A comedy series based on the manga of the same (meaningless) name**,
Azumanga Daioh is the rather disjointed and occasionally surreal story of several Japanese high school girls and two of their teachers. Episodic to the point of being sketch comedy, the show has little in the way of a coherent storyline, preferring to set up and deliver what amounts to the animation equivalent of several daily comic strips per episode. Its ensemble cast includes a half-dozen or so schoolgirl characters that (mostly) tend to defy the usual stereotypes, and the two female teachers with whom they interact most often are little more than grown-up children themselves.
Azumanga Daioh has been described as "
Peanuts on LSD", which seems more or less accurate. It's a bit of an acquired taste, but if you're in the right mood, it can be hilarious.
AzuDai also has a
character sheet,
Just Bugs Me,
Crowning Moment of Awesome,
Fanfiction recommendation and
Wild Mass Guess pages. In other words, the complete set.
**The title combines the author's name (Kiyohiko Azuma) with the word "manga" and the name of its original publisher (
Dengeki Daioh magazine) — it can be read as the Japanese equivalent of an acronym for "Azuma's Comic Strip For Daioh Magazine" (
Dengeki Daioh being a magazine aimed mainly at
teenage boys, the general theme of the strip was to poke gentle fun at the audience's female classmates — "Man, teenage girls are
weird...").
This show provides examples of:
- Adult Child (Yukari-sensei)
- Beach Episode (two of them)
- Best Beer Ever (Yukari)
- Bird Run (Subverted: Osaka tries this during a relay race, but it only slows her down.)
- Bishoujo
- Bifauxnen (Sakaki may be the ur-Tall Dark And Bishoujo, but she definitely fills the role).
- Big Fancy House (Chiyo-chan's)
- Big Friendly Dog (Mr. Tadakichi)
- Blah Blah Blah (Yukari tries speaking to a foreigner in English, which the viewer isn't supposed to understand anyway)
- Book Dumb (Tomo and Kagura)
- The Boo Radley (Sakaki, sort of — she just looks intimidating)
- Bokukko (Kagura)
- Bottle Fairy (Yukari)
- Cats Are Mean (Kamineko)
- Chaste Teens (Five post-pubescent high school girls and no romance for any of them)
- Cheerful Child (Chiyo-Chan!)
- Christmas Cake (Kurosawa-sensei)
- Cloudcuckoolander (Osaka)
- Corner Of Woe (Kurosawa)
- Cloudcuckoolander (Osaka) (Hmm, I know i've seen that line somewhere before...)
- Cross Popping Veins
- Delinquents (Sakaki's unintentionally intimidating attitude cause the girls to mistake her by one of these).
- Dirty Old Man (Kimura-sensei)
- Dojikko (Kimura's wife)
- Dreadful Musician (Yomi, though she's more Hollywood Tone Deaf)
- Drives Like Crazy (Yukari. Just...Yukari)
- Enemy To All Living Things (Sakaki, subverted; She loves all living things, even dreaming herself St. Sakaki of Assisi at one point, but most of them only see a huge, scary girl and either run away or attack her on sight)
- Engaging Conversation (Minamo-sensei, give Chiyo a chance to grow up first, okay?)
- Everyone Calls Him Barkeep (Her name is Ayumu Kasuga, but everyone starts calling her "Osaka" by the start of second year; the yonkoma even has a strip where Osaka forgets her real name is Ayumu. In the anime, she's Osaka within moments of her first appearance once Tomo decides to nickname her.)
- Faceless Masses
- Fanservice (Relatively minor but still quite present in the beach episodes; remember who the show's for)
- Festival Episode (many)
- Flanderization (Kaorin's crush, Osaka's eccentricity, Tomo's genkiness)
- Genki Girl (Tomo)
- Growing Up Sucks
- Hachimaki (Sakaki)
- Hero Stole My Bike (Yukari in the first episode, while one of her students is trying to fix hers)
- Heterosexual Life Partners (Yukari and Kurosawa-sensei)
- Ho Yay (The reason for Chaste Teens. Or perhaps its result.)
