but it's fun for anyone. Guys will like it for the short skirts and cute girls. Naturally, I read the manga first, and the anime enhances the book versions without compromising much of the stories. As the first series of anime I got into, Azumanga Daioh contains fun, silliness, and characters I feel have become newly found friends to me.

This limited edition box also has cloisonné pins of Chiyo-chan and the Kamineko, the cat that bites Sakaki. The DVD extras contains art studies of Chiyo-chan and Chihiro.

I mean, come on. He dislikes EVERYTHING. Should he really be reviewing these types of DVDs when he obviously doesn't care for the entire genre? This is one of the best US anime releases of the year, don't let Solomon's featherweight review dissuade you. What it's about (contrary to Solomon's claim that it's about nothing) is the characters--and their remarkable chemistry makes even mundane experiences entertaining. A smart and funny comedy, with characters that you will grow genuinely fond of by the time the final credits roll.

Gigantic robots... strange-colored hair... magical girls... none of the above are to be found in Azuma Kiyohiko's /Azumanga Daioh/. Unlike any other anime before it, it has no fantastic story to tell-- no shape-changing, nor bounty hunting, nor hidden metaphorical meaning. It is, quite simply, genius in that it lasts 26 enjoyable and wonderful episodes based only on its characters and how they encounter everyday situations at a Japanese high school. A full ten minutes on this DVD are devoted to nothing more ordinary than a case of the hiccups, and yet, you will most likely keep watching. This anime pioneers a whole new genre, which anime has never seen the likes of before but is well known in the world of fiction; a novel (as opposed to sci-fi). When you remember that fantasy stories preceded the novel in Western literature, this appears to be quite a turning point for anime.

The characters stand out instantly for their quirks. There is Chiyo, the child genius who is hard not to adore; Osaka, the Southern girl whose mind wanders, and yet you will never want to call her stupid; Tomo, who really *is* stupid; and Sakaki, who's great at doing adult things but wishes for something less mature. Interestingly, Yomi, who many would leap on in a more typical anime (i.e., Akametsu) as the "cute" character with glasses, emerges as the most bland, and you only feel sympathy for her because Tomo is quick to tease her. It seems to me as if Kiyohiko is trying to prove some sort of point here.

The animation style divulges from the norm as much as the story. Rather than following the "shoujo" or "shounen" schools of art popular in the 1990s, Kiyohiko draws on iconified, comic strip-like manga art. He is careful to keep his characters' faces and hands less detailed than their outfits, which produces a very cute style remniscent of /Love Hina/ on a good day.

At the end of four episodes, no epic story will have been told, and no adventure will have been started by the characters, but you will feel as if you have gone to school with them for a few months. Hang on tight-- as the series progresses, the feeling will strengthen.

Having only seen as far as the 1st DVD in the series, I can confidently say that this stays VERY true to the manga. Anyone who's not familiar with either the manga or the anime doesn't need to know much about this series. It's about 6 high school girls who... y'know... hang out. Of course it's more than that (but not much more). I asked a friend of mine if the series had a plot at all. His only response was. "...well... they graduate...." That puts it best. This is a good series for boys or girls. It's very funny, and I highly reccomend it.

Azumanga Daioh, more than any recent anime, has created a rift in the fan community. Of course, in one corner we have the absolutely rabid fans of the series, and in the other, those who think Azumanga Daioh to be nothing but mindless romp and filler.

That being said, Azumanga Daioh is very much an acquired taste. Alot of it's appeal is held within its genre itself. Rarely done in anime, and even more rarely done right, is the Slice of Life genre. In Slice of Life there are no action scenes, no magical transformations and no huge particle-beam blasting mecha. Instead, Azumanga simply tells the tale of these (primarily) six high school girls.

Of course, it's not any old boring life. The day in and day out of the girls is anything but dull, and is instead a joyous and humourous experience.

