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Azumanga Daioh is a comedy yonkoma manga series written and illustrated by Kiyohiko Azuma, which revolves around six high school girls, as well as their classmates and teachers. Child Prodigy Chiyo Mihama enters high school at the improbable age of ten, and befriends five other teenage girls: intimidating but shy Sakaki, loudmouthed Genki Girl Tomo Takino, her beleaguered Straight Man Koyomi "Yomi" Mizuhara, airheaded Cloudcuckoolander Ayumu "Osaka" Kasuga, and brash Passionate Sports Girl Kagura. Being episodic to the point of resembling sketch comedy, and largely lacking serious conflict or drama, the series has little in the way of conventional storylines, instead revolving around the ennui of everyday life.

...And despite having no real fanservice to speak of, it somehow invented the term "waifu." Yes, really.

The manga was serialized in MediaWorks' Dengeki Daioh magazine from 1999 to 2002. Each chapter covers a month of the girls' lives, following the April–March Japanese school year and ending with graduation. In 2000, it received a spinoff short in the form of Azumanga Web Daioh; as the name implies, it was published exclusively online, immediately granting it historical significance as the very first "Original Net Animation," an online-based variant of the Original Video Animation format. The following year, the series received a theatrical short by J.C. Staff that later got turned into a full-blown televised anime adaptation, which aired on TV Tokyo from April to September of 2002 for 26 episodes. The TV anime expands upon the setting and characters while omitting other jokes.

The Work Info Title combines the author's name, "Azuma", with the word "manga", appended with the title of Dengeki Daioh. It can be read in full as "Azuma's Manga for Dengeki Daioh". The magazine is aimed mainly at young teenage boys, so Azumanga Daioh is considered shōnen, contrary to its premise and characters. However, since it mostly lacks many tropes common in shōnen, it's often mistaken for shōjo, or occasionally seinen.

Its humor, especially in the manga, is heavily character-driven and often relies on Beat Panels, subtle changes in facial expression, mundane chit-chat, Running Gags, references to Japanese culture, and jarring shifts into absurdism. It's also notable for demonstrating that a series about high school girls could be popular and profitable by focusing on their personalities instead of their bodies. Its impact on Japanese media was strongly felt, as the formula and tropes that it popularized would go on to define an entire genre, the Schoolgirl Series.

In 2009, to celebrate the series' tenth anniversary, Azuma wrote up a new series of "Extra Lessons" interquel strips, featuring the first (and only) new pieces of official Azumanga Daioh content since the end of its anime adaptation. That same year, a reprint of the original manga was put out featuring redone artwork by Azuma; while it wasn't a full front-to-back redraw, it did feature a good amount of touch-ups, especially for the first volume (where several characters originally looked very different from their later designs), and even included some new strips slotted alongside the old ones (separate from the "Extra Lessons" installments).

The anniversary was also marked by the release of Osaka Expo, a memorial book split half-and-half between retrospective looks at Azumanga Daioh's influence on pop culture (such as marketing, merchandise, and even its international translations) and a series of strips drawn by guest artists who were influenced by the series, such as Hidamari Sketch author Ume Aoki and Nichijou author Keiichi Arawi. Since then, no new material has been put out, not even for the 20th anniversary in 2019.

The series was originally licensed in the U.S. by ADV Films, who released English dubbed and subbed versions of the anime, as well as a concurrent translation of the manga throughout the mid-2000s. The license to the manga is currently held by Yen Press, who released their own translation in 2009. The anime license, after spending several years in limbo, was acquired by ADV's successor Sentai Filmworks in 2016.

It also has spawned a lot of doujinshi and fan games covering various genres, such as Azumanga Fighter, a fan-made Fighting Game.


This show provides examples of:

