Forum - View topicShelf Life - Azumanga Daioh
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Mr. Oshawott
 Posts: 6773 |
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I had a swell time watching Azumanga Daioh. Tomo-chan was the fun schoolgirl had no problem pushing Yomi's buttons to the point of sheer frustration. I found their moments, as well as Yukari and Minamo's funny talks, to be the funniest part of the show.
 Plus, the simplistic normal high-school nature of Azumanga Daioh had put myself in a relaxed state of mind. Perhaps I'll get around to re-watching the show one day.
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varmintx
 Posts: 1220 Location: Covington, KY |
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Is this a Zodiac cipher?
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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I mean, think about it: - Sakaki = Charlie Brown, the long-suffering good character, whose dream of one perfect kite or football-kick seems to be almost conspired against by the force of nature, - Osaka = Linus, whose offbeat attempts to express his observations often come out as accidental deep philosophy, - Chiyo = Snoopy, who's friends with the group, but seems to be privy to some secret jet-set/achiever life of his own, - Tomo = Lucy, bossy, organizing the others, and a complete idiot, - Yomi = Schroeder, serious, mature, goal-oriented, and cursed with a smitten idiot hanging around his piano, - Kagura = Peppermint Patty, who would have an easier time at school if grades were more like sports, - Ms. Yukari = Sally...All she wants is her fair share, preferably tens and twenties. (And I assume every anime fan in the world by now has seen the classic "Lord of the Yen" AMV, so the mods would complain if I tried to link a joke about AzD being a "classic saga"...) 
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Cerceaux
 Posts: 180 Location: Earth |
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This show had so many funny scenes and episodes that made me laugh out loud it's hard to pick a favorite. And even with comedy at the forefront, by the end I cared enough about the characters to tear up a bit during the last episode.
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Snomaster1
 SubscriberPosts: 2876 |
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I've heard a lot about this anime for a long time but haven't really watched it until recently. I was watching a video on YouTube about about great comic scenes in anime and this show was among them. They used the subtitled version and I went in search of the English dubbed version. It wasn't too bad,so after that,I went in search of a couple of episodes I'd heard about. The first one was the school trip to Okinawa in which Sakaki befriends an Iriomote Mountain cat. It's the first animal to let her pet it voluntarily.
Needless to say,she had a very emotional parting from her new friend. After a while,the cat journeyed to Tokyo after it's mother passed away in a traffic accident. It defended Sakaki from a cat she called Kamineko. It scared off the other cats but it was so weak from it's journey that it needed medical attention. Eventually,it got better and she gave it the name Maya,after a shortened version of one of it's Okinawan names. Now,I like both cats and dogs and to me,Maya's one of the cutest anime cats I've seen because it's so very sweet and lovable. What do you guys think? |
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jymmy
 Posts: 1244 |
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The formula may have been refined and certainly the cute girls doing cute things aspect has been developed, but I still think Azumanga Daioh is not only a classic but one of the greatest, easily standing above most of if not all slice of life series following it.
