(L) Azumanga Daioh Discussion

[kenjiharima]

I like Sakaki the most. Also we've NEVER known her last name.

Kinda like Vegeta and Ryu(street fighter canon he has no last name)

[KimmyChan]

A girl of many mysteries is our Sakaki Which is what's most appealing about her

[The Chaos]

I find Sometime Sakaki bit boring with her love for the weird cat...Osaka is the best to me

[KimmyChan]

It's Sakaki's love for cats that has me totally drawn in each time But Osaka is still great though

[kenjiharima]

Gotta love those silent type girls. Though she's no Rei clone and she's got a great body, good at athletics and love for cute animals. Probably the long black hair attracted me plus those eyes.

I really want to see a Azumanga Xover Yotsuba. Chiyo meets Yotsuba and Fuka meets Sakaki.

[KimmyChan]

That would be rather entertaining to say the least

[ACSephiroth]

Originally Posted by The Chaos

lol..The best moment for her when she try to wake up Yukari-sensai with big knife

What was censored from the original scene http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHgPuee4LPs

[The Chaos]

Originally Posted by ACSephiroth

What was censored from the original scene http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHgPuee4LPs

yep That the Great moment ...too bad it cut at the end when she say ""Oh,you´re awake...I screwed up"

[Vexx]

Originally Posted by Dist

@ Vexx.
For example, I find Lucky Star and Azumanga Daioh often compared, and how AD is supposedly so superior to LS, and this is what I don't understand. Lucky Star is awesome, and it's actually funny.. But this series isnt'. But hey well, it's just my opinion.

And I didn't exactly mean the characters can't be portrayed as semi-realistically, that's not really the problem. And I do like alot of other animes than just shounen =P.

AzuDa's major advantage/disadvantage is age - its somewhat unfair to compare L*S and AzuDa when one is, to some extent, only possible because of the success of the other (L*S being a descendant). As others point out, AzuDa is just about 'typical girls' growing up in the "late 20th C." whereas L*S is definitely "21st C." trendy hip. Also the anime version of L*S incorporated all sorts of easter eggs, inside references, and industry gags ... which almost pushes it into Paniponidash territory. AzuDa was able to avoid that sort of commercialization.
I feel like you can safely ignore people who try to compare the two without addressing those points

Thanks for elaborating.

[kenjiharima]

AzuDa is just about 'typical girls' growing up in the "late 20th C." whereas L*S is definitely "21st C." trendy hip

QFT. That is the big difference of LS and AD.

[yezhanquan]

Well, if you compare the manga, you realise that the gags aren't really that different from each other. As I say before, I watch AzuDai for the seiyu-tachi. Somehow, I can't bear reading the manga.

[Vexx]

Aye... I didn't want to get into how much of the L*S anime has very little to do with the manga. Whereas AzuDa anime is an almost too faithful transcription...

The two mangas have very similar flavor outside of the activities and gadgetry differences (as do many other similar 4-koma works)

[KimmyChan]

I think that both AD & L*S are really great slice-of-slice school comedies in their own ways, except that I've seen many more AD episodes than what I have of L*S lately that's all

[ACSephiroth]

Originally Posted by yezhanquan

Well, if you compare the manga, you realise that the gags aren't really that different from each other. As I say before, I watch AzuDai for the seiyu-tachi. Somehow, I can't bear reading the manga.

Whats seiyu-tachi?

[kenjiharima]

Originally Posted by KimmyChan

I think that both AD & L*S are really great slice-of-slice school comedies in their own ways

Another QFT.

Both animes are slice of life the story, the only difference is how the comedy is presented and the life the school girls are presented. AD has more of a "NORMAL" school life, while LS does has it's share of references to "REAL LIFE".

[yezhanquan]

Originally Posted by ACSephiroth

Whats seiyu-tachi?

The voice cast.

[4Tran]

This is an unfunny show that isn't very good, and I can't see what the appeal is...

Wait... this thread's about Azumanga Daioh!? Heck, in that case, Azumanga Daioh is one of my favorite anime ever. In fact, it's currently in the #2 spot, and it gets there by doing two things very well: the obvious one is the comedy, the less obvious being the way it pulls off a light, but still very significant mood. Two of my favorite scenes from the entire show are the snowball fight and the episode where the girls play jump rope against the sunset. Neither of them are extraordinarily humorous, but the sheer warmth they engender is rarely matched in any other anime (or many other media for that matter). Aside from the first episode and the dream episode, I can reliable count on just popping in an Azumanga Daioh DVD and getting a barrel full of laughs. I wish that there were more anime like it.

Originally Posted by Dist

Mhm, well, I just didn't find jokes in this anime funny, that's all. And the characters personalities didn't match my liking. Though I found it boring, I do like various slice of life animes. For example, I find Lucky Star and Azumanga Daioh often compared, and how AD is supposedly so superior to LS, and this is what I don't understand. Lucky Star is awesome, and it's actually funny.. But this series isnt'. But hey well, it's just my opinion.

You can chalk most of that down to a matter of personal taste and perhaps being slightly outside of the preferred demographic. Humor is obviously going to differ from person to person - for example, my favorite forms of humor tend to come from British comedy and based on largely irony. Azumanga Daioh plays very well to my tastes, especially with the extra-long timing pauses, and the derived gag. How this works is that it will present most of a gag, and let the audience fill in the rest of the punchline - thereby involving the audience and making it more of an interactive experience. While this is right up my alley, it's obviously not going to be to everyone's taste. In contrast, Lucky Star tends to make its jokes more interactive by relying on in-jokes - this is obviously effective for bigger anime fans, but I tend to find a large amount of it unfunny.