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  • 2D Visuals, 3D Effects: Due to it being animated on a low budget, Azumanga Web Daioh overlays hand-drawn characters atop computer-rendered backgrounds. This is most prominent in a scene where Tomo runs through the halls with Chiyo's camcorder, with the scenery being rendered using simple shapes, flat shading, and no textures.
  • Actor Allusion:
    • Kurosawa apparently has a troubled past with a love letter that Yukari threatens to blackmail her with if she reveals any of Yukari's schooltime shenanigans. Kurosawa's voice actress, Aya Hisakawa, also played Sailor Mercury/Ami Mizuno, who gets a special in the anime and manga dedicated to a romantic notion of hers. In it, she's shown to have a strong aversion to love letters, culminating in an allergic reaction to some that are used to attack her in the climax.
    • Kaorin's German voice actress, Kathrin Neusser, played Mayu from Elfen Lied, a character who looks very similar to Kaorin.
  • Adaptation Distillation: A fair amount of content and jokes from the manga don't make it into the anime, such as everything involving the McDonald's Expy that Chiyo, Osaka and Tomo briefly work at (though a close up shot of the cup Kagura drank from in the 19th episode reveals that it came from that same restaurant), any of the scenes where it's raining, or the dream Tomo had involving Chiyo and a button. Since some events happen earlier in the anime, Kagura's involvement in certain scenes is also removed entirely due to her not joining the main cast's class yet, most notably her absence from the anime's version of the Hiccups chapter.
  • Adaptation Expansion: Because of the differences between the yonkoma format and TV anime format, several jokes are expanded upon in the anime. Most notable are the "Get motivated!" scene, which becomes an Overly Long Gag, and the scene of Osaka waking up Yukari with a knife, which adds Chiyo freaking out at seeing Osaka with a knife. There's also several scenes made exclusively​ for the anime, and Episode 19 is completely original with nothing from the manga in it.
  • After-School Cleaning Duty: A common standard to have in Japanese schools. It shows up most prominently for A Day In The Life of Chiyo. Tomo just plays around with a broom, while Osaka tries to clean but keeps scooting backwards while using the dustpan.
  • Age-Stereotypical Food:
    • Tomo teases grade school aged Chiyo for being childish because her favorite food is meatballs, but when asked what her favorite food is, Tomo says that it's bananas, prompting Yomi to call her an idiot.
    • In another episode, Ms. Yukari asks Chiyo if she has ever had Matsusaka beef. She has. When Ms. Yukari asks her to choose her favorite thing from an expensive catalog, Chiyo points out an ice cream set, and Ms. Yukari gets angry at her for it, asking her if she's being childish or just showing off her rich background.
  • Airplane Arms: Subverted; Osaka tries this during a relay race, but it only slows her down. Then again, Osaka isn't a very good runner to start with; she even loses to Chiyo. Although in this case, the idea isn't that it will make her run faster; she reckons the other racers won't be able to get past because her arms are in the way.
  • All Animals Are Domesticated: Zigzagged. Sakaki's plight is portrayed as a realistic aversion, as she's trying to pet feral cats, explaining why they're so territorial and hostile towards her. But it's played straight with Mayaa, a wild cub who acts like a pet kitten. These opposing portrayals are justified: the cats she's petting, regardless of whether or not they're feral, all find her to be large and imposing. These traits, however, are what Mayaa saw in his own mother, hence his affectionate behavior towards Sakaki.
  • All Just a Dream:
    • At least part of the movie was Osaka's dream.
    • Any time things start getting surreal, it winds up being someone's dream— usually Osaka's or Sakaki's.
  • Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: Sakaki is seen as a stoic yet imposing student by her classmates, further emphasized by her tall stature and long black hair. However, her apparent aloof attitude is actually because she's a Shrinking Violet.
  • Always Late: Yukari Tanizaki, despite being a teacher who despises laziness from her students, is so lazy and immature herself that she frequently shows up late to her own class. Usually it's because of her poor sleep schedule, preferring to doze off rather than get up on time, while other times it might be due to things like showing up to the wrong class or getting stuck in line for the newest PlayStation game. Eventually, her friend and coworker Nyamo starts driving her to school, allowing her to start showing up on time more often.
  • Amusing Injuries: Chiyo and Osaka are on the receiving end of some very comically powerful blows that leave no lasting injuries, usually with Yukari or Tomo being the ones to hit them.
  • Animals Hate Her: Sakaki. All she wants is a cat — or at least to get near a cat. Episode 9 shows just how far the universe goes in thwarting her: the entire episode comprises incidents where Sakaki tries to get close to a cat or a cat replica, and is denied — someone else gets the last copy of a cat book, a robotic cat breaks down before she can pet it, etc. That's not even getting into the biting cat, whose sole purpose in life, it looks like, is to bite Sakaki and remind her that her favorite animals hate her. Still, she does end up winning two cat plushies from a crane game. It isn't until very late in the series that this trope begins to relax in her favor.
  • Arc Words: The phrase "a real cat" recurrs whenever Chiyo's dad appears in one of Sakaki's dreams, referring to Sakaki's goal to eventually find a cat who doesn't hate her. She ends up finally finding one in her third year.
  • Armor-Piercing Question:
    Osaka: (to Yomi and Tomo) So do y’all have boyfriends to show off your style to?
    Chiyo: Sakaki, did you steal my height? You stole it didn't you? You stole it didn't you?
  • Art Evolution:
    • It took a while for Azuma to perfect the designs of the main characters, and by the time he does his entire style has shifted into a more consistent, rounded appearance. Osaka is the most noticeable difference; her early design has tired Tareme Eyes, but it isn't until around volume 2 that she receives her signature wide-eyed stare. In general, the early issues also rely more on exaggerated proportions to carry the gags, while later ones keep a more grounded style focusing more on facial expressions.
    • In early chapters, Chiyo's pigtails looked more like real hair before they were simplified into their famous bun-shaped appearance.
    • Background art also improves as the manga goes along. Early comics often take place in featureless, blank areas, while the last few feature the meticulously detailed scenery that eventually became a hallmark of Yotsuba&!
    • The tenth anniversary reissue of the manga has a lot of the art redrawn in a style more consistent with Yotsuba&!, with volume 1 in particular receiving the most changes. The new art includes more detailed scenery, and makes Chiyo look a lot like Yotsuba herself. This is also carried over to the new Extra Lessons chapters.
    • As for the anime, the style noticeably changes between the Azumanga Web Daioh pilot (which has designs reasonably accurate to the manga, but with 3D-rendered backgrounds), Azumanga Daioh: The Very Short Movie (which has a very fluidly-animated style with heavier shading and sharper edges), and finally the televised series (which has more limited animation, but characters designs more faithful to the manga).
  • Artistic License – Child Labor Laws: In August 1999 and July 2000, Chiyo gets a part-time job at Magnetron Burger despite being ten years old. The manager is fully aware that she's underage, but believes she needed the money and got a fake high school ID to apply. In the 2009 reprint, he instead hires her because she already has encyclopedic knowledge about the restaurant and can recount the prices of specific orders off the top of her head.
  • Ascended Extra:
    • Yomi debuted as one of many nameless students in Yukari's class, who just happened to get bothered by Tomo a lot. She became more prominent throughout the early chapters as their dynamic further evolved, and eventually she was solidified as part of the main cast when the first summer trip came around. It took another hundred pages before she was properly named, though.
    • Kagura was originally a recurring background character in Minamo's class, and while she got namechecked during the first sports festival, she didn't graduate to the main cast until the second volume, making her something of a Sixth Ranger.
  • Asleep in Class:
    • Osaka falls asleep often in class, and usually gets smacked for it by Yukari. Chiyo wonders if it's because she stays up late at home.
    • At one point Kaorin falls asleep in class, and Kagura attempts to wake Kaorin up by poking her with a pencil, only to stab her in the back of the head when she wakes up with a start.
    • Yukari herself sleeps in class sometimes. Particularly notable in that she's the teacher and usually is the one to get after Osaka for doing the same thing.
  • Athletically Challenged: Of all the girls in the main cast, Osaka is the worst when it comes to sports. Among other things, she can't pass a volleyball and spikes it sideways when attempting to serve, she claims to struggle with floating in water, and she consistently loses every foot race she partakes in, even when competing against Chiyo, a ten-year-old. Much of this is rooted in her overall poor motor control and lack of flexibility.
  • "Aww"-choo: Osaka has hay fever during the finale, but her sneezes just sound like she's softly saying "ehhh-cho," which Kagura and Tomo find very amusing.
  • Bait-and-Switch: In the 2009 reprint, one replacement strip sees Tomo pledge to do her best for her freshman midterm exam. Cut to Tomo appearing to work hard during the exam... and it turns out that all she's doing is writing her name in a ridiculously ornate font.
  • Banana Peel: Discussed. Osaka has always wanted to trip on a banana peel and fall on her face.
  • Banging Pots and Pans: Osaka tried to do this as a prank to wake up Yukari, but in a half-asleep daze, ended up grabbing a knife instead, freaking the hell out of Yukari.
  • Battle Aura: Mayaa uses a growl and an intimidating aura to scare off biting cat's gang.
  • Beach Episode: There are three episodes/chapters throughout the series where the girls and the teachers go to Chiyo's summer home during summer break. These segments are also where Yukari's terrible driving is revealed. The girls also spend some time on the beach in Okinawa and during the third Extra Lessons chapter.
  • Beat Panel: Used often in the manga. The beat pauses in the anime are punctuated by various car sirens.
  • Beautiful Singing Voice: Sakaki surprises Yomi and the others when a karaoke session reveals she she's a very good singer (in addition to her other talents). Each of the girls remark on her singing voice, causing Sakaki to smile shyly and blush.
  • Beergasm: Yukari gets absolutely thrilled after she chugs alcohol. One summer night shows that Nyamo gets this way, too, and may surprisingly be even more of a riot.
  • Berserk Button:
    • Osaka's pretty laid-back and easy-going...but do not split your chopsticks improperly, or you'll get the full brunt of her anger, as Tomo found out.
    • Don't tell Chiyo's "dad" that his face resembles that of former prime minister Yoshiro Mori (Bill Clinton, in the anime dub). Especially don't tell him that he isn't a real cat. Even if he says so himself.
    • Yukari has several of these, but probably her biggest one is her Vitriolic Best Bud, Nyamo. Also, don't say that you like ice cream more than Matzusaka Beef, or that you had all the snow crab you could eat.
  • Berserker Tears: When Yomi manages to eat curry noodles without splattering it all over herself, Tomo is pushed over the top and goes on a rampage in the lunchroom with tears in her eyes until she accidentally hits Yukari. Yukari's subsequent reaction must be seen to be believed.
  • Big Damn Heroes:
    • Mayaa shows up just in time to save Chiyo and Sakaki from getting attacked by a gang of cats that has them cornered.
    • Kagura also saves Sakaki from being terrorized by the biting cat, but she was probably just passing through.
    • Sakaki in the anime-exclusive snowball fight. When Kagura throws a snowball at Chiyo, Sakaki catches the snowball right before it hits Chiyo, swerves around, and immediately throws it right back at Kagura. She just barely misses her, and Kagura even comments on how cool it is.
  • Big Fancy House: Chiyo-chan lives in a Simple, yet Opulent one, big enough that she has both a study and a bedroom to herself. In the Extra Lessons, she reveals she has a private film screen, too.
  • Big Friendly Dog: Mr. Tadakichi, a "man of character". Though he's far less hyper then most examples of this trope, being friendly in a more relaxed way. He's also one of the only animals that lets Sakaki pet him.
  • Big Red Button: Tomo has a dream where she pushes one to kill Chiyo, after the latter already told her exactly what it would do. She could have, y'know, not pushed it, but this is Tomo we're talking about.
  • Big "WHAT?!": In episode 14, Nyamo's "What Did I Do Last Night?" ends with a big WHHAAAAAAAAAAT?!?!?!?
  • Bilingual Bonus:
    • Only counts if you're watching the Japanese dub, but look at the scene from the first episode in which Osaka's hiccups render her recorder-playing unlistenable. It's implied that the phrase Yukari was partway through writing means "What are you doing" in English.
    • Another for the English speakers: the reason Tomo's repeating the food names over and over again in the Okinawa arc is because they sound like dirty innuendos. There's ukon tea, which sounds like "unko" (shit), and chinsuko, which sounds like "chinko" (dick).
  • Bittersweet Ending: With graduation comes the time for all the characters to go their separate ways. Even though they might still stay in contact, the sudden finality accompanying entrance to the "real world" is a dramatic shift away from the series' usual lighthearted tone.
  • Black Comedy Burst: Chiyo tells the other girls that she plans to study abroad in America. Kagura and Osaka immediately agree that she'll get killed.
  • Blah, Blah, Blah: Yukari speaks to a foreigner in English (or in the English dub, French), which the viewer isn't supposed to understand anyway—so what the two are actually saying is literally "blah, blah, blah" over and over).
