Hilarious Anime recommendation: "Azumanga Daioh" (The fluffy temptation of wheat!)

In brief, Azumanga Daioh is a hilarious and adorable anime series about a group of girls in high school in Japan. It mostly revolves around the normal day to day events of school and the strange things kids talk about, not about giant robots or anything epic. It's "a show about nothing" that takes place in a Japanese school. Years ago I watched it with my anime group, and last monday I randomly picked up the DVDs off my shelf and watched some, and discovered it was so much better than I remembered.

I first discovered Azumanga Daioh through a fanvid (oh look, fan promotion that lead to me buying the product!) I was looking through popular videos at animemusicvideos.org, and watched the highest rated AMV that was listed as having multiple sources I recognized. Here it is, to Blowing for Soup's "1985".



As it turns out, the majority of the footage is from AD with cameo shots from other shows, but I was intrigued by what I saw. I showed the AMV to many of my friends (mostly for the NERVana jokes), and went to youtube to find the show. I watched the first half of the first episode, and then ordered the DVDs. I didn't want to buy them without knowing anything about the show, and I had no legal way to see it. I have really never understood why all shows don't have their first episode online. I'm never going to buy a DVD without seeing at least one episode, and I have no desire to just watch a random episode from the fourth season of a show to decide if I want to watch it. Lots of shows have their most recent 5 episodes on hulu these days, why not the first episode? I can't imagine it possibly decreasing DVD sales. I suppose this is a tangent, but I always think of my experience with Azumanga Daioh as the perfect example of this use case that I think should be totally reasonable from everyone's perspective.

The main character in the AMV is Yukari, the homeroom teacher for the protagonists of AD. Her life bares very little resemblance to the lyrics of the song. She's a single Japanese woman who teaches English and is more immature than some of her students. She's very... enthusiastic, and spazzy in a traditional anime way. In my opinion, the real star is Chiyo-chan, a young prodigy who has skipped middle school and gone straight to high school. She is kind and earnest, but quite naive and susceptible to being lead astray by strange ideas. "Osaka" is the transfer student from the Japanese city of Osaka, who is slow witted and speaks slowly with a strong accent that the subtitles try to portray. In the dubbed version, she speaks with a Southern drawl. We also have the tall, attractive and athletic girl who is considered "cool" and "mysterious" by the other girls, when she is really just shy. She desperately wants to play with animals, but they usually bite her. One of the other girls is desperately in love with her, but of course unable to say anything. There's the smart overachiever and her slacker best friend who she pretends to hate but really loves, there's the athletic girl... the characters can all be fairly easily summarized, and there is nothing particularly deep about the show, but it is rich and delightful.

Each season repeats the same general events, like summer vacation at Osaka's house and the school field day, but each one manages to be funny and charming. There isn't much in the way of continuing plot arcs, just life continuing on. There's no graphic violence, scatological humor, or strong sexual content. I'm not sure at what age kids would start enjoying the show, but it's totally acceptable for all ages in my mind. Well, there's a male teacher who seems to have creepy crushes on students, which I can't imagine ever airing on a similar American show, but that's the creepiest thing.

In conclusion, it's delightful, you should watch it. You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001VFM5YM/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B000ADKWNM&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0CY50CS320QZ8NYJCVWF