characters:
Ten-year-old genius Chiyo
animal-loving Sakaki loudmouth Tomo
athletic Kagura
weight-conscious Yomi
and
dim-witted Osaka
are six friends who share laughs, good times, and a high school homeroom. With scary (and sometimes perverted) teachers, school festivals, penguin suits and general hilarity abounding, you can be sure that there's never a dull day in the life of one of these students!
story
Azumanga Daioh chronicles the everyday life in an unnamed Japanese high school of six girls and two of their teachers: child prodigy Chiyo Mihama and her struggle to fit in with girls five years older, reserved Sakaki and her obsession with the cute animals who seem to hate her, spacey Ayumu "Osaka" Kasuga with a skewed perspective on the world,Koyomi "Yomi" Mizuhara's aggravation at an annoying best friend, Tomo Takino, whose energy is rivaled only by her lack of sense, sporty Kagura and her one-sided rivalry with Sakaki, and their homeroom teacher Yukari Tanizaki and her friend, physical educationteacher Minamo "Nyamo" Kurosawa. Secondary characters include Kimura-sensei, a creepy male teacher with an obsession with teenage girls, and Kaorin, a classmate with a crush on Sakaki. The story covers three years of tests, talking between classes, culture festivals, and athletic events at school, as well as time spent traveling to and from school, studying at Chiyo's house, and vacations spent at Chiyo's summer beach home and the fictional theme park Magical Land, concluding with the graduation of the main cast. It is generally realistic in tone, marked by occasional bursts of surrealism and absurdity, such as Osaka imagining Chiyo's ponytails being "unscrewed" from her head and an episode featuring the characters' New Year's dreams.
Media
[edit]Manga
Main article: List of Azumanga Daioh chapters
Azumanga Daioh was written and illustrated by Kiyohiko Azuma, largely in yonkoma (four-panel) format. The unnumbered chapters were serialized by MediaWorks' in the monthly magazine Dengeki Daioh from February 1999 to May 2002 and collected in fourtankōbon volumes.[6] Each of the four volumes covers about a year in the characters' lives.[7] A new edition in three volumes was released in Japan by Shogakukan to commemorate the manga's 10th anniversary,[8] with volume one, covering the first year of high school, being published June 11, 2009.[9] The reprint edition contains three additional 16-page chapters serialized in Monthly Shōnen Sunday starting in May 2009 under the title Azumanga Daioh: Supplementary Lessons (あずまんが大王·補習編 Azumanga Daiō Hoshūhen?).[10][11]
The series was licensed in English in North America and the United Kingdom by ADV Manga, which released all four volumes between 2003 and 2004. ADV later reprinted the series in an omnibus edition (ISBN 978-1-4139-0364-5) on November 7, 2007.[6] In 2009, Yen Press acquired the North American and UK license of Azumanga Daioh, and released a new translation in December 2009 in an omnibus volume.[12] In Europe, Azumanga Daioh is licensed in French by Kurokawa,[13] in German by Tokyopop,[14] in Spanish byNorma Editorial,[15] and in Finnish by Punainen jättiläinen.[16] In Asia, the series has been licensed in Korean by Daiwon C.I.,[17] in Thaiby Negibose Comics,[18] in Vietnam by TVM Comics,[19] and in Chinese by Tong Li Publishing.[20] It was the first yonkoma manga translated in France.[21]
[edit]Anime
Main article: List of Azumanga Daioh episodes
The anime television series, Azumanga Daioh: the Animation, was produced by J.C.Staff and aired from the week of April 8, 2002 until the week of September 30, 2002.[22] It was broadcast on TV Tokyo, TV Aichi, TV Osaka, and AT-X in five-minute segments every weekday, then repeated as a 25-minute compilation that weekend, for a total of 130 five-minute segments collected in 26 episodes.[23]The compilation episodes, which were the only versions to include the title and credits sequences, were released on 6 DVDs in 2003 and 9 Universal Media Discs between 2005 and 2006 by Starchild Records, and a DVD box set of all episodes was released on June 24, 2009;[24] the five-minute segments can be distinguished by their individual titles.