  • Bland-Name Product:
    • Both the manga and the anime feature an amusement park called "Magical Land", a stand-in for Tokyo Disneyland. The anime makes this more apparent by featuring a parody of Splash Mountain's famous photo-op.
    • In the manga, Chiyo, Osaka and Tomo end up working a part-time job at "Magnetron Burger", a knock-off of McDonald's, for a short amount of time. The anime removes these scenes, but still keeps a reference to the restaurant via a close up shot of a cup Kagura drinks from in the anime-original 19th episode.
    • In general, this is averted in the manga: Yukari mentions buying a new PlayStation game, Sakaki looks up cats on Google, and Chiyo mentions going to... McDonald's, implying that Magnetron Burger is a knock-off in-universe. The anime also removes these references, with Yukari's case being changed to simply "a new game".
  • Blank White Eyes: Happens frequently, usually out of shock or surprise.
  • Boke and Tsukkomi Routine:
    • Tomo usually attempts to fill the role of the boke, though nobody is willing to be her tsukkomi — Yomi, the usual victim, tends to tune her out for her own sanity. In the first episode, when Tomo learns they've got a new transfer student from Osaka, she asks Yomi to be the tsukkomi to her boke, despite her protests. Tomo reacts to Yomi's completely unenthusiastic "nandeyanen?" with a take where she leaps across the room, clearly demonstrating her hyperactive nature.
    • Yukari tries to perform a routine in class with Osaka. After asking Osaka who should play the boke and who should play the Tsukkomi, she hits Osaka over the head for saying she (Yukari) should be the Boke.
    • Chiyo unwittingly plays the tsukkomi to Tomo's boke in one instance, correcting her on the Japanese name for December, leading Tomo and Osaka to protest.
  • Book Ends:
    • The very first chapter, April 1999, features banner art of Yukari in formal wear lamenting how depressing the title of the opening strip is. The very last chapter, March 2002, features banner art of Yukari in formal wear expressing pride in the conclusion of the series.
    • In the anime adaptation, the girls' final summer vacation in August 2001 begins and ends with nearly identical scenes where Osaka comments on the sight of Kagura's chest. In the first version of the scene, she asks how far Kagura's tan goes, and when she sees her tan lines, she remarks that Kagura could go naked in public without anyone noticing because they match the outline of her swimsuit. In the second version, she asks Kagura if she looks like broiled saury and compares her breasts to "big bowls of pea rice." Both times, Yomi angrily warns Kagura not to take Osaka seriously.
  • Book Dumb: Tomo, Kagura, and Osaka all tend to score quite poorly on most tests. The three of them eventually start calling themselves the Knuckleheads as a form of solidarity.
  • Boyish Short Hair:
    • Tomo cuts her hair short in her third year to imitate the look of Ryoko Hirosue (or Ayumi Hamasaki in the anime).
    • Kagura's hair is also short to match her tomboyish personality, complete with Hot-Blooded Sideburns.
    • Chihiro's hair makes her look quite boyish compared to the other girls, to the point that you could mistake her for a boy if she weren't wearing the girls' uniform.
  • Breakout Character: Osaka got considerably less focus than the other main characters in the first volume of the manga (partially due to coming in later than the others), but due to her popularity, got a much greater focus from the second volume onward. The 2009 re-release of the manga features Osaka on the cover of the first volume, rather than Chiyo, and she was the namesake for the official fan book released the same year, Osaka Expo.
  • Brick Joke:
    • After Osaka mentions she can't eat spicy foods in episode 2, Yomi tricks her into eating a croquette flavoured with cayenne pepper. During Yukari's rant about rewards for winning the sports festival in episode 15, Osaka mentions that a cayenne pepper is a type of chili pepper to Kagura. Kagura obviously doesn't get it.
    • In the third beach episode, Osaka says she's jealous of Sakaki's large breasts. Tomo responds, saying she's been growing too. Osaka reminds Tomo that she was put in the same chest size group as her and Chiyo by Yomi in episode 4, much to Tomo's dismay.
    • One that only appears in the anime as a result of some slight Adaptation Expansion. When Yukari decides to make the class play sports instead of learning English, Osaka suggests that her team be called Team Sea Slug in an anime-exclusive gag, much to Chiyo and Kaorin's dismay. Later, during the class trip to Okinawa, Osaka finds some sea slugs while diving and starts playing when them in a bit carried over from the manga; Chiyo still isn't amused.
    • One of Sakaki's encounters with the biting cat is cut off by Kagura whacking the cat on the head, which scares it off; when Sakaki asks if it's possible to just talk out the issue, Kagura responds by pointing out that you can't talk to cats. Later, after Sakaki adopts Mayaa, she tries to take Kagura's advice to heart by whacking him for slashing Tomo's hand open, only for everyone else to respond that Tomo deserved it for treating him like a toy. Both times it's played for comedy.
    • Osaka gets hay fever every March, with gags focused on the odd way she sneezes (generally written as "hechyo"). When graduation rolls around in March of their final year, there's a tiny "hechyo" in the audience, with everyone wondering what it was.
  • Brilliant, but Lazy: Tomo, of all people, shows signs of hidden intelligence. She got a 100 on a P.E. exam when she specifically studying for it to spite Chiyo. Later on, Tomo reveals to Kagura that she managed to get into their competitive high school solely because Yomi said she couldn't. Kagura's main takeaway is that Tomo puts too much effort into pissing people off.
  • Broken Record:
    • A staple of the anime adaptation, which frequently uses repetition to make up for the fast-paced nature of the manga and how poorly that would translate to the screen if adapted literally. This leads to an Overly Long Gag or two quite a bit in the series, with such scenes like Chiyo repeatedly asking Sakaki if she stole her height and Tomo performing the same punchline in a dream ad nauseum for over half a minute.
    • In the manga, one strip starts with Yomi asking Tomo if she recorded a show like she asked her to, only for Tomo to casually admit that she forgot. Yomi calls herself an idiot for trusting Tomo, and Tomo responds by shouting back "idiot!" Tomo then proceeds to keep shouting "idiot!" over and over again, which freaks Yomi out and results in her clutching onto Tomo like she's malfunctioning; the strip is even titled "Broken VCR."
  • Bruce Lee Clone: Osaka misinterprets Bruce Lee's name as "Blue Three", which leads to her and the Knuckleheads to come up with a superhero of the same name. They speculate on what happened to Blue One and Two, and Osaka posits that Jackie Chan must be Blue Five.
  • Brutal Honesty: Kimura is pretty blunt about why he made his career choice when asked about it.
    Tomo: Question! So why did you decide to become a high school teacher, Mr. Kimura?
    Kimura: Because I like high school girls! That’s why!
    (Beat as class bell rings)
  • Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Kimura and Yukari are portrayed as competent teachers, but do things in school that would make headline news. He lusts after his female students, and she is very immature and prone to hitting her students for annoying her.
  • Buxom Beauty Standard:
    • Osaka makes a comment about Sakaki's, Kagura's, and Yomi's chest sizes:
      Osaka: [to Sakaki and Kagura] You two are American. [to Yomi] You're Hawaiian. [to Tomo] And you're Japanese.
    • Tomo also seems to believe that Sakaki and Kagura's chest sizes are directly correlated to their beauty and athletic ability, and says at one point that her chest is the only thing holding her back from being like her idol, Fujiko Mine. She even uses Sakaki's larger chest as an excuse to get a head start against her in a race!
  • Call-Back:
    • Early into the series, Sakaki watches (and cries over) a movie about a cat that made a very long journey to meet its owner. She also brings up 3000 Leagues in Search of Mother, a series with a similar plot, when thinking about the stray kitten that Yukari brings to class. Fun fact: The distance from Tokyo to Iriomote Island in Okinawa is about 1,200 miles over the ocean.
    • In June 1999, Osaka nearly presses the button for the school's fire alarm because of how overwhelming the temptation is, only for Tomo to stop her by pushing her away and claiming that one of the fire alarms is a self-destruct button. In March 2001, Tomo recounts how she killed Chiyo in a dream by pressing a big red button despite being warned not to do so, and defends herself by stating that "When you see a button, you gotta press it, right?" Osaka immediately agrees with this statement.
    • In January 2001, we learn that Yomi took a vacation to Hokkaido over winter break, which was her first time riding an airplane. When she asks the others if they've been on a plane before, Tomo and Osaka both say they haven't, while Chiyo-chan says she has. When the time comes for the class trip to Okinawa in July 2001, the group is split into those who have been on a plane before (Chiyo, Yomi, and Sakaki) and those who haven't (Tomo, Osaka, and Kagura). Naturally, Tomo bothers Yomi by ignoring airport etiquette, buying and opening souvenirs before she's even left.
  • Calling Your Attacks: Yomi has an attack called the Double Chop. She shouts this name as she attacks Tomo with the move for calling her fat.
  • Candid Camera Prank: In the manga, after Chiyo gets a job as a fast food clerk, one customer thinks that it's part of a hidden camera prank. He even specifically namedrops Candid Camera in the earlier ADV translation.
  • Canon Marches On: An incredibly minor one. The anime shows that Kaorin doesn't swim in open water due to having motion sickness (much to her dismay when she sees Sakaki in the water). The manga's Extra Lessons, released seven years after the anime, show that Kaorin doesn't have any problem being in the water.
  • Carload of Cool Kids: A variation happens where Tomo (in Yukari's car) yells at the passengers in Nyamo's car because she doesn't Drive Like Crazy (at 2:10).
  • Cats Are Mean: The biting cat goes out of his way to let Sakaki get close to him just so he can bite her.
  • Cherry Blossoms: Prevalent in episode 19, as a means of tying into its more tranquil atmosphere compared to the rest of the series (it being original to the anime adaptation). The anime's credits sequence also features cherry blossoms quite a bit, tying into the soft tone of the closing song "Raspberry Heaven".
  • Child Prodigy: Chiyo has college-level intelligence at age ten, and consistently gets the highest grades of her entire class.
  • Celebratory Body Tossing: When Yomi successfully passes her college entrance exams, the rest of the girls suggest tossing her up in the air in celebration. Tomo pipes in that Yomi is too heavy, so she convinces them to toss Chiyo-chan instead.
  • Christmas Episode: Celebrated in December 1999 and December 2000 in the manga, though only in the secular Japanese sense (discussions about presents, how Santa goes around the world so fast, and if reindeer are really real). These are all condensed into episode 17 of the anime.
  • Class Trip: In year 3, the class goes on a trip to the tropical islands of "Okinawa... Okinawa! ...OKINAWA!" and indulge in much of the real-life sights and delicacies.
  • Clingy Sleepers: When the girls get the photos back from their first summer vacation together, Kaorin, who was unable to attend, is horrified to find a picture of Tomo sleeping in the same futon as, and clinging tightly to, a sleeping Miss Sakaki. When asking to know why (Kaorin has an unrequited crush on Sakaki), all Tomo can offer by way of explanation is that she tends to cling to things in her sleep. When Kaorin further demands to know why, Tomo shrugs and says there's no real reason.
  • Cloudcuckoolander: Osaka is by far the biggest airhead in the series, and possibly Anime as a whole. So much so that she provides this trope's Anime & Manga page image. The rest of the main cast also apply to some degree, with Kimura-sensei and Sakaki being the most notable examples (but in very different ways).
  • Coincidental Dodge: Yomi only avoided Tomo's lunch tray smash because Yukari opened the cafeteria door just at the right time to get whacked in the face. It didn't end well for Tomo.
  • Color Failure: The anime adaptation repeatedly makes use of this as a means of displaying particularly extreme cases of shock or distress. Chiyo for instance turns chalk-white when an offhanded mention of the Yukarimobile just after the first summer trip rings back traumatic memories of Yukari's driving.
  • Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: The school the girls attend features salmon pink Sailor Fuku uniforms for most of the year and sky blue uniforms for the summer months.
  • The Comedy Drop: During a sports fest episode, Tomo witnesses the boy's gymnastics team and suggests that Chiyo do a handstand while Tomo supports her. Unfortunately, Tomo has the attention span of a flea, and she gets distracted and lets Chiyo fall flat on her back.
  • Comically Missing the Point: Tomo fails to do some small favor for Yomi, who comments that she was stupid for having asked at all. Cue mockery of Yomi's "stupidity."
  • Conspicuous Consumption: Yukari on any and all kinds of expensive foods, to the point where she'll aggressively attack anyone fortunate enough to have experienced them before her.
  • Continuity Nod:
    • After finding out what she missed out on when she declined the other girls' offer to go with them on summer vacation, not knowing Sakaki would be going, Kaori made sure to go with them by the third year.
    • An interesting minor bit of continuity concerns a background student, a glasses-wearing boy named Masaki Ohyama. He's first named in one of the manga's earliest strips, where it's revealed he got a perfect score on a test Yukari assigned. After Yukari picks him to be the first term's class president, we find out at the end of the year that he had the highest overall grade in the class next to Chiyo. Following that, he disappears for two years until the graduation ceremony... where it's revealed he became the Student Representative, apparently maintaining his high grades off-screen.
  • Continuity Overlap:
