Azumanga Daiou The Animation

Chiyo Mihama begins her high school career as one of the strangest students in her freshman class—a tiny, 10-year-old academic prodigy with a fondness for plush dolls and homemade cooking. But her homeroom teacher, Yukari Tanizaki, is the kind of person who would hijack a student's bike to avoid being late, so "strange" is a relative word.

There certainly isn't a shortage of peculiar girls in Yukari-sensei's homeroom class. Accompanying Chiyo are students like Tomo Takino, an energetic tomboy with more enthusiasm than brains; Koyomi Mizuhara, Tomo's best friend whose temper has a fuse shorter than Chiyo; and Sakaki, a tall, athletic beauty whose intimidating looks hide a gentle personality and a painful obsession with cats. In addition, transfer student Ayumu Kasuga, a girl with her head stuck in the clouds, fits right in with the rest of the girls—and she has a few interesting theories about Chiyo's pigtails!

Together, this lovable group of girls experience the ups and downs of school life, their many adventures filled with constant laughter, surreal absurdity, and occasionally even touching commentary on the bittersweet, temporal nature of high school.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kasuga, Ayumu Main

Matsuoka, Yuki Japanese

Sakaki Main

Asakawa, Yuu Japanese

Mihama, Chiyo Main

Kaneda, Tomoko Japanese

Takino, Tomo Main

Higuchi, Chieko Japanese

Tanizaki, Yukari Main

Hiramatsu, Akiko Japanese

Kagura Main

Kuwashima, Houko Japanese

Mizuhara, Koyomi Main

Tanaka, Rie Japanese

Kurosawa, Minamo Main

Hisakawa, Aya Japanese

Chiyo's Father Supporting

Wakamoto, Norio Japanese

Kimura Supporting

Ishii, Kouji Japanese

Matsukura, Yuuji Producer

Oosawa, Nobuhiro Producer

Ikeda, Shinichi Producer

Suzuki, Seiji Assistant Producer

Reviews

Feb 18, 2025

scarleteyes666

Recommended

This is a work that the public normally starts watching without any expectations, just to have a laugh and pass the time, but this anime surprises, and surprises a lot.

Obviously every good comedy needs to be funny, and in this regard, this work is essentially better of most comedies I've seen when it comes to anime. Even renowned comedy animes usually lag behind here in the West because many of the jokes only make sense to the Japanese, this leads to some unfunny jokes for us, or even ones that don't make sense here, but Azumanga Daiou doesn't, every joke is hilarious, all the ... characters are memorable and captivating, the aesthetics are incredible, and it's not even possible to give enough praise here. The way the author handled the relationships between the characters without leaving a morbid air of seriousness is simply pleasant to see, this work is an example of what a comedy should be, at the same time that there will never be anything like what it was. Greatest of his time.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Mar 22, 2025

Emarurururu

Mixed Feelings

With high scores from my friends, I went in expecting a funny and cute watch. I mean, I like Love Live and Umaru, what about this one would make me not enjoy it? Well, I did a bit, but more than anything I was left feeling like I was missing something. That there was a puzzle piece that everyone but me could fit that made this show special. Azumanga Daioh is cute and sometimes funny, but that's about it. The characters are tropes and nothing beyond said tropes, there ae some highlights like Yukari or Sakaki but a lot of the time you will get ... attached to one or two characters and then be waiting for those same characters to get screentime. The heavily lesbian coded character Kaori was another favorite because I'm bisexual. To all my fellow LGBTQ+ people out there don't watch this anime as you will watch Kaori slowly decrease in relevancy and end up getting stuck with the pedophile in the end. Very disappointed with this show and I feel like I wasted my time.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Sep 5, 2013

Fujaku

Not Recommended

I am a huge fan of the slice-of-life genre. Something about seeing cute girls sit around and do... Stuff is somehow entertaining for me. Slice-of-life however, seems to be one of the most hated genres only second to ecchi/hentai stuff. The only expectation to this rule seems to be a few iyashikei (healing) slice-of-life shows and Azumanga Daioh. While I could rant on how the iyashikei genre isn't very good, I am instead going to rant about why Azumanga Daioh, one of the most celebrated slice-of-life anime, is one of my least favorite ones out there, as I do not like this at all.

Now, the ... most important thing in a slice-of-life shows is the characters. While I consider characters the most important part of all anime, as if you don't care about the characters, what's the point of watching them, this is especially true with slice-of-life anime, where the whole point is watching a random group of people mess around and do stuff. If these characters fall flat, then the show automatically falls flat too. A common complaint for the slice-of-life genre is that it recycles character archetypes a lot. Now, I personally consider that to be part of the genre and judge the characters not by whether we've seen their personality ten times before, but how much they add new stuff to their personality and become their own character. Now, Azumanga Daioh, being one of the first “a bunch of school girls mess around” show creating all of these archetypes we see so much in today's slice-of-life, the characters in Azumanga Daioh would be unique enough that everyone would want to rip them off, and the answer to that question is a big no.

While you don't go to slice-of-life shows looking for multi-layered characters, you can't just give them a personality and role with it, you need to flesh out the personality and add details to it and that is one thing Azumanga falls at miserably. The teacher, Yukarin, is lazy, Tomo is the energetic goofball, Chiyo is the small, cute, and smart one, Yomi is the straight man in the group, Osaka is the ditz, Sakaki is the tomboy who likes cute things, and Kagura... Is tomboyish? I guess? That's all there is to it. Nothing more. That's literally the whole show right there. These have to be some of the most one-sided characters I've seen in any slice-of-life anime.

So due to the fact we have a group of dull characters with only one or two traits to them, the comedy suffers. And there is no plot to this show, just comedy. Jokes get over-used all the time. Goofy, random stuff happens for no reason to be goofy and random, and some people might, but I do not find random humor to be that funny. Well, okay, maybe it's funny in all doses, but if I sit through a show where the whole purpose is goofy random humor, I just get used to the randomness and it isn't funny anymore. I didn't laugh once through the energetic comedy FLCL as the comedy just bounced off me as once I quickly got used to the randomness, you well, get used to the randomness and it doesn't become funny anymore. While Azumanga Daioh does try to pull out a more slow pace than other random comedies out there, in a way that's even worse as it drains whatever personality this show is trying to have even more. Not to mention that four episodes in, whatever comedy the show had quickly gets old as these are one-sided characters with nothing to them and they can't do much else besides act to their one-sided personality. Not to mention that this show reuses plots so much. Three beach episodes, 3 sport festival episodes,and 2 festivals. That means that 5 episodes in this show reuse plots from previous episodes. And stock footage too if I recall correctly.

Which brings me to my next negative on this show, the animation,which, to be honest, sucks. Characters never move while talking, the character designs are about as undetailed as you can get, with some of the cast members even looking alike as there's little variation. Backgrounds are dull and just fade in. Footage is sometimes repeated for little reason expect to save money. The voice actors are also pretty mediocre too, but who can blame them with the terrible characters they're put into. The music is rather good though, with catchy background tunes and a very memorable opening and ending theme.

Azumanga Daioh Final Consensus
Story- Comedy falls flat and relies too much on randomness-3.
Characters- A terrible, one-sided cast-3.
Art-Very poor- 4.
Sound- Dull voice actors, good music-6.5.
Comedy anime around 2004 must have all sucked if this is seen as one of the greats in the genre (and now that I think about it, the only other comedy from around that time that I ever see get recommend is Cromartie High School, so perhaps that's true). Azumanga Daioh is everything a slice-of-life anime should not be. While you cannot ignore its influence on the genre and on anime in general, I still cannot recommend this to anyone. Overall, a score of 4.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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