Right off the bat, we are introduced to airheaded teacher Yukari Tanizaki, biking to school, late as usual. When her bike breaks down, she simply steals that of a male student passing by. We are then introduced to the main characters: Tomo, the overly-energetic one; Yomi, a bespectacled, mellow young woman rather obsessed with her weight; and Sakaki, a mysterious yet kitty-obsessed girl. Of course, there's always a new student, so we are then introduced to Chiyo Mihama. Chiyo is only ten years old and happens to have the cutest pigtails ever! Before the first episode is over, we meet Ayumu Kasuga, a transfer student from Osaka. She seems to be airheaded, but is just easily distracted -- often by her own mind.

Azumanga Daioh was adapted from a four-panel style comic run in the Japanese serial Monthly Comic Dengeki Daioh a couple of years ago, written by Kiyohiko Azuma. The comic was a sensation, and so when the call to produce an anime adaptation was made, JC Staff stayed true to the form of the original Azumanga manga.

Each 25 minute long episode of Azumanga Daioh is composed of five few minutes long vignettes, very loosely tied to one another, though more overarching stories are attempted throughout Volume 2. As such, an episode of Azumanga Daioh will rarely get boring, though some gags do get old after a while.

The character designs by Yasuhisa Kato also ring true to the original designs from the manga, and are wonderfully done, right down to the uniforms. The music (which uses the recorded quite a bit) also fits the series perfectly.

As far as voice acting goes, the English track is okay, but some of the voices don't seem to fit the characters, and Osaka's drawl just gets on my nerves. Though if you have no preference for dub or sub, it wouldn't hurt to give both a try.

Overall, Azumanga Daioh is a welcome and original treat. It's bursting with comedic flavour, but is also a sweet and heartwarming affair, earning the highest rating Amazon allows.

When I first saw Azumanga, it came in the form of fansubs. Everyone kept going on about how amazingly amazing it was. And oh boy, is it ever.
The original cast is excellent, the animation is flawless. It never ever gets old - Azumanga Daioh is like having your own group of good friends that you can be with whenever you want. So much of it is relateable to everyday life - from Osaka not being able to break disposable chopsticks, to Yomi's diet woes, to Tomo's lost vending machine battle.
This particular DVD box set comes with two pins - Chiyo-chan and the biting cat. The pins are nice and big, and the box itself is very pretty. The Amazon price is right as well - you can snag the box set for the same price of the normal DVD at Suncoast.
The dubbing... My friend agrees with me that they all sound the same. And there is no possible way you could dub Tomo or Osaka. An Osakan accent doesn't translate into English. The voices are grating and pretty bad, but then, I hate dubbing anyway. It kills so much of the original animation. The only voice I enjoyed was that of Kimura - making him sound more perverted is funny, if not true to the story. Osaka's English VA did not manage to capture her air-headedness at all. Sakaki's English VA doesn't manage to capture Sakaki's nature either. ADV needs to hire more people into their dubbing department cos they all sound the same no matter what show you're watching. By the way, a lot of the cultural or lingual jokes don't translate at all - so unless ADV includes a "translation notes" section for everything, you're going to be missing out on a lot.
At the end of the day, however, you're still getting Azumanga Daioh. A show that will make you laugh and cry and long to have friends like these. Even Tomo.

The plot of Azumanga Daioh has already been summarized numerous times on this page, so for our purposes let's say "Azumanga Daioh is about a cadre of high school girls and their day-to-day travails."

With that in mind, understand that Azumanga is not a deep anime. It will not provoke your thoughts, nor lead you to ponder the deeper meaning of life. However, provided the proper mindset, what it will do is draw you into its simple world where the most ordinary problems (the hiccups, the appearance of a new "rival") can be the most challenging, and everything is fair game for absurd comedy.