    • During the first school festival in the manga, Kokoro Kosaka (from Azuma's concurrent series Wallaby) shows up at the girls' plushie booth. She keeps the eponymous Wallaby in her coat pocket, though he doesn't appear in the corresponding anime scene. Over in Wallaby itself, the final chapter ends with Kokoro offering to take Wallaby to a culture festival at her friend's school, which leads into the cameo in Azumanga.
    • In the Extra Lessons, Tomo wears a "Kodomo Usagi" shirt, a brand which is often seen in Yotsuba&!; the latter series is often implied to take place in the same continuity as Azumanga.
  • Corner of Woe: Nyamo, during the third beach episode, when she can't help the girls with their studying and even Yukari appears more competent than her.
  • Covers Always Lie: The covers for the ADV Films DVDs make the series look like a fanservice anime when it's nothing of the sort, showing the girls in a very unflattering light: exposed stomachs, embarrassed expressions, and skirts that are dangerously close to being blown upwards by the wind. Granted, they're frames from the opening animation... very strategically chosen frames. The Sentai Filmworks re-release uses artwork that's more faithful to the series' tone.
  • Covert Pervert: When Tomo puts Yukari and Minamo on the spot about their love lives, Sakaki quickly re-enters the room and can be seen peeking from behind Yomi and Tomo, while trying to listen in. Then she inches forward to make sure she doesn't miss anything. It gets hilariously subverted the following year (two scenes later in the anime), as she ends up hearing more than she would have liked and couldn't look Minamo in the eye the following morning. Though Yomi and the others were very appreciative.
  • Creepy Cockroach: The infamous cockroach scene where Tomo smashes one with her workbook.
  • Cross-Popping Veins: In particular, Yukari and Yomi. Yukari when she doesn't get her way, and Yomi over a lot of the things Tomo does.
  • Cue the Sun: The third chapter of the Extra Lessons, and the final piece of official Azumanga Daioh content as a whole, features all of the main girls shouting "Yahoo!" and laughing as they happily watch the sunrise.
  • Cute Clumsy Girl: Kimura's waifu. Quite a pleasant person compared to Kimura himself, but is often seen hitting her face right into walls.
  • Cultural Translation: The English localizations most commonly translate Osaka's Kansai accent as an American southern drawl. This originated in the anime dub, and the initial translation of the manga interestingly went with a Brooklyn accent before adopting the anime's approach.
  • Cuteness Overload: Pretty much everyone overloaded when they saw how cute Chiyo looked in that penguin costume.
  • Cuteness Proximity:
    • Chiyo is already cute on her own, but put her in a penguin suit, and her cuteness magnifies for all to fall for. Putting her in a cheerleader outfit causes this to a lesser agree.
    • Sakaki, when she sees a cat. No matter how threatening the cat may turn out to be to her, she will always attempt to pet it, since she only sees them as innocent little kitties.
  • A Day in the Limelight: The six main girls all get one except for Tomo, while Nyamo and Yukari share one. Sakaki gets several, one of which is shared with Kagura.
  • Demoted to Extra:
    • The manga took an interesting approach near the beginning where, aside from a few main characters (Chiyo, Sakaki, and Tomo), the rest of the cast was a rotating set of nameless students who would regularly interact with one another, in what seems to be an experiment to suss out interesting dynamics between them. Yomi and Kagura ended up being bumped up to the main cast through this, while others weren't so lucky:
      • Kaorin, despite attempts to avoid this trope. In the early chapters of the manga she has roughly the same prominence as Sakaki or Yomi, but from around the time Osaka is introduced Kaorin starts to fade into the background. The demotion is solidified by the time of the first summer trip, which she doesn't join. She's still a regular recurrer in later comics (even getting a few new appearances in the Extra Lessons), but her fate as an extra is sealed when she's transferred to Kimura's class in the last volume. In the anime she isn't demoted as quickly (or as far), but she's also more obviously a supporting character from the start.
      • Chihiro, Kaorin's best friend. She starts out as a recurring character who frequently hangs out with Kaorin and Yomi, even sharing the latter's Only Sane Man tendencies in contrast to Tomo. She seems like she'll be a main character and even gets a name tag in the first episode. But as the series goes on she appears less often, and by the time the third year starts up, she becomes a non-speaking background character who doesn't even get a single line of dialogue in the final episode, while in the manga she straight up vanishes and is never seen again except for a very brief cameo during the final sports festival.
    • Sakaki takes the stage for most of the series, but ends up with maybe two or three lines tops once her plotline gets wrapped up in the Mayaa arc (as is befitting for her personality).
    • Kimura ends up becoming more of a minor character when the third year starts, due to the main cast moving out of his classroom. He only makes a handful of appearances in the rest of the series. He's also the only major character absent from the Extra Lessons. The anime slightly changes this by giving him a couple more extra scenes, including one last moment of him harassing Kaorin in the final episode.
    • Goto, one of the male teachers, was already a minor character in the manga who had some scenes where he interacted with and scolded Yukari. The anime removes his scenes and only gives him a brief cameo when Kimura eats lunch at the staff room after being tricked into thinking it was lunch time.
  • Didn't Think This Through: Yukari sees Kagura struggle to help an English-speaking tourist with his bags, and decides to "show her how it's done" by offering to help another foreign tourist. The problem is that Yukari assumes all tourists speak English. It turns out this one speaks German, which Yukari doesn't know — so she just ditches him.
  • Diegetic Soundtrack Usage:
    • Yomi "singing" the theme from the short movie in the series proper.
    • Tomo's ringtone is one of her image songs, Sakaki sings her theme in the karaoke session and it's also played on the radio in Yomi's room, and Osaka sings one of her songs in karaoke as well.
  • Diet Episode: Yomi is seemingly always on a diet. Her Day in the Limelight episodes often feature her trying several unsuccessful diets.
  • A Dog Named "Dog": One strip reveals that Tomo has a pet hamster named Ham-chan; next to the dog named "Black" (after its fur color) and the girl from Osaka nicknamed "Osaka", it demonstrates how uncreative Tomo is. Some translations though change the pets and their names.
  • Door Stopper: The omnibus of the entire manga is nearly 700 pages long, though the length is alleviated by brisk pacing (think of newspaper comics).
  • Double-Meaning Title: It can be read as "Azuma's Comic Strip For Daioh Magazine" and "Azumanga the Great King". The latter doesn't have anything to do with the show, but the girls discuss it during the post episode 1 trailer.
  • Doujinshi: There are quite a few Azumanga doujin games around, including a snowball game, a beach volleyball game and even a fighting game.
  • Dramatic Wind: The wind howls as Sakaki bids farewell to the Iriomote cat she befriended in Okinawa.
  • Dream Episode: The episode focusing on Hatsuyume was a vignette of all the dreams the characters had on New Years, which includes Osaka dreaming about Chiyo flying using her pigtails, and Sakaki dreaming about meeting Chiyo's father, who is a cat, among others.
  • Dreams of Flying: The opening and ending themes harken to Osaka's dream involving all the girls flying. She has a recurring dream motif where Chiyo can fly using her pigtails.
  • Dream Sue: Tomo's dream involves her beating Chiyo in a test and Sakaki in a race, and being hailed as the town hero.
  • Drives Like Crazy: Yukari is the queen of this trope. We never see her driving in action, but her car is smashed up and the reactions of the other characters indicate that she speeds around with no regards for traffic laws.
  • Dual Wielding: Yukari attacks Tomo with two lunch trays after the latter accidentally hits her in the face while trying to attack Yomi.
  • Embarrassing Hobby: One of Sakaki's defining character traits is her love for cute objects, which she collects. She's especially fond of plush dolls and has an even bigger soft spot for cats. But she hides it from her friends at school, because they have the wrong idea about her and she's too shy to tell them. So she'd be mortified if they ever found out. While there's never a big reveal moment, they eventually do figure out that side of her, and Chiyo even bonds with her over it.
  • End-of-Series Awareness: The penultimate episode's Post-Episode Trailer has the girls concerned that they'll die when the show ends, to which Yukari assures them that they'll "live on in the hearts of viewers".
  • Engaging Conversation: Nyamo jokingly asks Chiyo-chan to marry her after learning that she buys and cooks her own meals.
  • Ensemble Cast: The main group of six girls, plus their two teachers, makes for a main cast of eight, with none really being the central character. Chiyo is closest to the "central viewpoint" character, while Sakaki gets the most Character Development, but it never gets to the point that they become more prominent than the rest.
  • Ephebophile:
    • Kimura states that he became a teacher because he likes high school girls. In fact, Osaka asks him in the manga whether Chiyo really counts as a High School girl, since she's so much more a Grade Schooler. He insists: "High School is High School".
    • Later on in the manga, a scene comes up featuring Nyamo and Yukari dressed as high school students to participate in a costume race. In one of his most hilarious moments, Mr. Kimura comes out of nowhere—dressed as a high school student himself—to give 'Yukari-senpai' a love letter. Perhaps he just has a fetish for school uniforms.
  • Epic Fail:
    • During one summer trip, Yukari spins out hard in the yard while trying to get out... and it turns out she accidentally put the car in reverse gear.
    • Osaka is frequently depicted as struggling in... a lot of things... but one thing that goes beyond typical boundaries is her attempt at predicting the weather. She tosses her shoe in the air to see which way it'll land... and ends up kicking it into the back of a passing truck.
  • Eskimos Aren't Real:
    • In the Christmas Episode, Kagura stops to ask if reindeer are real. Tomo mocks her for believing in them, thinking them to be as fictional as Santa Claus — and promptly gets shown up when everyone else, including Osaka, is aware that they're real.
    • Later on, when Tomo declares her intent to join Interpol, Kagura questions if the organization even exists, or if it was just made up for movies. Tomo is taken aback by this, and the two of them end up asking Chiyo if it's real.
  • Even the Girls Want Her: Sakaki— All the girls in her school think she's "so cool!" Just ask Kaorin.
  • Everyone Has Standards:
    • As weird as Osaka can be, she's not incapable of being weirded out herself. Particularly by Kaorin's insistence she wouldn't mind if Sakaki was a guy, and Tomo and Yukari at their craziest. She's also genuinely concerned when Sakaki breaks down imagining Chiyo's dad as Santa Claus.
    • Despite the "entire male student body" being impressed with Kimura's... "honesty", many male background students are shown looking uncomfortable with his antics in other scenes.
  • Evil Laugh: Tomo, mostly, given her nature, but Yukari can pull off a mean one. See the beginning of the trip to Okinawa arc or mocking the opposing team during the sports festival, for example.
  • Evolution Powerup: Osaka was under the impression that a matsutake mushroom is the evolved form of a shiitake mushroom.
  • Expressive Hair: Chiyo's pigtails tend to perk up and droop down depending on her mood, while Kaorin's hair gets frizzled when she gets frazzled.
  • Expy:
    • Before the manga began, Azuma was well-known among doujin circles for his Neon Genesis Evangelion fanwork; as a result, the early style and characterization of the series takes heavy influence from NGE, though in a much more lighthearted setting. The most obvious expies are Yukari (of Misato, down to the Beergasms), Tomo (of Asuka), and Sakaki (of Rei). All three characters diverge significantly from their sources as Azuma finds his footing, though Yukari still keeps a lot of Misato in her.
    • Azuma also drew several Tenchi Muyo! and Final Fantasy VII doujinshi, and these franchises were also influences on his characters: Chiyo = Sasami, Tomo = Ryoko, Yomi = Ayeka, Osaka = Mihoshi, Sakaki = Tifa, Chihiro = Yuffie.
  • Eye Catch: A picture of a character/characters saying "A!" (あ!) between commercial breaks.
  • Faceless Masses: Anyone that's not a named character in the series tends to be drawn this way, which is to say everyone else in the classroom, especially the boys.
  • Face of a Thug: Sakaki only looks like an Aloof Dark-Haired Girl.
  • Fanservice:
    • Relatively minor, and not the primary focus of the series, but it's there. The beach episodes are most prominent. Yukari lampshades it by name in the anime; when she heads to the school pool wearing a bikini, she outright says that she's "going for more fanservice this year". Actually, the anime seems to have added several extra scenes set at the pool or the beach for the exact reason of fanservice (such as Tomo posing in a bikini in her New Year's dream).
    • The manga isn't entirely exempt, though; some of the "bumper" pages between chapters border on pin-ups. There's also Sakaki, Kagura, and Tomo dressing in male cheerleader costumes with sarashi (toned down to tank tops in the anime).
    • Yomi stripping naked to weigh herself after the marathon is more played for laughs in the manga, but in the anime — aside from being reprised in the second athletic festival episode — it's upgraded to the opening credits of every episode (albeit she only goes down to her track uniform).
  • Fear of Thunder: Sakaki and Chiyo express fear of thunder in the manga. Osaka is scared of it, too, but likes it at the same time.
  • Feminine Leg Swish: In ep. 12, the girls are all having lunch together on the roof. Tomo is sitting on a planter, swinging her legs up and down together as she eats. It's worth noting that Tomo doesn't do the scissoring motion, and instead moves her legs together in tandem.
