Azumanga Daioh

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I was always very closed off with the type of mangas and animes I watched, and never in my life did I think I would become obsessed with a manga and anime about a group of high school girls living their daily lives together...

One of my favorite mangas of all time. I love its characters and also its silly and nonsensical humor, which is handled in a 4-panel format in a spectacular way. I finished it around February and today as I write this I can't stop thinking about this series and the impact it had on me. The emptiness that leaves you when you ... finish the last chapter is impressive. in short: PEAK FICTION!!!!!!!!! (btw what a shame that in the anime they didn't animate the mini arc of Osaka and Chiyo working at Magnetron Burger...)

best thing since sliced bread (maybe)
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Azumanga daioh is considered a classic in the SOL genre, though the opinions on it seem to be very divided, some people think its the greatest thing ever and others view it as incredibly overrated.
I my self fall in to the category of people that love it and here's why:

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Azumanga daioh (a combination of the mangakas name Azuma and the name of the magazine it was published in Dengeki daioh) tells a story about a group of friends living their high school years from the start of the first year to graduation. Each month of every year being divided in to two parts.

Typically Azumanga is told in the 4-koma panel style (if you don't know what it is google it) and has a highly comedic tone, though it dose once in a while deviate from it for longer more traditional manga style comics that are well worth it.


Azumanga characters are written by effectively using tropes.
Tomo is extremely loud, impulsive and competitive despite not being able to win at anything, she has been friends with Yomi since first grade, who would be considered the "smart" one of the group, if it weren't for the child prodigy Chiyo who skipped from elementary straight to 10th grade. Yomi is there to ground Tomo into and the others to reality (sometimes failing to do so) and generally used as a punching bag for the manga, since nothing seem to go her way.
Osaka is hard to describe, but id consider her the airhead of the group. Also you have Sakaki, who has an image of being cool and distant, but really she likes everything cute and really wants to pet a cat.

Azumanga has really good side characters from the teachers to other students, and you never get bored of it since it places importance equally on all its characters. With this you get to see pretty much every combination of the characters play out.



overall azumanga daioh is a really enjoyable series that is well worth the read.
(also the term waifu originates from its anime counterpart)

p.s. the anime intro song is so good i cant stop listening to it.

I found Azumanga to be very mediocre. Like many other comedy mangas from around the same time period, I rarely laugh at the jokes or the funny scenarios the character finds themselves in. It is often puns, funny faces or playing on the distinct traits of the characters. Is is an easy read since it is written in a 4 panel format and is probably the reason I read it until the end. Some chapters were however a couple pages long, and these were the most interesting ones. So should you read it? If you like light humor in 4koma format in a high school ... setting you might find it somewhat entertaining.