Azumanga Daiou 1

Created/Updated 2002-06-25



Completed. Kanji list available. E-mail me.

Artistically, Azuma-sensei has a very different approach to drawing manga than other manga artists I've encountered. I don't believe Azuma-sensei is particularly skilled like Abe-sensei or Tomizawa-sensei; however, it's easy to see that he does know what he's doing by seeing how he differentiates among characters. If you're thinking of the hair length and shape, well, that's not all there's to it. Slight differences in face shape and eye shape are more important because hair is easy for any half-artists to do. Anyway, art is not fantastic in any big way. It's very soothing, I guess. Story is not coherent as a whole. In fact, it's not even all that interesting. Azumanga Daiou is all about characters. You just gotta love the characters. It takes a while, but before you get through half of the book, you'll most likely be attached to at least one of the characters. If not, well, it's not for you.

The closest thing I've seen to this is Calvin and Hobbes, not in terms of the lessons since there are no lessons in Azumanga Daiou, but in terms of the general feel. All in all, I can't wait to see the anime. I'm looking forward to hearing Takaka Rie as Yomi-chan, Asakawa Yuu as Sakaki-san, Hiramatsu Akiko and Hisakawa Aya as the teachers, and Higuchi Chieko as Tomo, but I feel Ihata Juri should've played Chiyo-chan. I'm not definite about that one since my exposure to Kaneda Tomoko's voice is limited. I'm actually not looking forward to Kuwashima-san as Kagura. I can't see it working well. We'll see....


Back to Azumanga Daiou Index Page
Back to Animephile Homepage