  • Festival Episode: Two of them, specifically for the Culture Festivals in the first two years. Though unlike​ the other major school events, it only received two episodes instead of three, as the one for the third year is never shown.
  • The Fettered: Chiyo, Tomo, Osaka and Yomi, each have the greatest investment among the cast. Chiyo being the cute Class Representative, Tomo the Class Clown, Osaka who is easily influenced by the others. Which leaves Yomi the Straight Man having to either correct the mistakes, or discipline the girls.
  • Fist Pump: Tomo and Yukari are prone to this.
  • Flight, Strength, Heart: Parodied in one of Tomo's Imagine Spots where she gives herself Chiyo's intelligence and Sakaki's athletic ability, and Osaka offers her forgetfulness. The theoretical super-Tomo shows up late and without her textbook, but does a triple flip into her seat and gives a perfect translation.
  • Flung Clothing: After the second sports festival, Yomi strips naked to see if she lost any weight, tossing her clothes into the air... and then takes off her glasses to see if that changes the result. This bit is also featured in the anime's opening, albeit with Yomi stripping down to a track uniform instead.
  • Foil: Plenty of these to go around Yomi to Tomo (the former putting up with the latter's antics), Nyamo to Yukari, Sakaki to Chiyo (Chiyo wanted Sakaki's height, Sakaki wanted Chiyo's cuteness), and Kagura to Sakaki (sports rivals with very different personalities, although Sakaki isn't aware of this).
  • Food and Body Comparison: In a scene exclusive to the anime adaptation, episode 22 features two nearly identical scenes that bookend the girls' summer vacation in August 2001. In both of these scenes, Kagura shows her chest to Osaka after the latter inquires about her tan, with Osaka commenting on the sight before Yomi tells Kagura not to take her seriously. In the second version of the scene, Osaka asks Kagura if her tan makes her look like broiled saury (a type of edible fish common in the ocean waters near Japan), and after getting a look at her breasts, she compares the sight to "big bowls of pea rice."
  • Foreshadowing:
    • It probably wasn't intentional on her part, but in the first summer vacation arc while the girls are talking about TV show murder cases, Osaka starts describing a situation in which it happens to them, with the murderer ultimately turning out to be Osaka herself. Two summer vacations later, Osaka walks into Yukari's bedroom, holding a knife...
    • The movie that Sakaki and Chiyo (the latter only in the manga) watch at the movie theater, which is about a cat traveling far in order to reunite with its owner, is very similar to what happens near the end of the series when Mayaa travels across Japan to find Sakaki after his mother is killed by a car.
    • Similarly, every time Chiyo-Chichi appears in Sakaki's dreams, Sakaki needing to find "a real cat" is mentioned. This turns out to be Mayaa.
  • Formal Characters Use Keigo: Chiyo speaks in a very polite manner in Japanese, which indicates her kind and precocious nature, as well as her wealthy upbringing. Tomo makes fun of this when she imitates Chiyo by ending all of her sentences in "desu yo", a polite ending participle, regardless of whether it actually makes sense. Unfortunately, this joke is mostly Lost in Translation as a result.
  • Formally-Named Pet: Tadakichi-san (Mr. Tadakichi).
  • For the Funnyz: Tomo has bouts of this. Her most memorable case is throwing the keys to the summer cabin into the forest—right after Chiyo mentions they'd be unable to get in without the keys—for absolutely no reason whatsoever except that she thought it was funny.
  • Freeze-Frame Bonus: In one episode, pausing long enough to read the blackboard behind Yukari reveals that she's decided to teach her class a lesson in introductory physics... in English.
  • The Friends Who Never Hang: Downplayed, as while the main cast interacts often enough, they tend to form cliques that hang out more often than others, which leaves certain dynamics by the wayside. Sakaki and Yomi, for example, rarely interact one-on-one, and the anime cuts several of the moments where they do.
  • Freudian Slip: In February 2002, the girls are studying for entrance exams; Yomi is stressed out because she's already failed two of hers. Tomo tries to warn her that one of her books is going to fall off the table, but accidentally says "Watch out! That's gonna fail—" before covering her mouth and turning away. In the original Japanese text, she nearly says ochiru, which means both "to fall" and "to fail an exam", before catching herself.
  • Funny Fan Voice: Osaka distorts her voice with a car vent while riding with Nyamo to Chiyo-chan's summer home, commenting on how it makes her voice sound funny.
  • Gag Series: Being largely yonkoma for its manga run, this also applies to the anime. While there's plenty of heartwarming moments and character growth underneath the surface, it is a punchline-focused manga first.
  • Genius Bruiser: Implied with Sakaki. While most of what we see of her are her athletic skills, she's also has among the highest academic skills of the main six, up there with Chiyo and Yomi.
  • Genki Girl: Tomo, upon the very first seconds of her debut shows in all of her hyper energy exactly why she's the trope's page image. Yukari is an adult version of this, especially when it comes to challenging Nyamo.
  • Gentle Giant: Sakaki gets mistaken for a delinquent in part due to her height, but she's actually incredibly sweet and ends up becoming a sister figure to Chiyo.
  • Gentleman and a Scholar: Chiyo. She is not only a prodigal genius, but is also the most polite of the main students.
  • George Lucas Altered Version: The manga received a reprint in 2009 that significantly revamps a good amount of content. Many strips are redrawn or otherwise touched up (especially in the first volume), new strips are added, some old strips are removed, and several others are rewritten, presenting a noticeably different experience compared to the original 1999-2002 release.
  • Girlish Pigtails:
    • Chiyo has pigtails that are shaped like footballs, showcasing her childishness despite her high intelligence. In her last year, she starts wearing them lower to indicate how she's matured.
    • Yomi wears more mature braided twintails in the Extra Lessons of the manga, mostly to accommodate a gag where a cicada ends up on her back, but complementing her feminine fashion sense either way.
  • Glowing Eyes of Doom: Yukari-sensei gets a murderous pair of these after Tomo accidentally hits her in the face with a tray.
  • Goldfish Scooping Game: The turtle variant. Osaka is more concerned about what use she would have for turtles, rather than actually playing the game.
  • Goofy Print Underwear: Sakaki is shown wearing panties with a kitten printed on rear as part of her Establishing Character Moment, contrasting her tough image.
  • Goofy Suit:
    • For the first year's cultural festival, the students design a mascot costume resembling a cat in a bowtie. Tomo goes on a rampage while wearing it, to Yomi's distress. Chiyo asks to wear it, but due to her height, it doesn't fit her well and ends up creeping out Tomo (and later Tadakichi-san, when Chiyo takes it home).
    • Chiyo's asked to wear a penguin mascot costume for the second year's cultural festival, to match the theme of their exhibit (a stuffed animal café). The suit severely limits her mobility, but she's happy to wear it, and everyone around her finds it a major source of Cuteness Proximity.
  • Go-to-Sleep Ending:
    • Episode 12 ends with Chiyo-chan going to bed. Which is fitting because the whole episode involves her going about her school day, beginning with her waking up.
    • When all the girls arrive at Chiyo-chan's house after Mayaa reunites with Sakaki in episode 24, she and Chiyo agree to sleep over for the night at the end.
  • Graduate from the Story: The narrative ends with the high school graduations of the core group of students.
  • Gratuitous English: One of the series' hallmarks. There are far too many examples to count, but just to name a few:
    Yukari: (in the pool) "Oh my god! Unbelievable!"
    • "Hallo every-nyan! How-ah you? Fain sank you."
    • "Oh My Gah!"
    • "Ah, I wish I were a BIRD!"
    • "AI'MU SORRIII!!!"
    • "Mai waifu!"
    • Yukari has an entire monologue full of this in Episode 22, which comes with an incredibly heavy accent.
      Yukari: It's said that most Japanese have unique character of shame. Alike their character, and are proud of it very much. Generally, most of Japanese who say that in English, I think their nature of shame prevent them from improving our skill of speaking English. But we stop trying to speak English, are willing to make reading mistake. When we say...
    • In Tomo's dream, she and Yukari have a conversation in Gratuitous English, complete with Japanese subtitles.
      Yukari: I HAFF NOTHEEN TO TEECH YOU!
      Tomo: SANKS MEES YUKARI!
    • Lampshaded in the first episode, where she cheers on a student in Gratuitous English, prompting the appearance of a caption pointing to Yukari and reading "Supposedly an English teacher".
      "OH! GOOD! FINE! FANTASTIC!"
    • Kagura: "You are a fool!"
    • "INTERNET TECHNIQUE!"
    • "I... like... you."
      • "YOU?!"
    • In the Extra Lessons, when Tomo is asked to read an English passage: "I cannot speak English now!" Osaka responds, "Me too... now."
  • Gratuitous French: Chiyo states that Mr. Tadakichi, a Great Pyrenees, is of French origin. This leads Osaka to greet him with "Tadakichi, s'il vous plaît!"
  • Group Reacts Individually: Episode 14, the girls have gone to Chiyo's family's beach house for the summer, where Minamo "Nyamo" Kurosawa managed to over-imbibe while trying to keep Yukari, a fellow adult, from drinking. During her period of inebriation, she gave the girls an informative talk about the birds and the bees, which was shown with Relax-o-Vision. The next morning, a hung-over "Nyamo" has no memory of what happened the night before, and wonders why Sakaki is running away from her in embarrassment, and then Chiyo-chan, a Grade Skipper, asks her, innocently enough, about the things "Nyamo" told them the night before, to "Nyamo"'s horror. Sakaki, a regular student, is blushing and looking away, Chiyo is confused, The Knuckleheads (Tomo, Osaka, and Kagura) are showing her respect and reverence, and Yukari is delighting in "Nyamo"'s discomfort and confusion.
  • Growing Up Sucks: Handled in a gentle manner. It's basically, "growing up can be sad, but that doesn't mean you won't ever be happy again."
  • Had the Silly Thing in Reverse: In episode 22, the third Beach Episode, Yukari starts the car careening all over the yard before returning to its initial position, at which point she notices she was in reverse.
  • Hair Wings: Osaka once dreams that Chiyo-chan can use her pigtails to fly. Chiyo even offers Osaka the opportunity to "wear" them so she can fly, too, but this convinces her that the pigtails are Puppeteer Parasites. She ultimately decides to put them on and fly away when her failed attempt to "save" Chiyo ends up killing her.
  • Hammerspace: Yukari pulls a swim ring out of nowhere when she hears of a vacation trip.
  • "Harmful to Pets" Reminder: When Sakaki and the others are served cake by Chiyo, Tadakichi tries begging Chiyo for some. She gently pushes him aside, saying, "No, no. None for you," then explains to Sakaki that they try to keep him from eating people food since it's not healthy for him. Upon hearing this, Sakaki starts sweating as Tadakichi switches to begging her instead.
  • Hates Rich People: Yukari is overall a very envious figure, but she gets particularly irate whenever she sees someone displaying a higher level of affluence than her. Among other incidents, When Nyamo gets a memory foam pillow, Yukari hits her and calls her "damn bourgeois," and when Chiyo gleefully states that she's had matsusaka beef (which is both highly-prized and highly-priced) before, Yukari smacks her in the face.
  • Hatsuyume: One in the first volume that focuses on Osaka, Tomo, and Sakaki's first dreams, and one in the second volume that focuses solely on Sakaki. The anime merges these into one, episode 8, and adds in Kaorin's dream.
  • Head Pet: Osaka has a Nekokoneko doll on her head one time in the manga. Sakaki puts one on her head during the second culture festival.
  • Height Angst: Chiyo and Sakaki cover both ends: the first is a Grade Skipper so she's a lot shorter than the rest of the cast (even for her age), the second is a Huge Schoolgirl with the usual too-tall complex.
  • Heroic BSoD:
  • Hero of Another Story: Literally with the cameo of Kokoro Kosaka in the first school festival episode. She is the main character of Wallaby, a short-lived manga authored by Azuma. She is the girl looking at the stuffed animals when Osaka tells her that they are buildings and places in Osaka. Wallaby himself appears in her pocket, but only in the manga version. Incidentally, the last chapter of Wallaby actually sets up this cameo, ending on Kokoro telling Wallaby about a school festival she's going to.
  • Hero Stole My Bike: Yukari steals a bike belonging to one of her students in the premiere, while said student is trying to fix hers.
  • Heterosexual Life-Partners: Yukari and Nyamo, despite their conflicts, always hanging out with each other during their downtime from teaching a class. Yomi and Tomo may be considered a Junior Counterpart of this.
  • Hiccup Hijinks: "Osaka's Half Day", a "DX" chapter in the manga, revolves around her getting hiccups after eating a spicy croquet. Most of it is dedicated to the various ways she and her friends try to get rid of them, including Kagura socking her in the stomach. For the anime, it was bumped up to before Kagura joins the cast, with Tomo taking her role.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Osaka tries to scare Chiyo by putting a firecracker under her ass. Osaka then gets impatient and comes closer and is scared to death by the bang, while Chiyo doesn't even notice.
  • Holding in Laughter: In one set of strips set during December 2000, Kagura tries to keep Tomo from spoiling Chiyo's presumed belief in Santa and scrambles to explain how he can deliver gifts to everyone around the world. When Chiyo reveals that she already knows that "Santa" was just her dad, Sakaki has an Imagine Spot based on the conversation, in which said father is the yellow catlike creature from a dream she had at the start of the year. The thought is so funny to Sakaki that she presses her hand over her mouth and shudders holding in her laughter, with Osaka asking if something's the matter.