My other point about the target demographic is that Azumanga Daioh is ideal for viewers who have been out of high school for a number of years. It's not too surprising if younger viewers are less enamoured about the show because there's less proximity between their own experience and the show itself, and hence a lot of that mood that I wrote about is lost or becomes less entertaining.

Originally Posted by KimmyChan

I think that both AD & L*S are really great slice-of-slice school comedies in their own ways, except that I've seen many more AD episodes than what I have of L*S lately that's all

It's a bit of a nitpick, but I don't really see either show as a slice-of-life (I don't see slice-of-life intersecting with any other genre). About the only thing that they share with that genre is that they don't have much in the way of an over-arching plot. If I had to choose, I'd have to say that Azumanga Daioh has more slice-of-life elements, but it's still firmly in the comedy genre.

[KimmyChan]

I see that I stand corrected But yes, you're right, when you put it that way

[4Tran]

I've decided to rewatch my favorite shows and share I liked about them on an episode to episode basis. The second on my list is Azumanga Daioh, my favorite anime comedy (the first being Twelve Kindoms). I hope to cover about an episode a day. Please feel free to interject or comment or correct me on the show. (Otherwise, I'll just be posting a lot to myself )

A note about the title: "Azumanga Daioh" is a concatenation of three things, the mangaka's name "Azuma", the fact that it started life as a manga: "manga", and the magazine it was published in: Degenki "Daioh". Otherwise, the name is just gibberish.

OP
The OP for Azumanga Daioh is "Soramimi Cake", and it's one purposefully weird piece. On the face of it, it's just a wacky tune with wacky lyrics set to wacky visuals. And that's really what it is, except that the visuals basically lay out the entire show in about a minute and a half, and that the song is very exemplary of the show's overall mood and tone (uh, sort of). It's not exactly the kind of piece to show people who have started exploring anime recently, but this show isn't really for that audience either. Overall, I like it for what it accomplishes, but it's not quite what I would put into my playlist outside of the show.

Main Episode
Structurally, every episode of Azumanga Daioh is made up of five five-minute segment, some of which are tied together thematically. The first episode is the introduction episode, and so we see the main characters being introduced and featured in each segment - Yukari, Chiyo, Sakaki, Tomo and Ayumu. Each of these characters' personality quirks are brought out quite nicely with Yukari being the selfish and obsessive teacher, Chiyo as the 10-year old prodigy who's been advanced to high school (grade 10), Sakaki as the tall and dark girl whose appearance belies her shyness and love for cute things, Tomo as the energetic girl whose bark is a lot louder than her bite, and Ayumu as the spaced-out girl who isn't stereotypically Osakan, but is given the unfortunate monicker of Osaka (her real name being quickly forgotten).

These segments are all quite funny and fun, but as they are mostly introductions, they lack the kind of characters playing off one another that the later episodes show. But from the very beginning, we can see a lot of the different elements that make Azumanga Daioh stand out as much as it does: the music, the comic timing and repetition, and the very style of comedy itself.

Tackling these elements in order, the music is perhaps one of the most underappreciated things about Azumanga Daioh. Dominated by recorder strains, the music is extremely whimsical, and almost all of it is used to either serve the overall mood or to emphasize certain comedic moments. The comedic timings of the show are unusual in that a gag will often be started, and the music is brought out to build up anticipation for the punchline - a punchline that's often delayed several seconds. This is even more apparent when comedic repetition is used - like when Sakaki goes to pet Kamineko the second time. All of this is used to increase the comedic tension of the gags, and it's a technique that I find to be very effective. It's especially important for rewatches since the viewer would be already familiar with the gag.

Last on the list is the style of comedy. What Azumanga Daioh relies on for its gags is a lot of old staple comedic elements: from physical humor, to strong ironic tones, to the offset of anticipation and result. The only major unusual comedic element that is a bit more unique to the show is the use of repetition. Having said that, I find that this kind of humor is very effective, and that it is infinitely superior to the proliferation of reliance on parody.

The other core element that Azumanga Daioh brings to the table is a very strong sense of tone and mood. It's one of the most exemplary anime at delivering the flavor of what it's like to be in high school. In fact, it's so successful at this that I'm at a loss to think of any other show to bring up in the same sentence. And I think that it's this very feel that makes Azumanga Daioh fit more for adults than for teenagers (or even those recently out of high school). Anyone who isn't in high school yet probably won't get the references or the feel yet, and those still in high school won't be able to get the nostalgic feel (real or otherwise ) that the show so strongly evokes. This last bit isn't entirely there in the first episode, but one can see little inklings of it - from Tomo's "punishment" and her silly little outbursts, to stuff like forgetting to do one's homework, to how the friends play off one another.

Overall, episode 1 of Azumanga Daioh is quite good, and I laughed out loud in several places. All of the elements that make up the show are more or less in place, even if they aren't completely developed yet. It's still a long ways from reaching the show's potential, but it's a decent start. As an aside, I regard this as one of the weakest episodes in the whole show.

ED
The ED for Azumanga Daioh is "Raspberry Heaven", and it's a more conventional song than the OP is. There's still a lot more oddness in the visuals, but the song feels a lot more placid than the show itself is (even though it still sounds a bit unusual). On closer inspection, this is not only entirely purposefully done by the creative staff, but "Raspberry Heaven" fits extremely well with the show's overarching tone and mood. Taken together, the OP and ED take the discordant pieces of Azumanga Daioh and sets them aside quite nicely.

[andyjay729]

Yeah, I kinda think LS was mainly intended as an otaku satire (esp. the anime), while Azumanga was more of a general high school satire. Azumanga doesn't seem THAT old to me, but then I remember it's been 7 years now... Hard to believe. Well, I'd say that gives it something of a timeless appeal. A decade from now, will LS still hold the same appeal?