- Huge Schoolgirl (Sakaki)
- I Know What We Can Do Cut (The Hiccup Hijinks plot in "Osaka's Day")
- The Idiot From Osaka (Well, uh... Osaka, of course)
- Imagine Spot
- Improbable Age (Chiyo-Chan, the ten-year-old high school girl)
- Inside Shoes
- Jerkass (Tomo is a big fat jerk! As well as her adult counterpart, Yukari-sensei.)
- Joshikousei ("Joshikousei toka suki da kara!")
- Late For School (Yukari, in the first episode)
- The Linus (Chiyo, acing test after test while failing to understand sexual stuff any teenage girl would know by heart already)
- Lolicon (Partial — though Kimura prefers the more developed girls, his exclamation of "I like High School Girls!" and open-mouthed stare are still quite disturbing. In fact, Osaka asks him in the manga whether Chiyo really counts for his liking of High School girls since she's so much more a Grade Schooler. He insists: "High School is High School".)
- Measuring Day
- Meganekko (Yomi, the Straight Man)
- Mega Neko (the large floating orange cat that may or may not be Chiyo-chan's father)
- Memetic Mutation ("Mai waifu", as first spoken by Kimura when introducing his hot "waifu" to the girls. Used by fans to describe anime or video game women that are, in their opinion, "desirable")
- More Teeth Than The Osmond Family (Kamineko)
- My Name Is Not Durwood (Osaka, to the point that almost everyone forgot her actual name, including her)
- No Accounting For Taste (The Kimuras)
- Odd Couple (Tomo and Yomi)
- The Ojou (Chiyo-chan)
- Ordinary High School Student (and this time she is ordinary)
- Pet Baby Wild Animal (Maya)
- Pet The Dog (Parodied when the girls find out Kimura-sensei has a kind wife, a cute daughter, voluntarily cleans litter off the streets and regularly donates to charity... but it doesn't stop them from thinking he's creepy; also played straight with Sakaki's weakness for cute things... Well, almost straight, given her terrible luck with said cute things. Even without that angle, it's actually kind of heartbreaking.)
- Post Episode Trailer
- Pungeon Master (Osaka)
- Romantic Two Girl Friendship (Kaorin and Chihiro)
- Sarashi (in one of the sports festivals in the manga)
- Satellite Character (Chihiro)
- Schoolgirl Lesbians (One-sided: Kaorin really, really adores Sakaki, but Sakaki fails to notice.)
- Schoolgirl Rival (Kagura engages Sakaki when she first transfers into the class, and Tomo tries this with predictable results.)
- School Festival
- Seinfeldian Conversation
- Shonen (often confused to be Shojo)
- Shoo The Dog (Sakaki must do this to Mayaa before leaving Okinawa. He comes back to drive off Kamineko from the streets.)
- Short Anime Movie (a "pilot" literally a few minutes long)
- Shout Out (Tomo idolizes Fujiko of Lupin III)
- Shrinking Violet (Sakaki, believe it or not)
- Standing In The Hall (Tomo, self-inflicted)
- Straight Man (Yomi)
- Tall Dark And Bishoujo (Sakaki)
- Tear Jerker (Watch through the whole series, then watch the last episode. You will cry. Oh yes, you will cry. You won't believe it.)
- Ted Baxter (Tomo)
- Teen Genius (well, pre-teen — Chiyo-chan)
- Thunder Shock (Sakaki, overwhelmed by the cuteness of a photo of kittens.)
- Token Loli (Chiyo-chan)
- Two Teacher School (Three Teacher School, technically)
- Ugly Guy Hot Wife (Kimura)
- Wacky Homeroom
- What Do You Mean Its Not Awesome (Osaka, Kagura and Tomo combining their test scores for the sole purpose of beating Chiyo. You'd think they were trying to form Voltron or something.)
- Widget Series (this series is random enough to fit nicely in this category)
- With Friends Like These
- The Woobie (Chiyo, Sakaki)
- Yonkoma (the normal format of the manga)