  • Horseback Heroism: In a scene exclusive to the anime, Kaorin's New Year's dream depicts Sakaki riding in on horseback to rescue her from a group of "delinquents" (the other main girls).
  • Hot for Student: While Kimura's self-admitted lust for teenage girls knows little to no boundaries, he appears to take a special liking to Kaorin, pulling strings to get her in his homeroom class and insisting that he use the nickname that her friends gave her, much to her despair. When Yomi finds out, she calls it worse than getting bullied. His last spoken line in the anime is even him declaring that he and Kaorin will be together forever, again to Kaorin's dismay.
  • How Can Santa Deliver All Those Toys?: After accidentally asking Chiyo if she stills believes in Santa, Tomo and Kagura discuss this, among other things, to cover their asses in case Chiyo thinks Santa is real. According to Kagura, Santa's presents are paid for by the government, he's a master lockpicker (to get into houses without chimneys), he makes deliveries by flying at Mach 100, and he can do it because he isn't human. It's all moot once Chiyo reveals she knows Santa doesn't exist.
  • Huge Schoolgirl: Sakaki is quite tall for a Japanese schoolgirl (172 cm / 5'8" and still growing), even taller than the teachers.
  • The Idiot from Osaka: The overarching joke of Osaka is that she subverts the "loud, fast-talking, money-grubbing Osakan" stereotype, instead being a soft-spoken space cadet. Tomo expects her to be this trope and frets about having a rival, yet seems disappointed when she doesn't fit the bill. Osaka wasn't even born in Osaka — she was born in Wakayama and lived in Kobe and Osaka briefly.
  • "I Know What We Can Do" Cut: The Hiccup Hijinks plot in "Osaka's Half Day", as Osaka tries various home remedies to cure what ails her. (Pulling the tongue, applying pressure to the eyeballs, balancing a cup on a pair of chopsticks...)
  • Image Song: Everyone gets two, however, they sometimes share with another. For instance, Yukari and Nyamo share two, with Mr. Kimura being in the latter, Osaka is in three, Tomo is in four, and Chiyo is in five!
  • Imagine Spot: Happens frequently, usually the result of Sakaki or Osaka imagining something weird in the middle of a conversation.
  • Incoming Ham: Chiyo-father (voiced by Norio Wakamoto) introduces his funniest moment when he suddenly floats through a window and greets the baffled Osaka with a hearty and hammy HARRO EVERYNYAN.
  • Inherently Funny Words: During the class trip to Okinawa in July 2001, Osaka fixates on Okinawan language, finding its heavy use of long syllables amusing. After Chiyo teaches her how to ask "Is that a Shisa?" in Okinawan ("Shisa yaibīmi?"), she uses the phrase as much as she can. Later, she bursts into giggles when she hears the Okinawan word "osenmikocha" (a room of prayer in Shuri Castle), and when she goes to tell Tomo about it, she can't even finish her sentence because she's laughing so hard. When she spots chanpurū at a buffet the following evening, she immediately names every type they have and loudly shouts "Chanpurū!" after finishing her meal. Finally, in the second July chapter, she fixates on the word "sātā andagī", a type of Okinawan pastry, repeating it constantly. Every time she speaks Okinawan, she overstresses the long syllables.
  • In My Language, That Sounds Like...: Tomo takes great pleasure in pointing out how many Okinawan dishes sound like crude anatomical references in Japanese.
  • In Love with Looks: Played for Laughs with Mr. Kimura's wife; when asked how she can love him, given that he's a shameless Ephebophile who openly admits that he only became a teacher because he likes highschool girls, the only answer she can give is that he's handsome.
  • Innocent Prodigy: Chiyo, acing test after test while failing to understand sexual stuff any teenage girl would know by heart already.
  • In-Series Nickname: Yukari-guruma ("Yukarimobile" in the translations) for Yukari's beat-up Toyota, Kaorin for Kaori, Yomi for Koyomi, Nyamo for Minamo and, of course, Osaka for Osaka... er, Ayumu.
  • Intentional Engrish for Funny: One of the few examples in a non-English work. A well-meaning Kagura attempts to offer aid to an English-speaking tourist; this rapidly devolves into her screaming "HELP ME!" at the poor man. She does eventually manage to help the guy out, but when he shakes her hand, the only response she can come up with is "Yay!"
  • Intra-Scholastic Rivalry: Class 3 (Yukari's class) and Class 5 (Nyamo's class) have a longstanding rivalry that typically gets played out during the yearly Sports Fest. This is largely fueled by the animosity between Yukari and Nyamo, who could best be described as frenemies. The only member of Class 5 that we get to know by name is Kagura, and she ends up in Yukari's class the very next year to serve as a ringer in this very rivalry.
  • Inverted Portrait: In the Title Sequence, it happens with Yukari upside-down and Nyamo right-side up. Then Yukari glares at Nyamo, and their positions are switched.
  • In Vino Veritas: Nyamo decides to "take one for the team" and down the rest of Yukari's beer to prevent her from getting drunk. It's implied to lead into this, as she rants about relationships and eventually degenerates into an off-screen drunken sex ed lesson.
  • Invisible Parents: None of the main characters' parents are ever seen on-screen, beyond Chiyo's father (who may or may not be a giant, floating, talking cat) and, in the anime only, Kaorin's mother. The girls' parents are frequently mentioned in passing, and sometimes appear just off-screen, but are otherwise intentionally absent. The only adult supervision they're given is by their teachers, who may as well be teenagers themselves.
  • It's A Small Net After All: Invoked, but actually averted. When Sakaki tries to search for cats on Google, she first enters the generic term "cat" and gets thousands of non-specific results. She then enters "Iriomote cat" (an equally generic term) and the first result shows her a plot-relevant news story about an Iriomote cat, Mayaa's mother, who got ran over by a car. This makes sense; the Iriomote cat is a critically endangered species, so the recent death of one would be a leading news story and a high-ranking search result.
  • Iyashikei: While not to the same extent as is successor series Yotsuba&! (or even most other examples of this trope), Azumanga Daioh is very much a series meant to leave the reader/viewer with a pleasant feeling afterwards. This is especially the case with episode 19 of the anime adaptation, a fully original installment with a far more warm and tranquil atmosphere to it compared to the more gag-filled nature of the rest of the series.
  • Japanese Delinquents: Sakaki's unintentionally intimidating attitude (and frequent hand injuries) cause the girls to mistake her for one of these.
  • Japanese School Club: Despite taking place in a Japanese high school, clubs play a relatively small role in the series; only two characters are part of clubs (Kagura is on the swim team and Kaorin is in the astronomy club). The possibility of joining a club is discussed by the other girls early on. Kaorin invites Sakaki to join the astronomy club, but rescinds her offer after being intimidated by Sakaki's glare, which Sakaki silently regrets. Tomo jokes that she could put her energy to use by joining the pep squad (which Yomi thinks is a perfect fit), while Chiyo asks about joining a "pet club", which the school doesn't have (to both her and Sakaki's disappointment). In the anime, Kagura also lampshades that all the other girls are in the "go-home club".
  • Jerkass: The "biting cat" that Sakaki keeps encountering. Unlike other cats, who are intimidated by her appearance and either bite her or run away from her because of this, it's made pretty clear that he actually enjoys biting her and goes out of his way to hurt her for his amusement. It's implied that he does this to other people as well, since he not only led a gang of cats to try attacking both Sakaki and Chiyo, but at one point he was going to bite Tomo as well and only backed off when he smelled Mayaa's scent on her (due to her getting scratched by Mayaa earlier).
  • Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Kimura-sensei is into high-school girls, and possibly Chiyo-chan, and tends to stalk Kaorin more than is healthy...but he also frequently donates large sums of money to charity, goes out of his way to clean up litter, has a loving wife and family, seems to be a genuinely good teacher, and (to the shock of the girls who witnessed) once prayed for peace on Earth as part of his New Year's prayer. Despite this, the girls still agree that none of this makes him a good person, since these qualities are wasted on a boorish pervert.
  • Job's Only Volunteer: Tomo is the only one who willingly volunteers for the role of Class Representative, a role she's hopelessly unsuited for as an attention-seeking loudmouth; her mindset going into it is "nobody else will do it if I don't". It's subverted in that Chiyo is forced to volunteer and ends up winning the role, but Tomo's volunteering still leads her to become vice-president.
  • Joshikousei: Why did Kimura become a school teacher? "'Cause I like high school girls, that's why!"
  • Just Shoot Him: When Yukari suddenly decides she'd rather teach PE instead of English, the class end up playing dodgeball. When Chiyo is the last person on her team, Tomo starts throwing the ball to just barely miss the clearly terrified Chiyo, prompting Yomi to say, "Just hit her, already."
  • Karaoke Box: The girls spend a night singing karaoke. This is where they discover that Sakaki can sing beautifully and that Yomi... can't.
  • Keep It Foreign: In the English dub of the anime, Yukari becomes a "language teacher." It's the same for the first issue of the translated manga. The second issue got a new localization team and switched to her being an English teacher, though some other English-language gags are inexplicably changed to French and German. The Yen Press omnibus also keeps her as an English teacher.
  • Kindhearted Cat Lover: Sakaki loves all animals, but her affinity for cats easily surpasses the rest, even if the love is one-sided. That is, until Iriomote kitten she meets in Okinawa starts retributing it.
  • Kindly Vet:
    • Dr. Ishihara, the veterinarian who takes care of Tadakichi, whom Chiyo and Sakaki later bring Mayaa to when he's passed out. He's a genial fellow who's known Chiyo for a long time, and though he seemingly notices that Mayaa is an Iriomote cat, he lets it slide and allows Chiyo and Sakaki to take care of him.
    • Sakaki lists becoming a veterinarian as her top aspiration, fitting with her kind and animal-loving nature, and she eventually makes it a serious goal once she graduates.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: Tomo threw a temper tantrum at Yomi and chased her through the cafeteria trying to hit her with a lunch tray. Instead she hit Yukari, who then had a much more justifiable reason to whale on her with two trays. It's also a double example since earlier in the same episode Yukari and Tomo had both been yelling at and hitting Yomi due to jealousy over the fun she had in Hokkaido.
  • Late for School: Happens with Yukari every once in a while, which is noticeable here because she's the teacher. It's mostly because she commutes by bike (the car she uses for the summer trips belongs to her parents, so it's implied she can't use it regularly). She finally starts showing up on time once she gets Minamo to drive her to school.
  • The Load:
    • Chiyo and Osaka in any athletic competition (apart from cheerleading competitions, where Chiyo's cuteness gives her the advantage). Chiyo because she's about three-foot-nothing and fifty pounds soaking wet, and Osaka because she's, you know... Osaka.
    • The "Bonkurazu" ("Blockheads" or "Knuckleheads" depending on the translation) — Tomo, Kagura, and Osaka — in just about anything. Minamo outright calls them "unreliable" in one of the Extra Lessons chapters, since they seemingly can't get anything done without losing focus and goofing off.
  • Let's Get Dangerous!: Sakaki was shown to win the races she was involved in nearly effortlessly. Then, during the final Sports Festival, a jerk from another class started mocking Chiyo-chan. Cue Sakaki giving him a Death Glare, and retying her hair for speed. And then, when she starts running for real...
  • Lost in Translation:
    • The Bruce Lee "Blue Three" joke relies a lot on the quirks of Japanese pronunciation — both phrases are pronounced as buruusurii. While the English manga was able to get around this by rewriting the joke, the anime dub doesn't explain where "Blue Three" comes from, which makes it very confusing if you don't already know the joke.
    • During the Okinawa school trip, a running gag involves Tomo finding a random food product and repeating the name to Yomi repeatedly while waving the box in her face. The joke, which tends to go untranslated, is that these Okinawan products' names are extremely close to sounding like naughty words in standard Japanese. (Chinsukou -> Chinko (Dick), Ukon Tea -> Unko (Poop))
  • Love Bubbles: Kaorin, whenever she thinks of Sakaki. And when she finally gets to dance with her.
  • Loves Me Not: Kaorin pulling the petals off a flower to determine whether she would be in the same class as Sakaki for second year (but the more conventional question is definitely in the subtext). The first flower yields a negative and she starts having a major panic attack, but before she can pull the last petal, Yukari gives her another flower that she can start over with. The same thing happens, except it's Mr. Kimura who offers the flower (to the horror of both Kaorin and Yukari). A pile of stems and petals later, Kaorin decided to just go ahead and look at the roster. To her relief, she is in the same class.
  • Ludicrous Gift Request: In December 2000, Tomo asks Yomi what she would pick if she could get anything for Christmas. Yomi responds by asking for a hundred trillion yen, which Tomo tries to get her to pare down to a more realistic amount; Yomi's response to that is to suggest ten million yen instead. Later, when Tomo asks Chiyo the same question, she responds with the star on top of the train station's Christmas tree, with Tomo ribbing at Yomi by describing Chiyo's wish as purehearted.
  • Luminescent Blush: The girls' reaction to Nyamo's drunken rant about her sexcapades; by the fourth panel, their entire faces are bright red.