As several reviewers mention, Azumanga has no sustained plot line per se, even each individual episode goes through several smaller events which are not necessarily connected. But this need not be a weakness; instead, it allows the show to be flexible and decide what it wants to do next irrespective of what has gone before. The jokes range from overt slapstick humor to bizarre extended word-plays, and if you watch the series long enough (the first disc has a relatively generous five episodes) you're likely to find at least one or two gags that will make you smile.

I was a little disappointed to find that the show does not offer much in the way of new material to those who have read the manga (released in English by ADV Manga), and if you already know the girls' adventures from their print form, the main draw here will be the clean, bright animation and the excellent acting from the Japanese cast. (The English dub? Well, it's not awful, but how much it agrees with you will probably depend on your tolerance for dubs whose overall quality fluctuates throughout.)

Azumanga Daioh is surely worthy of the attentions of an anime fan at least for one disc, and even moreso if you happen to enjoy comedy. It won't awe you with its insights, but it will delight you with its simple, innocent sense of fun.

~

High school is a difficult time for all teenagers - Japanese as well as American. Azumanga Daioh is the story of once such group as they make their way through. This isn't about their serious moments, though, but the laughter and comic situations that make the going less tough. It is a running narrative focused not on magic or monsters, but the daily lives of some odd, but basically normal teenagers.

The series is illustrated by the studios of J.C. Staff, the story is a remake of what the Japanese refer to as a four panel manga. No real mystery about this - in the U.S. we call this a 'comic strip.' Short little scenes with a comic punch at the end. This is a genre which usually makes a very poor transition to anime, which keeps trying to make whole episodes out of the short pieces and stringing the gags together until the humor is painful - and boring.

Not the case here. J.C.Staff director Hiroshi Nishikiori follows a strategy of letting the unique and endearing characters of the story take over and work the story in such a way as to capture both the gags of the manga and the infectious good humor of the story. By deliberately making stylistic decisions that abstract the atmosphere of the action, the artistic effect of the manga is magically preserved.

While Azumanga Daioh is neither deep or sweeping in its scope, one can't help be drawn into the circumstances of the unbearably cute and intelligent Chiyo (who really loves to cook), the overcompensating Tomo, and the other quirky characters that race across the screen. Sakaki is my favorite, quiet, and an excellent sportswoman, everyone around her assumes she is a dominant, strong young lady - when in truth what she wants is to run a flower shop and pet a cat.

Azumanga Daioh is to be admired both for what it is - a fun, feel good series, and for the accomplishment of translating a difficult genre into something immediately accessible as anime. Definitely tops in its age group, and fun for us adults as well.

Now this is a very, very, very enjoyable series. I've seen the whole thing in japanese and I can't wait for this to come out. The basic story revolves around these crazy highschool girls, each one with their own eccentric personality (my personal fav Osaka!). There isn't much drama, no crazy actions scenes, and no romance stuff, just really funny and extremely cute. It reminds me of the Sunday Funnies, in 30 min segments and a whole lot funnier.

When I first started to watch I was expecting some generic plot, and started to get confused. I asked myself "what's the point of this cartoon?". Well before I knew it, I fell in love with the characters, and couldn't stop watchin'. So what exactly does a day with the Azumanga Girls involve? Well it could be anythin' from classroom hijinks, fierce competition in the school athletic festival and culture festival, a day at the beach house, or just hangin' out at Chiyo-chan's mansion, it's all in great fun!

This series is great for any age group, and for anyone. This is definitely a one of a kind cartoon, I know I've never seen anythin' like it. Five stars indeed!

If you don't laugh at least a little in the adventures of Osaka, Tomo, sakaki, Chiyo, Yomi, kagura, Kaorin, Ms. Yukar, and Mr. kimura, then you need some mental help. This is oe of the funniest anime/manga series ever, which is rare for plotless (but incredibly funny) anime. the animation is clean, the stories are funny, and it's an okay watch/read for almost all ages. i reccomend it for ages 12+--mild innuendo, some sexual refrencces, and some alchohol ussage.