It's not what I'd call perfect in terms of comedy or pacing... but then there's the manga, which is: an honest masterpiece of comedy, slice-of-life and the 4koma format. |
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maximilianjenus
Posts: 2891 |
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nani nani ? |
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Actar
 Posts: 1074 Location: Singapore |
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This is one of the exceedingly rare times where I find myself disliking something that's popular... Usually, it's the other way around. (^.^;)
I'm actually quite surprised that this show is as popular as it is in the West, when other Slice-of-life shows have failed to make that big of an impact. What is it about Azumanga Diaoh that has made it so beloved? I'm a huge, huge, huge fan of Slice-of-life/Comdey shows. However, Azumanga Diaoh just never sat well with me. I just don't get it at all. Of course, it's completely subjective, so please don't let me take away from your enjoyment of the show. (>.<) To me, the show seems very confused. Unlike Nichijou, that's completely absurd, or Non Non Biyori, that's grounded in reality, Azumanga Diaoh seems to be caught in the middle in terms of both comedy and characters. Maybe that's the point, but personally, it does lead to a rather disjointed experience. Firstly, Azumanga Diaoh's comedy is too slow-paced for payoffs that are just not worth the buildup or are completely predictable. For instance, like the aforementioned chomping cat joke, some scenes just drag on and on for no determinable reason. For other Slice-of-life comedies like Ichigo Mashimaro, every single second is used effectively for a certain purpose. Where is the expert comedic timing that people have been raving about? Not to mention, there are also a ton of throw-away scenes or sudden cutaways, like dream sequences or Chiyo's cooking that just take us out of the current scene. As you have astutely pointed out, the characters are odd. However, the characters are not odd enough for over-the-top comedy and are too odd for a relaxed Slice-of-life setting. With regard to the immature/perverted teacher characters, in a real-world setting, there is absolutely no way that any of their actions would be tolerated. From a comedic standpoint, there is barely a punchline to their shenanigans to validate their behavior. Mitsudomoe has weird characters and the show revels in that fact. The characters are always placed in bizarre scenarios that result in an over-the-top punchline that gives viewers the necessary catharsis.
This statement, I take issue with. You see, that's not the point of Lucky Star. Lucky Star is not about the otaku references nor is it about how strange all the characters can be. It's about how relatable the characters and situations can be. It's about how it makes witty observations on daily life (ones that you think no one else would) and pokes fun at them. I watched Lucky Star without knowing any of the references that the show was making and it still managed to become my number 1 favorite Slice-of-life anime for that very reason. I'd go as far as to say that it is a near-perfect reflection of our mundane lives and how the most trivial things can still be funny and be the glue that binds us together. |
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SEGAtheGENESIS234
 Posts: 81 |
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Azumanga Daioh has a charm that I wish modern slice of life stories would have. I know it sounds like I want the past to come back, but it seems like new slice of stories are hit and miss these days. Creators go after marketability rather than interesting characters. Don't get me wrong, we have good shows like Nichijou and Non Non Biyori, but then we have countless others that are made just to make bank off of Japan's love for cuteness. Sure, the characters from Nichijou and Non Non Biyori are designed to be cute, but not so much where it's the show's selling point. Not to mention, with the success of shows like K-On! everybody's doing the whole "cute girls in after school activities" idea. Heck, I've sat through Bakuon! and to me all it is is K-On! on motorcycles. I know that the originality of these shows come from what activity the main cast is in, but all these shows have the same archetypes. You have the leader, the shy one, the tomboyish one, and the one whose just... there.
Now, I don't hate slice-of-life anime, but in this day and age, so many litter the market. There's some good ones, which I'm thankful for, but many are hit and miss. |
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EricJ2
Posts: 4016 |
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Anyone can be cute. Cute is easy. Knowing how occasionally not to be cute, and still rationalizing it as a comfortable part of the world, takes a little more know-how and knowledge of human behavior. At the other end of the spectrum, Excel Saga is as crazy, fast-paced and wrong as all-get-out, but seems to hate its characters, and knocks them pillar-to-post just for the next violent, blood-spurting or otherwise acceptable-boundary-tweaking gag. In AzD, oddness is not only comfortable, it's expected. Even lone rational sensible killjoy Yomi turns out to have her own hidden personal eccentric side as one of the girls, when she harbors a secret desire to go to the amusement park, or obsesses over her diet scale. We're all odd, no one gets away from it, and no one looks down on it either. Odd just Happens.
And some are just deliberately there to annoy us. 