    M–Z 
  • Madness Mantra: Tomo and Kagura devolve into this when it seems like their summer break ended too fast. They keep repeating "today is a summer service day" (a day in the middle of summer break where students come in to prepare for the upcoming term). Osaka gets infected with it, too. It's really catchy.
  • Male Gaze: We get a view of Sakaki's and Yomi's ample chests, courtesy of the crazy Kimura.
  • Martial Arts Headband: Subverted with Sakaki in the last Sports Festival episode. She starts off wearing one as normal around her head, then, after hearing a boy from another class make fun of Chiyo's running, she takes it off and uses it to tie her hair in a ponytail.
  • Mascot's Name Goes Unchanged: Most honorifics in the English dub are translated, which the exception being Chiyo. She is always called "Chiyo-chan". This led some fans to believe "-chan" was a part of her name and everyone was on a Full-Name Basis with her, being a time before dubs began to leave honorifics alone. Part of why it was translated was likely due to this, however it's also hard to translate "Chiyo-chan" to something that both sounds right and fits the Mouth Flaps.
  • Measuring Day: A recurring event throughout the series, as with actual Japanese high schools; the first of these notably introduces the fact that Tomo's mocking of her friends' appearances and habits is actually rooted in her own insecurity about herself.
  • Mega Neko:
    • The large floating orange cat that may or may not be Chiyo-chan's father.
    • A neighborhood cat named Maru is mentioned in one scene, and though we never see him, he is apparently quite large. He's shown in the 2009 print of the manga, and ends up being a downplayed example (larger than average, but still a realistic size for a cat).
  • Mischievous Body Language: Tomo is prone to mischief face, despite the fact that she's Book Dumb and a shining example of The Friend Nobody Likes. Chiyo once unwittingly provoked her to action by stating that if she lost the keys to her family's beach house, they'd be in trouble. Tomo got a scheming look on her face before seizing the keys and throwing them in a grassy field. When she suggests it would be funny if she did it again, her childhood friend Yomi has Sakaki restrain Tomo while Chiyo unlocks the door.
  • Mistaken for Pedophile: In one April 1999 strip, a male teacher disciplines students for forgetting to do their homework by smacking them on the head with a rolled-up magazine. When he gets to Chiyo, she becomes a shaking, stammering wreck, resulting in him simply tapping her on the head out of sympathy. Two students in the background are seen with thought bubbles that read "lolicon..." (in the English translation, they think "he likes 'em young"; in the Spanish translation, they outright call him a pedophile). The 2009 reprint removes the thought bubbles, only displaying the students' resigned facial expressions.
  • Moe Couplet:
    • Sakaki and Chiyo. Chiyo is already cute on her own, but her cuteness can multiply with Sakaki's presence, making her seem like a protective Cool Big Sis to the impressionable Chiyo-chan.
    • Osaka and Chiyo can be this way, too, just by the way of being the top two cutest girls of the main students.
  • More Teeth than the Osmond Family: The biting cat's jawline is essentially a bear trap. One has to wonder how Sakaki just doesn't lose her hands from him entirely.
  • Morning Routine: During a Chiyo-chan-centric episode/chapter, we see her daily morning routine before she heads out for school. Both the anime and the manga notably go out of their way to avoid showing her parents.
  • Mundane Made 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.
    • Tomo has an Imagine Spot where she combines Chiyo's intelligence, Sakaki's athleticism, and Osaka's forgetfulness. She apologizes for her late arrival to class, leaps high into the air, and pulls off a graceful somersault. Her friends look up in amazement as she lands perfectly in her seat, answers Yukari's question with ease, and declares that she forgot her textbook.
    • The act of breaking chopsticks is made to look awesome a number of times.
    • Yukari's sea-parting Engrish monologue, raised practically to A God Am I levels.
    • Yomi's reaction to the buffet in the Okinawan hotel. Limiter override!
    • During the snowball fight in episode eighteen, Kagura throws a snowball at a petrified Chiyo, only to be caught, juggled, and thrown back at Kagura by Sakaki, moving at ridiculous speeds in a manner that would not have looked out of place in an action series.
  • Must Have Lots of Free Time: There are two unmarried teachers who are on friendly enough terms that they follow their students on vacation. This is probably an exaggeration of the closer relationship Japanese students have with their teachers. Also justifiable because Yukari and Nyamo do have a lot of free time — Yukari is such a jerkass that nobody except Nyamo will voluntarily associate with her, and both of them are single at an age where they'd be expected to be married.
  • Mutual Envy: Chiyo-chan wishes she was tall and cool like Sakaki, whereas Sakaki wishes she were small and cute like Chiyo-chan.
  • My Life Flashed Before My Eyes:
    • When the girls talk about going to the zoo, Osaka mentions that she wants to see pandas and her life flashing before her eyes.
    • For a more typical example, this seemed to have happened to Chiyo when she rode in Yukari's car. So much so that when someone brings it up, she seems to have flashbacks, screaming out for an old man unfortunate enough to be caught in the Yukarimobile's path.
  • Narrator All Along: Osaka's story about the girls being murdered on summer break ends with the reveal that she was a killer.
  • New Transfer Student: Chiyo (from her elementary school) and Osaka (from her eponymous city) transfer into Yukari's class near the start of the first year. One student lampshades the proximity between the two. ("Another one?")
  • New Year, Same Class: And it's not because Yukari didn't feel like learning new names or anything like that. Subverted in the case of Kagura, though. She got transferred to Yukari's class in Year 2 because Yukari wanted to make sure that, hands down, her class won the athletic festival.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: During the third athletics festival, Yukari tackles Nyamo to prevent her from being first to the finish line. Yukari's team end up last because of it.
  • Nice Kitty...: Inverted: the biting cat is deceptively cute and tiny, which he uses to his advantage to repeatedly tempt Sakaki to try to pet him, just so he can either run away from her at the last second, or bite her.
  • Nice Mean And In Between: Chiyo, Osaka, and Sakaki are nice, Tomo is mean, Yomi and Kagura are in-between.
  • Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant:
    • The biting cat, due to him having More Teeth than the Osmond Family, and that he seems hellbent on making Kindhearted Cat Lover Sakaki's life miserable.
    • Osaka achieved this status following her infamous "knife incident". She was sleepwalking with a knife, and walked right up to Yukari, but one can make you believe that she was a bloodthirsty murderer.
  • No Full Name Given: Among the main cast, Sakaki and Kagura never have their full names stated, and Azuma specifically stated on his personal blog that he would never reveal them. Similarly, Kaorin and Chihiro's last names are never stated, nor is Mr. Kimura's first name.
  • No Hugging, No Kissing: Five post-pubescent high school girls, and no romance for any of them. Osaka lampshades this in both the manga ("No one's got a boyfriend to bring along?") and the anime ("But neither of you have boyfriends to show off your summer styles to").
  • "No. Just… No" Reaction: Sakaki's reaction when Osaka suggests renaming a stuffed cat Sakaki's already given a name, life story, and family tree is a blunt "No way."
  • Noodle Incident: Yukari has managed to buy Nyamo's silence about their high school years simply by bringing up a "la-la-la-love letter!" Nyamo apparently wrote.
  • Not a Morning Person: Osaka and Yukari are both guilty sleepyheads, as both are known to fall asleep during classtime.
  • Nurikabe: Osaka suggests that Chiyo-chan could dress up as nurikabe for a haunted coffee house themed cultural festival. She looks cute, but struggles to get up when she falls flat on her face.
  • Obviously Fake Signature: In March 2001, Tomo bribes her way into Chiyo's 12th birthday party by claiming that she'll gift her an autograph from famed Yomiuri Giants infielder Kazuhiro Kiyohara, taking advantage of Chiyo's love of the baseball team. In the next strip, Tomo gives Chiyo the autograph, only for the latter to discover that it's just a blocky rendering of the kanji for Kiyohara's name, which Tomo gladly admits was her own handiwork. Chiyo's only response is to give the "autograph" back to Tomo while trembling with rage.
  • Odd Couple: Tomo and Yomi are best friends. but the former is a wild and at times mean Genki Girl, while the latter is a more focused Straight Man. This is almost perfectly paralleled with Yukari and Nyamo, respectively.
  • Oh, Crap!: Chiyo's are pretty epic. Examples include that time Yukari said the class trip was cancelled and when Chiyo found out Iriomote cats can eat animals as large as her dog, Tadakichi.
  • Ojou: Chiyo-chan comes from a fabulously rich family and is almost consistently polite towards the folks around her.
  • Old Maid: Yukari, despite being in her mid-20s (which is, in Japan, the point where she would be expected to settle down), is implied to have never been in any romantic or sexual relationships, unlike Nyamo, who admits while drunk to having been very active in those departments. Ironically, Nyamo has similar issues with maintaining steady relationships and even wishes to get married during her New Year's shrine visit (according to Yukari).
  • One-Gender School: The school the characters attend used to be girls-only back when Yukari and Minamo were students.
  • The One Guy: Outside of pets and Chiyo's dad, there are very few male characters in the entire series. Among the only recurring ones are Kimura, a recurring background student named Ohyama, and another recurring background student whom fans refer to as "that one dude" (his most memorable appearance is when he gets his bike stolen by Yukari).
  • One Last Field Trip: Done at the end of the series, when the girls have graduated. They decide to take one last trip to the Magical Land amusement park for old times' sake, since Yomi had to stay home from a cold the first time they went, before going their separate ways, making it a Bittersweet Ending.
  • One of the Kids: Yukari-sensei, for certain. Despite being a teacher, she tends to be quite childish for her age at times, too. There's a reason she's considered the adult version of Tomo, after all.
  • Only Sane Man: Yomi is (relatively speaking) the most straightforward girl of the main students, who are all guilty for their stranger antics compared to her, something she herself often acknowledges. Nyamo is this for the teachers (at least, compared to Kimura and Yukari), although, like Yomi, she definitely has her occasional less-than-sane moments as well.
  • On the Next: The anime ends each episode with a preview of the next, which are generally less descriptive and more the nonsensical chit-chat variety.
  • Overly Long Gag: Lots of them, more so in the anime, to accommodate for the manga's extensive use of Beat panels. Most notable is probably Tomo's "Why in the heck?" sequence in her dream, which takes up exactly two panels in the manga but goes on for a good 30 seconds in the anime.
  • Packaged as Other Medium: The Japan-only 2009 reprint is designed to resemble a set of school textbooks: the covers feature characters on a minimalist background with nothing else beyond the title and author's name, while the interiors feature a similarly standardized design style throughout.
  • Page-Turn Surprise: In November 2001, Sakaki is attacked by a horde of cats, when suddenly, a cat appears in the way! It isn't immediately identifiable yet, to those who didn't connect it to the foreshadowing and haven't seen the anime. We see a close-up of Sakaki's eyes... and turn the page to find a full page of Chiyo latched on to Sakaki, who's looking down at the Iriomote cat she met on the school trip!
  • Painting the Medium: The Japanese version of the manga uses a number of different fonts and text weights to indicate changes in tone of voice. This is carried over to the Yen Press translation, which, among other things, writes Chiyo's dialogue in a slightly bolder font to indicate her higher-pitched voice.
  • Pet Baby Wild Animal: During the class trip to Okinawa, the girls meet a Iriomote kitten in Iriomote Island. Unlike domesticated cats, the wild kitten takes a liking to Sakaki and lets her pet him. Sakaki initially leaves him in the wild, as she knows that the Iriomote cat species is endangered and should not be kept as a pet. However, Mayaa later found his way from Okinawa to Japan to find her after his mother was hit by a car, and is staying with Chiyo-chan until Sakaki gets her own apartment.
  • Pet the Dog: Parodied when the girls find out Kimura 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.
  • Physical Attribute Swap: Brought up jokingly at one point. When Sakaki admits that she is still growing and recently went over 170 centimeters, Osaka suggests that she got that tall by "sucking away" the height from Chiyo. This leads Chiyo to start begging Sakaki to "give it back." Then, when they learn how big Sakaki's boobs are, Tomo and Osaka both start begging her to "give them back."
  • Playing Pictionary:
    • Sakaki's "dog" and "cat" plushies basically resemble flat discs with rudimentary features attached, and not even Sakaki can tell them apart.
    • Chiyo and Osaka, at one point, draw pandas in an attempt to remember what they look like. Chiyo's panda looks a bit off, but Osaka's doesn't resemble anything, and freaks them both out.
  • Playing Up the Stereotype: When Osaka transfers in from a school in Osaka, resident Genki Girl Tomo believes that she'll perfectly embody The Idiot from Osaka and gets disappointed when she turns out to be gentle and soft-spoken. Tomo angrily accuses her of being an imposter, and when Osaka tries to explain that Osakans aren't all loud and brash, she recognizes that it's not working and instead lightly strikes Tomo in an imitation of an Osakan Boke and Tsukkomi Routine. Tomo immediately and enthusiastically responds "You pass!"
  • Post-Episode Trailer: In the anime, the characters preview what happens in the next episode, though these usually just devolve into Seinfeldian conversations.
  • Post-Victory Collapse: Mayaa collapses after he drives away a gang of hostile cats that were about to maul Chiyo and Sakaki.
  • Premature Aggravation: When Yukari finds a stray cat and tries to get the girls to take care of it, Sakaki starts thinking of what she would name it if she could take it home. This quickly leads her to dream up an elaborate and tragic backstory for the kitten, until she finally reduces herself to tears, much to Kagura's confusion.
  • Public Domain Soundtrack: In Episode 6, "Csikos Post," "Camptown Races," Offenbach's "Infernal Gallop" ("The Cancan Song"), "Clarinet Polka," Kabalevsky's Comedians, and "Turkey in the Straw" are all featured as Background Music. All are typical tunes played during typical sports days at Japanese schools.
  • Pun-Based Title: In addition to the "Azuma's Manga for Dengeki Daioh" reading mentioned above, Azumanga Daioh can also be interpreted as "Emperor Azumanga"; the manga itself would title one strip after this alternate reading, jokingly describing Osaka as the "Empress of Forgetting". The characters also discuss this in the anime during one On the Next segment, concluding that if the series is "Emperor Azumanga", the preview must be "Prince Azumanga".
  • Pungeon Master: Osaka, due to her Cloud Cuckoolander tendencies, is surprisingly good with wordplay. When Tomo pulls out a set of brain teasers that stump Chiyo, Osaka gets all of them right first try.
  • Puppeteer Parasite: In the "New Year's Dreams" special for January 2000, Osaka's first dream of the year involves Chiyo's pigtails being sentient. Osaka assumes that they're controlling her and rips them off in an effort to save her; instead, Chiyo drops dead.
  • Real Men Take It Black: Yomi, who otherwise has a serious Sweet Tooth, takes her coffee black, prompting Chiyo to comment on how mature she is. Tomo implies that this is a recent switch Yomi made for one of her diets, which is quickly confirmed when Yomi tastes it and mutters "yuck" under her breath.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: Tomo tries to smack Yomi in the face with a dinner tray, complete with a slow motion jumping attack, but misses, and whacks Yukari in the face. Cue scary music and a slow motion reveal of Yukari's glowing red eyes, then cutting to her whapping the hell out of Tomo with two trays.
  • Relax-o-Vision: During one stay at the beach, Nyamo has to dispose of all the alcohol Yukari and Tomo brought along, getting completely drunk during the evening. Tomo uses the opportunity to ask her about sex, which gets her into starting a lengthy lecture. As her explanations are replaced by soft music, the audience is shown the fascinated faces of the girls and a number of calming pictures that'd make for some interesting metaphors. Happens again the next morning when Chiyo approaches her for one more question.
  • Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Played with; one Extra Lessons strip sees Tomo and Osaka approach a group of turtles on their commute specifically to flip them over and watch how cute they look wiggling around on their backs, only for Osaka to remember at the last minute that turtles are covered in germs and shouldn't be touched— right after they had already touched several, still holding a pair in their hands.
  • Rock–Paper–Scissors: Played by the five main girls at the start of the first beach episode to determine who has to ride with Yukari. Chiyo laments being terrible at it. Later, during the second athletics festival, Tomo, Yomi, Chiyo and Osaka all throw to determine who gets to ride on top during kibasen. Osaka throws late, and still loses.
  • Rubber-Hose Limbs: During more exaggerated moments, the characters' limbs tend to turn into limp, flailing tubes (such as when Tomo cries out "I'm not stupid!" after revealing she thinks reindeer aren't real).
  • Sailor Fuku:
    • The high school where the series takes place uses sailor uniforms for the girls' uniform, though with elastic ties instead of the typical scarf or bow. The winter uniform is salmon pink with long sleeves, while the summer uniform is blue with short sleeves. In the manga, Yukari and Nyamo dress up in an older version of the school's uniforms during the third year's costume race, with the primary difference being that the collar is the same color as the top.
    • Kimura suggests that the girls wear their sailor uniforms in gym class, and later goes after Yukari and Nyamo in the aforementioned costume race, implying that he might just have a sailor uniform fetish.
    • When Chiyo's grade school friends graduate to middle school, they wear the classic navy blue sailor uniforms with red scarves. Chiyo expresses jealousy that she'll never get to wear one like theirs because she skipped ahead to high school, but they note that they are not likely get into her school.
  • Sarashi: In the third and final sports festival; Tomo, Kagura, and Sakaki are all dressed as male Japanese delinquents for the cheering competition, much to Kaorin's pleasure.
  • Satellite Character:
    • Chihiro to Kaorin, and to Tomo and Yomi early in the manga. Most if not all of her screen time is just her being Kaorin's friend, while in the manga she also started out as a third wheel to Tomo and Yomi's dynamic who was then quickly phased out.
    • Miruchi and Yuka-chan, Chiyo's friends from grade school; their purpose is mostly to be comparative examples of "normal" kids.
    • Kimura's wife to Kimura himself; her ditziness mostly serves to add an extra layer of comedy to Kimura's Jerk with a Heart of Jerk status.
  • Scary Shiny Glasses: Yomi's glasses turn into these when she's stressed or irritated. Kimura is like this perpetually.
  • Scenery Porn: There's some really gorgeous ink-drawn scenery of the girls' neighborhood late in the manga's run, and also of the native tropical scenery during their trip to Okinawa. This translates into nicely-done watercolor backgrounds for the anime, which were done by Studio Ghibli employees.
  • School Festival: Comes up in the first and second years. Both times, the first suggestions given are "coffee shop" and "haunted house", which are rightfully pointed out to be clichéd. In the second year, they consider combining them into a "haunted coffee shop", but Osaka vetoes it after imagining herself failing to serve tea while hopping on one leg as a karakasa. In the end, they go with a stuffed animal shop for the first year, and a stuffed animal café for the second, with cute uniforms to match. Chiyo even dresses up as a penguin the second time, to adorable effect.
