Azumanga Daioh

26 episodes on six DVDs
Seen: episodes 1-5

azumanga
Osaka, Chiyo, Yomi and Sakaki

Azumanga Daioh is about the daily lives of several high school girls and their teachers. Ten-year-old Chiyo is very bright and has skipped several grades; she's cheerful, competent and friendly. Tomo is hyperactive, competitive and often obnoxious; she exasperates her friend Yomi, who is quiet, disciplined and blunt. Sakaki is tall, reserved and rather intimidating; she's actually painfully shy, but the other students are too awed by her to dare talk with her. And then there's Ayumu, assigned the nickyname "Osaka" by Tomo. She's soft-spoken with an Osakan accent (you can hear the difference in her speech rhythms even if you don't know Japanese) and very spacy. Yukari is their English teacher; she's selfish, irresponsible and far more immature than any of the students, even Chiyo. (As she rides her bicycle to school on the first day of class, the chain slips off the crank. When a student stops to help her, instead of waiting for him to fix the chain, she grabs his bike and races off to class.) Nyamo, the gym teacher, is her long-suffering friend.
The interactions of these very different personalities are the basis of Azumanga Daioh. It's mostly comic. When Tomo or Yukari are the focus, the show tends toward farce and slapstick. With Sakaki, it tends to be more wistful than funny. With Osaka, the show varies from whimsical to weird. It is Osaka who gives the series its distinctive flavor, whether she's following the floaters in her eyes, fantasizing about Chiyo's pigtails or wondering about the Japanese word for "hemorroids." She is potentially a first-rate comic character, and I'm curious to see how she's developed in the later episodes of Azumanga Daioh.
But I may not watch them. I've seen only the first disc of the series, and I'm extremely ambivalent about it. The problem is the literature teacher, Mr. Kimura. He became a high school teacher so he can leer at the girls, and he makes no secret of it. The fourth of the five episode on the DVD is devoted to his attempts to watch the girls during their swimming lesson. I suppose that the makers of the anime thought it was amusing, but I found it disgusting. There's much to like about Azumanga Daioh; it's a pity that I can't recommend it.

Update: I've seen all 26 episodes, and I'm pleased to report that the later episodes are better than the earlier ones, and that there's less and less of Kimura as the series progresses.

Addendum

Eric Carra writes:

So let me get this straight... you're using one minor character (yes, I find him annoying, too) as a premise to not watch the show?
That's a shame.  AzuDaioh IS a fantastic show because of its major characters.  Mr. Kimura shows up less and less as the series goes on (maybe one time per DVD), and the personalities of the girls get more and more fleshed out.  By the time the series is over, you KNOW these young women.  To be frank, the last episode made me tear up, and that NEVER happens.
And if you let Kimura keep you away from the show, you'll never understand why.  If there's a better 'real life' anime series (as opposed to fantasy/sf based series), I've never seen it... and I've seen a bunch (been watching anime since 1991).
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