When Sakaki has a rare moment when something good happens--"Photos from my first trip with friends"--the Wrong gag happens: "Hey, looks like there's a ghost in that photo!" (Gyaa!) Yomi adds, "Oh yeah, you can see it...", and Chiyo adds, "Wow, you're really lucky to have a photo like that!" And each time, that slow siren take back and forth take perfectly times the unspoken reaction of "Will everyone....please....stop.........agreeing??  "
And no kite flyer would actually end up tangled up in his own kite string tied to the tree, and no baseball pitcher would actually have his clothes knocked off by a line drive. (And not even the grumpiest cat actually has piranha teeth.) It's everyday life taken just over the comic edge to silly overstatement, to show how common the regular version is to begin with.
Most of the audience who went into Lucky Star thought it would be just as philosophically eccentric as AzD, only to find out it was Girl's Slice of Life, and Konata was supposed to be the lone "walking disaster" for being an all-around otaku-girl. Actually, the tone of Lucky is caught up in that one scene in the OP where we see an anonymous skirt-cam shot of a group of girls all having girl-talk: "Have you played that new game at the arcade?" Afterschool girl talk, for girls to watch after school. Two scenes always summed up the universe of AzD for me: One was the moment where Osaka tries the shoe-toss to predict luck, it lands on a passing truck and disappears--And the other was the end of the first school-festival episode, where bundle-of-lunatic-energy Tomo shouts "Now it's time for our victory parade!" and obvious-audience-reaction Yomi responds, "...What 'victory'?  "
The show ends on a heartwarming sunset shot of the group actually having their four-girl victory parade on the way home, with Tomo leading in the mascot suit. Some everyday "victories" are possible, in their own odd little way. And then the show caps it off with another Wrong joke just before the credits. Just in case things got too cute. |
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treatment
Posts: 149 |
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Because Osaka...
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Actar
Posts: 1074 Location: Singapore |
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Thank you so much for engaging with me on the subject! (>.<) I really appreciate it! Now for my response~
Yes, we are indeed all odd. However, as I've mentioned, the characters in the show are too odd to be relatable and not odd enough for genuinely funny situations.
Interesting you brought that up because, you see, there's a joke with the exact same set-up in Nichijou. Except, instead of just ending with the shoe disappearing, Yukko chases the car down. However, instead of succeeding, she loses her second shoe along the way, having it taken by a dog in the opposite direction, leaving her worse off than she was before. Nichijou takes the joke so much further than Azumanga Diaoh where the viewer is constantly left asking... "Okay, now what?".
In fact, that "Okay, now what?" can be applied here too. For this particular scene, again, it's all about not feeling that emotional catharsis at all. Yes, they had a pretty successful display and they celebrated it together. "Okay, now what?" It didn't come after a defeat (which would have surely made that last scene far more poignant), it didn't come after putting in a ton of hard work or overcoming major obstacles (making the last scene more rewarding). It's just them going through the motions. In fact, the ending of Episode 23 does show them still having their own victory despite losing at the sports festival. And that works beautifully. I'm sure other more grounded Slice-of-life shows have also done this "everyday victory" as well, but with more emotional investment.
"Okay, now what?" I'd say that that was a great example of a joke that dragged on way too long... That would have been a great punch-line in and of itself if it had cut right after that initial shock. Speaking of ghost pictures, there's a phenomenal sketch in both Mitsudomoe and Lucky Star that has to do with ghost pictures as well. For the sake of brevity, I'll only elaborate on the Lucky Star one that uses the ghost picture as the punchline. Konata's mother, who sadly passed away when she was very young, decides to return to check up on her family. After a thoroughly heart-warming scene with both Konata's father and mother reflecting on their relationship and why they love each other, Konata's mother decides to join in the family portrait. However, our expectations are subverted when they decide to burn the camera after rightly deducing that it's a ghost photo. Why does this joke work? Firstly, it lightens up the mood, but still retains the bitter-sweet feeling instead of completely ruining it. In fact, I'd say it adds to the mood because we are reminded that her mother can never actually truly interact with them anymore. Secondly, it reaffirms the bond between father and daughter, which is what her mother was worried about to begin with. It's the perfect punchline as it ends when it needs to and achieves a lot.