  • School Sport Uniform: The characters' gym uniforms use the archetypical shorts for guys and bloomers for girls. Kimura has a particular interest in the bloomers, and even asks the girls to tuck their shirts into their bloomers, much to their disgust. Their outdatedness is lampshaded by Yomi near the end of the manga (which began serialization in 1999, when bloomers were already being phased out of schools due to modesty concerns), to which Kimura insists that "bloomers will never die".
  • Schoolgirl Series: The Trope Codifiers of both the genre as a whole as well as many of the character tropes and situational tropes therein.
  • Seinfeldian Conversation: Quite a few conversations between the characters tend to be about random, mundane topics. Osaka, being the Cloudcuckoolander she is, is often the one who starts these.
  • Sensei-chan: Yukari, very much so; she sleeps in class and chats with her students about the boys she hates. Nyamo applies to a lesser extent; she's still professional, but shows a more immature side on her summer trips with the girls (especially when she gets drunk). Tomo even calls them "Yukari-chan" and "Nyamo-chan", respectively.
  • Sexy Discretion Shot: In a anime-exclusive gag, one episode is bookended by Kagura showing her boobs to Osaka to answer her questions about what her tan lines look like. As soon as Kagura pulls her top down, the camera cuts to a view behind her.
  • The Shameless:
    • No matter what insults are thrown her way about her laziness, poor grades, or Jerkass behavior, Tomo is blissfully oblivious. One example is when, during a Beach Episode, Tomo, hearing Chiyo say that if she'd lost the keys would have them all in trouble, seizes the keys from her and tosses them into a field. While everyone is hunting for the keys, knowing how she has already inconvenienced everyone, says that it'd be funny if she found the keys and tossed them again.
    • Yukari Tanizaki makes Tomo look like an amateur. She Drives Like Crazy, makes unreasonable demands of her childhood friend Nyamo, is not quite The Alcoholic, but near enough that Nyamo worries about her drinking around her students on vacation, and makes bets with other teachers about her student's performances during the Sports Fest (though she at least bets in favor of her own class). She even gives a speech in Engrish about how she is not afflicted with shame, and is merely fascinated by the Japanese view of the subject.
    • Mr. Kimura has absolutely no qualms about telling his students that he became a teacher because he "likes high school girls". He's married and has a daughter, but he openly shows a great deal of interest in Kaorin, despite her constant efforts to rebuff him.
  • Share Phrase: "A!"/"Ah!", shouted by various characters at the end of certain segments in the anime.
  • Shoo Out the Clowns: Osaka parts ways with Sakaki and Chiyo on their walk home right before they're cornered by the biting cat and his gang.
  • Shoo the Dog: Sakaki must do this to the Iriomote wildcat she meets before leaving Okinawa. He travels all the way to her hometown back to drive off the biting cat from the streets.
  • Short Film: The anime received two pilot shorts while the manga was still running:
    • The first was a four-minute web video in 2000 titled Azumanga Web Daioh, which revolved around Chiyo bringing a camcorder to school for a class project before Tomo grabs it and starts messing around with it. Unlike later animated Azumanga content, this one was done by Ajia-do Animation Works rather than J.C. Staff. Notably, the short had Nyamo voiced by Akiko Hiramatsu, who would appear in the 2002 anime proper as Yukari, making her the only VA from here to reappear in the main series.
    • The second was a six-minute theatrical short in 2001, appropriately titled Azumanga Daioh: The Very Short Movie. It mainly consists of running through the most well-known jokes in the manga at the time in rapid succession as a way of demonstrating that it was indeed possible to faithfully translate a yonkoma comic — especially one as reliant on the format's intricacies as Azumanga Daioh — into animation.
  • Sick Episode: Yomi, who is most excited about going to Magical Land, falls ill on the day of the trip. Chiyo suggests the girls should cancel the trip and visit her, but of course, Tomo convinces Chiyo that they should go regardless. In the anime, she then catches another cold at the end of the episode from being in a snowball fight.
  • Side Bet: Nyamo and Yukari stake 10,000 yen on the athletics festival every year and shenanigans inevitably result, from Nyamo immediately taking the money back as payment for an old debt in the first year, to Yukari arranging for Kagura to transfer into her class in the second year, to Yukari tackling Nyamo while running in the relay for their classes in the third year.
  • Single-Target Sexuality: While Kaorin constantly fawns over Sakaki, she never displays attraction towards anyone else; Kaorin herself tries to deflect Osaka's suspicions about her sexuality by implying that this is the case, stating that she "wouldn't mind if [Sakaki] was a guy."
  • Sitting on the Roof: In the manga, the group sit on the roof to each lunch one time, with Chiyo having to hold Osaka back from attempting to jump off and float on the breeze. In the anime, there's a second example where Tomo, Osaka, and Chiyo all fall asleep on the roof. Minamo is not happy.
  • Sixth Ranger: Kagura is part of the main six girls, but doesn't join the main cast until the start of the second year.
  • Skintone Sclerae: Color art from the 10th anniversary re-release shows the cast with no eye-whites, matching the style of Yotsuba&!
  • Slapstick: A significant amount of humor comes from the girls (mainly Osaka and Chiyo) getting injured.
  • Slasher Smile: Osaka unintentionally pulls one off during the third summer trip, where, having grabbed a knife instead of a frying pan while half-asleep, she toddles into Yukari's room to wake her up. Yukari wakes up early and is immediately greeted with the sight of Osaka towering over her, wielding both a knife and an eerily vacant grin.
  • Slice of Life: One of the most iconic and well-known examples in manga and anime, enough that it became the Trope Codifier of the Schoolgirl Series sub-genre. The entire series is focused on the daily lives of six schoolgirls and all of the antics they get into during their three years of high school, with very little serious plot or conflict beyond that.
  • Small Name, Big Ego: Tomo. In her dream, she imagines herself as a celebrity with both boys and girls fawning over her. Meanwhile, Kagura only recognizes her as "that idiot who ran off at the start of the marathon".
  • Snowball Fight: The end of the 18th episode has one between all of the main characters, not seen in the manga.
  • Spice Up the Subtitles: The Yen Press translation has Kagura uncharacteristically call Tomo "retarded" for trying to model herself after Fujiko Mine from Lupin III; the equivalent Japanese dialogue is simply "baka", which is closer in tone to "stupid" or "foolish", and is translated as such everywhere else in the book. By comparison, the older ADV Films translation uses the more tonally accurate "idiot".
  • Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Sakaki gets the most focus out of the main cast, with several episodes primarily focused on her and her failed attempts at petting cats.
  • Standing in the Hall: Tomo self-inflicts the standing-in-the-hall punishment on herself for forgetting to do her homework. She's always wanted to try it.
  • Statuesque Stunner: Sakaki is both tall and beautiful to all of the students to the point that Even the Girls Want Her. However, she doesn't actually enjoy this for herself, at all.
  • Stock Footage: Scenes in this show are recycled for comedic effect.
  • Straight Gay: Despite her constant crushing on Sakaki, Kaorin exhibits little to no lesbian stereotypes, being treated as just another student who happens to be fawning for a same-gender peer.
  • Straight Man: Yomi is the most ordinary of the main students. She often has to question the weirder things that tend to go on with all of her other friends.
  • Strange Minds Think Alike:
    • Tomo and Kagura both independently suggest doing a haunted café for the culture fest, prompting Osaka to remark, "You two are on the same wavelength."
    • Osaka and Sakaki both see Chiyo's dad as a floating orange cat, independent of each other's description. It just adds to the strangeness surrounding him.
  • Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Sakaki is actually a real sweetheart on the inside, but she's too much of a Shrinking Violet to show it, so her friends only tend to see her as an Aloof Dark-Haired Girl, instead.
  • Super-Deformed: The series frequently has characters shift to this style as a means of accentuating its comedy; the manga most commonly does this in its first volume, though it occasionally pops up in the second and third years as well.
  • Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: When you constantly and intentionally keep agitating a wild animal? You are going to get hurt. Tomo learns this the hard way; after playing with Mayaa like a doll, she gets scratched so badly that she has to get it stitched up at the hospital. This also applies to Sakaki and her constant attempts to pet the biting cat. It doesn't matter that they're small, these are still wild animals that shouldn't be treated like house pets or toys.
  • Surreal Theme Tune: The anime's opening theme, "Ear-Playing-Tricks Cake" (soramimi kēki, a play on the Japanese word for mondegreens, soramimi kaishi), has rather nonsensical lyrics that have very little to do with the show itself.
  • Suspiciously Specific Denial:
    • When the second year starts, Yukari tells her class that she notices a lot of students who were in her homeroom last year, but denies that it's because she doesn't want the trouble of having to remember a bunch of new names.
      Yukari: Oh, and don't change the seating either.
    • In the manga, when Osaka asks if Kaorin is gay:
      Kaorin: The correct term is lesbian! Uh, not that I am a lesbian...
  • Symbolic Blood: After Yukari lets loose a bizarre scream when she spots the knife in Osaka's hand, the show cuts to a HUGE amount of tomato sauce being splattered on food by Tomo, spraying some on Kagura in the process.
  • Talking Animal: Chiyo's dad, a giant, floating cat-thing that speaks in overly-dramatic language.
  • The Talk: Nyamo, in an aggressive Beergasm, decides to give the girls a huge "birds & bees" lecture. The entire lecture was inaudible, but they all got quite a Luminescent Blush (expect for the much younger Chiyo-chan).
  • Tareme Eyes: Osaka, Tomo, and Chiyo all of cute, round eyes. Osaka and Chiyo because they are really cute, but Tomo moreso for her genkiness.
  • Terrible Artist: Sakaki, Chiyo, and Osaka are all poor at drawing. This is lampshaded a few times.
  • Thememobile: The Yukarimobile, so named due to traumatizing poor Chiyo from her reckless driving.
  • Thousand-Yard Stare: Chiyo-chan gets this whenever the Yukarimobile is mentioned, since she barely survived riding with Yukari-sensei at the wheel.
  • Throw the Dog a Bone:
    • Kaorin finally gets the chance to dance with Sakaki after the first sports festival, which is immediately yanked away when Kimura is her next dance partner. She also gets to win a 3-legged race with Sakaki in the second sports festival, and begins squeeing when she sees Sakaki dressed as a male cheerleader in the third year.
    • Kaorin finally got to go with the group to Chiyo's summer home in the third year after missing out the previous two years, giving her a final sendoff with the group after being sent off to Kimura's homeroom in the third year.
  • Thunder Shock: Lightning strikes around Sakaki when she's overwhelmed by the cuteness of a photo of kittens, and around Kimura when declaring his love for the ever-so-skimpy girls' gym shorts.
  • Title Drop: In the first episode of the anime, the logo appears, but then is cut off as it is hit by a baseball and flung out of frame. The same episode has a cutscene with Mr. Kimura walking with the logo on the back of his head. In episode 24, Chiyo is tackled by her dog Mr. Tadakichi, and then the logo and title are shown/heard for no clear reason.
  • Title: The Adaptation:
    • The short film is called Azumanga Daioh: The Very Short Movie, and the anime is called Azumanga Daioh: The Animation, presumably to mitigate the Artifact Title of no longer being a manga.
    • ADV's English translation of the manga, in a somewhat confusing recursive example, was renamed Azumanga Daioh: The Manga.
  • Token Mini-Moe: Chiyo, a 10-year-old child prodigy in a group of 15-year-old high schoolers. The series is all too quick to deconstruct the issues a child her size would have in high school, and then play them up for comedy.
  • Tranquil Fury: Of a fairly pacifistic kind, given by Sakaki of all people. At the third-year relay race, a boy saw fit to mock Chiyo for being slow. Sakaki looked at him like she was seriously considering killing him and, instead, as Chiyo was desperate due to how far behind she had gotten, gave Chiyo the single most heartwarming smile ever given in the history of anime, said it was okay and proceeded to obliterate the competition.
  • Translation Punctuation: Because the manga focuses on a group of classmates in an ESL class, Gratuitous English is fairly common. While some translations opt to Keep It Foreign, the Yen Press translation instead uses guillemets (« and ») to distinguish when the Japanese cast is speaking in English.
  • Transparent Closet: Kaorin really doesn't put much effort into hiding how much she loves Sakaki, and she's not good at pretending that she doesn't, either.
  • The Troublemaker: Tomo makes a lot of trouble for everyone, accidentally and on purpose. This includes challenging them to various, often pointless, contests like trying to race Sakaki, or telling her classmates that the illness Yomi suffered that kept her from coming on an outing was because she slept naked (she didn't, but Tomo was happy to spread the story, anyway). The best (worst) example is when the group takes a trip to Chiyo's summer home. Chiyo comments how it would be terrible if she lost the house's only key. Cue Tomo grabbing the key and tossing it into the forest, just for a laugh.
    Tomo: I did it!
    Koyomi: BUT WHAT THE HELL FOR??!!
  • Trust-Building Blunder: During the first Sports Fest, Chiyo and Tomo attempt to do an exercise where the former does a handstand and has the latter hold her up for support. Tomo immediately moves out of position after hearing her name called, leaving Chiyo to flip onto the ground.
  • Truth in Television: Yukari's suggestion to burn all of the unsold animals after the first cultural festival makes sense as a lot of the cultural festivals at schools in Japan end with a big bonfire fueled by decorations and flammable trash from the festival itself.
  • Tsurime Eyes: Sakaki and Kagura's eyes are drawn sharper compared to the other students, likely to highlight their strong athletic skills (as well as Sakaki being a Shrinking Violet).
  • Two-Teacher School: Yukari and Nyamo are, apparently, the only teachers who are invested in their students' personal lives. We do see other teachers, most notably Kimura, but no one wants to remember that one teacher who only appeared in one scene very early on and made Chiyo freak out. There's also a music teacher and second gym teacher seen very briefly in the anime, and in the manga there's an older teacher named Goto who's known Yukari ever since she was a student at the school and tends to still scold her. In the anime he only gets a cameo appearance.
  • The Unfettered: Sakaki and Kagura have much more personal roles, unlike the other four girls. Sakaki though sensitive, just wants to adore and love cute animals (especially cats). Other than that, she mostly keeps to herself. Kagura didn't join the main cast till later, she's more focused on her sports and physical education. But reacts badly to bullying or teasing, and isn't as deep or intuitive as Sakaki.
  • Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Kimura sports scraggly hair, a constant, slack-jawed expression, and angular cheekbones that add onto how much his personality and behavior creep out the people around him. Meanwhile, his wife is quite the looker, with Tomo (Osaka in the anime) describing her as very pretty. The contrast is enough to blindside the girls when Kimura reveals that the two of them are married.
  • Uncanny Family Resemblance: While we never get to see for ourselves, it's said that Tomo looks and acts exactly like her father. Yomi is not pleased. Also, Kaorin and her mom look exactly alike.
  • Unexpected Kindness: Occasionally, Mr. Kimura the notorious Dirty Old Man does something decent (i.e. donating to charity and picking up litter), which surprises the girls. They think he must have some good in him, and then it's immediately subverted when he says something perverted, proving them all wrong.
  • Universal Group Reaction: In the very first episode, Yukari introduces Chiyo-chan to the rest of the class, and then throws in, "And none of you better pick on the little brat just because she's smart for her age!" Cue the class all thinking, "But that's what you just did."
  • Unknown Rival: Kagura engages Sakaki when she first transfers into the class, and Tomo tries this with predictable results. Sakaki doesn't seem to mind, let alone notice.
  • Untranslated Title:
    • The series is named Azumanga Daioh regardless of what region it's released in, thanks to its Pun-Based Title (which can be read as either "Kiyohiko Azuma's Manga for Dengeki Daioh" or "Emperor Azumanga") being impossible to adequately translate.
    • While the US CD release of Let's Sing: Azumanga Daioh Vocal Collection gives official English-language titles for several image songs and even the opening theme ("Ear-Playing-Tricks Cake"), Tomo's image song "Poi Poi Peace" retains its Japanese name rather than using a translated one (e.g. "Throw-Away Peace").
  • Vengeful Vending Machine: Tomo tries to get some tea with milk from a vending machine, only for it to pour the drink but fail to dispense the cup. She's suitably outraged when Yomi then gets the same drink and ends up with two cups.
  • Virtual Pet: Early in the manga, Kaorin learns that Sakaki can't keep any pets at home because her parents are allergic, and suggests that she buy a "P-Pet" instead. Sakaki, who's Hopeless with Tech, interprets the term as referring to a literal pocket-sized pet and overwhelms herself with how cute it sounds.
  • Vomit Discretion Shot: When Yukari throws up after getting really drunk in one episode, the Eye Catch hides the act, although we still hear her retching.
  • Wacky Homeroom: Yukari's classroom is home to a number of shenanigans throughout the series, thanks to a mix of her personal dysfunctions and the strange students assigned to her class. For instance, Yukari is late for class one day because she wanted to buy a PlayStation game, and at another point she calls off teaching English to do P.E. instead.
  • What Does She See in Him?: Nobody can figure out what Kimura's wife sees in him, to the point that Tomo and Osaka consider calling the police. In the end, they learn Mrs. Kimura happens to be a kindhearted (if naïve) person, who apparently either doesn't seem to be aware of his leerier habits or flat-out doesn't mind them. She says her taste in men is simply out of style, like how '70s trousers came back in style in the '90s. None of the girls buy into this.
  • Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?:
  • With Friends Like These...: Yukari and Nyamo don't often see eye to eye with each other, but are nonetheless great staffmates. Tomo can be quite a Jerkass at times, but everyone still sees her as a friend, particularly Yomi.
  • Work Info Title: Named after the author and the magazine it was published in.
  • Xtreme Kool Letterz: Discussed with the misspelling of じ (ji, hemorrhoids) as ぢ(same reading, derived from chi rather than shi.). By Osaka, naturally.
  • Yonkoma: The normal format of the manga is a 4-panel page. The manga may occasionally present a "DX" format, which reads like a more traditional manga.
  • Youkai: Tomo and Yomi imagine Chiyo as a nurikabe in the second culture festival episode. Osaka imagines herself as a karakasa, trying (and failing) to deliver drinks.
  • You Say Tomato: Chiyo-chichi pronounces it "to-mah-to". Justified, as this actually is the standard Japanese pronunciation of the term ("トマト"), though he still pronounces it this way in the English dub.

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Osaka at the Beach

Only someone like her can suddenly talk about hemorrhoids out of the blue then suddenly talk about sea animals afterwards.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (2 votes)

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Main / Cloudcuckoolander

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