But I contest that going big is necessary to pull this off successfully. Take another Nichijou sketch for example. In this one, we see Annaka at a shooting gallery game stand. How do they parody it? Firstly, the prizes are all nonsensical items. Not only that, after Annaka fails to shoot any of them down, she suspects that the stall owner is cheating. By sheer luck, she discovers that... he actually was cheating! The prizes are all nailed down. However, the stall owner, instead of apologizing, becomes angry that she revealed his trick! Our expectations are not only subverted once, but three times! The rubbish prizes, the fact that there was cheating involved and the fact that the stall owner got upset instead of apologetic. To top it off, the bizarre setting and world they reside in allows for this kind of comedy to play out flawlessly.
I really don't understand why you're making such a big deal about the gender of the characters when their conversations can literally apply to anyone. - Cramming the night before for a test and getting amazing marks? Yup. - Getting health anxiety after watching medical dramas? Yup. - Not buying the front most item off a shelf because everyone else has touched it? Yup. - Making the excuse of taking a break whenever your parent comes in to check up on you? Yup. - Getting bitten by mosquitoes after a day at the festival? Yup. - Pretending that a half-filled straw is Pocky? Yup. - Being stingy on everything else but your hobby? Yup. ...and that's just the tip of the iceberg! This is one of the only anime to have pointed out these trivial moments in life that we take for granted, shown us that we're not alone, and shown us that it is these trivial moments that make life fun. The 4, later far more, characters give us different perspectives on the same situation that make everyone feel included. |
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EricJ2
Posts: 4016 |
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(Not quite sure how to take that... I mean, y'know, you did ask. )
And the answer is "Now, nothing": That's the economy of the joke. If the truck had run over Osaka's shoe, that would be too negative, and if it turned into Yukko's epic chase, it would turn into a joke about a shoe rather than a joke about Osaka & Chiyo looking forward to the sports day. As it is--like Charlie Brown never getting a decent break--the world can let you make your own problems. The truck zooms by, and the joke ends just on O&C's silent " o_o " looks of 1) "Um, okay, I'd call that a bad omen..", and 2) "Ya just had to do it... "
But since AzD takes place in an only slightly strange world based on our own quirks, Sakaki, the athletic kitten-obsessed softie, is at a shooting gallery stand trying to win a stuffed kitten. Sporty Kagura comes by, and when Sakaki wins the prize, Kagura cheers "Wow, you totally brought it down, you crazy sniper, you mighty hunter, you!" Thanks to Kagura happily ruining the moment, poor Sakaki, and her life of the imagination for cute stuffed animals, can't enjoy her moment of winning, and now stares at the plush with a guilt complex as if she's just mortally wounded it: "Please tell me you're okay...  "
It's not a joke that needs to go big to have anything happen, it's just a joke of what we so know that character would do. And where our own slightly odd world caused something good to go wrong again. |
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RGaspar
 Posts: 243 |
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What an awful, boring, totally uninteresting series I've never watched to completion and I don't care about....
< Points to Avatar Seriously, I really liked Azumanga Daioh and I watched it fairly recently, like a couple of years ago. I felt it is a tad slower than similar series I've seen, but the second half (after episode 13 or so) has better pacing, and I really liked the characters by then. I still remember a joke about Chiyo being traumatized by the teacher's driving skills. I laughed so much at that one, and the cat jokes... |
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Herald Of JOJO
 Posts: 144 Location: Malaysia |
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Hmm... maybe I should watch Azumanga Daioh for the heck of it.
On a side note, is no one going to talk about the stuff Jonathan has on his shelves?! Seriously, he has figures of Satan and Lucifer (from the Shin Megami Tensei games)! That's sooo siiick! Only thing that would be cooler is if he had Helel there alongside them. And that Miia Mon Musu poster... I've to get one. Is there one of Rachnera? |
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