Anime Fully Blast

About Azumanga Daioh:

Azumanga Daioh (あずまんが大王 Azumanga Daiō?, lit. "Azumanga the Great (King)") is a Japanese comedy manga by Kiyohiko Azuma. It was serialized by MediaWorks in the shōnen manga magazine Dengeki Daioh from 1999 to 2002 and collected in four bound volumes. In May 2009, in conjunction with the 10th anniversary of the manga, three additional chapters began serialization in Shogakukan's Monthly Shōnen Sunday under the title Azumanga Daioh: Supplementary Lessons.

The manga is drawn as a series of vertical four-panel comic strips called yonkoma and depicts the lives of a group of girls during their three years as high-school classmates. The series has been praised for its off-beat humor driven by eccentric characters, and Kiyohiko Azuma acclaimed as a "master of the four-panel form," for both his art style and comic timing.

It was adapted as an anime television series called Azumanga Daioh: the Animation byJ.C.Staff, which aired from the week of April 8, 2002 until the week of September 30, 2002. It was broadcast on the TV Tokyo network and AT-X in five-minute segments every weekday, then rebroadcast as a 25-minute compilation that weekend, for a total of 130 five-minute segments collected in 26 episodes. The compilation episodes were released on DVD and Universal Media Discs (UMDs) by Starchild Records; the five-minute segments can be distinguished by their individual titles. Several soundtrack albums were released, as well as three Azumanga Daiohvideo games.

Characters:

Chiyo Mihama:

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Chiyo MihamaVoiced by: Tomoko Kaneda (Japanese), Jessica Boone (English)Chiyo Mihama (美浜 ちよ Mihama Chiyo?), usually called Chiyo-chan, is a child prodigy, having skipped five grades to 10th grade (first year in Japanese high school) at the start of the series, yet she is still top of the class. Such grade-skipping would be unthinkable in Japan, and the series humorously explores its potential consequences.[2] The other characters find Chiyo amazingly cute, but sometimes take advantage of both her youthfulness and her scholastic abilities. However, it seems her classmates are mostly nice to her, with the exception of Tomo, who seems to enjoy teasing her. Her diminutive stature leads to her having a lack of confidence, particularly in sports where she fears she is a burden to others. Chiyo is frequently viewed with jealousy by fellow students, initially because of her intelligence, but later also because of the discovery that her family is exceedingly wealthy (they own an enormous mansion and a summer house, which Chiyo invites her classmates to visit on several occasions). The stylistic rendering of Chiyo's pigtails allow for several visual gags in both the manga and anime: Osaka often imagines them to be flapping wings, or even entities independent of Chiyo herself. At home, she can almost always be found in the company of her enormous dog, Tadakichi-san. Of all of the girls, she is the only one who does not sit through college entrance exams, as she intends to study overseas in America.

Tomo Takino:

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Voiced by: Chieko Higuchi (Japanese), Mandy Clark (English)
Tomo Takino (滝野 智 Takino Tomo?) is extremely energetic and competitive, despite being nonathletic and a slacker at the same time. She randomly challenges people to competitions she can't win—-mostly Sakaki in sports and Chiyo in scholastics. She tends to irritate everyone around her, especially Yomi, who has been her classmate since elementary school. Tomo's character is extremely impulsive and never considers nor cares about the consequences of anything she says or does. She is the only one of the main cast who picks on Chiyo. During the second trip to Chiyo's summer house, Tomo actually grabbed Chiyo's house keys and threw them into the forest because she wanted to see what would happen if they had lost them which, of course, was a very bad idea. However, on the occasions when Tomo has actually been inspired to concentrate on something, she has demonstrated that she is quite capable. She succeeded in gaining the grades needed to qualify for the same high school as Yomi, though it was only after Yomi ridiculed her and openly said that there was no way that she could do so. Once Tomo began attending high school however, she returned to her lackadaisical ways.

Koyomi "Yomi" Mizuhara:

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Voiced by: Rie Tanaka (Japanese), Nancy Novotny (English)Koyomi Mizuhara (水原 暦 Mizuhara Koyomi?), commonly known as Yomi, is a grade-school friend and general antithesis of Tomo. She is the voice of reason of the series, carrying herself as the most mature and serious of the group. Though smart and athletic, she is constantly dissatisfied with herself due to her weight and is always trying various diets in an effort to become thinner. She can never seem to stick to these diets however, as she finds herself constantly tempted by her favorite foods. Another weakness of Yomi's character is that while she is above average in everything else, she is an awful singer, yet karaoke is one of her favorite pastimes. While usually functioning as Tomo's"straight man", she sometimes manifests a rather cruel sense of humor, such as tricking the cat-tongued Osaka into eating an extremely spicy croquette. Compared to most of her peers, Yomi uses more masculine Japanese speech patterns, especially when dealing with Tomo's antics. Yomi also has an uppercut that Tomo is usually on the receiving end of whenever she pushes Yomi too far. However, even though she likes to think that she is well above the immature behavior of some of her classmates, Yomi has demonstrated on certain occasions that she can be just as childish as the rest of the characters, such as trying to get Chiyo to infuse a shrine charm with some of her intelligence so that she could pass her college entrance exams.

Sakaki:

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Voiced by: Yū Asakawa (Japanese), Christine Auten (English)Sakaki ( Sakaki?) is a tall, soft-spoken girl uncomfortable with her height and busty physique. Because she is so shy, she seldom speaks, and her reticence is misinterpreted as being mysterious, or cool. This reputation has been compounded by the fact that most of the school's sports teams try to recruit her every year in the story because of her natural athletic ability (she's usually stronger and faster than most of the male students in school), but, for the most part, she has no real interest in sports. In contrast to what the other students think of her, Sakaki is in reality a very emotionally sensitive person who holds a secret longing for all things cute. She loves cats, but the neighborhood cats dislike her, and her parents do not allow cats in their house because of her mother's allergies. Sakaki ends up spending a lot of time with Chiyo upon finding out that Chiyo's dog, Mr. Tadakichi, will let her pet him. This friendship actually shows the irony of their circumstances, as Sakaki wishes she looked more like Chiyo (so she could openly pursue her interest in cute things) and Chiyo wishes that she looked more like Sakaki (so people will take her more seriously). Later in the series, Sakaki also befriends an Iriomote kitten that she meets on a side trip to Iriomote Island during a class trip to Okinawa. Later, the kitten loses its mother and proceeds to seek out Sakaki in Tokyo. Since Sakaki was in danger with the neighbor cat leader and the cat's kitty band, the kitten saves her and they soon become close friends.

Ayumu "Osaka" Kasuga:

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Voiced by: Yuki Matsuoka (Japanese), Kira Vincent-Davis (English)Ayumu "Osaka" Kasuga (春日 歩 Kasuga Ayumu?), commonly known as Osaka (大阪 Ōsaka?), is a transfer student from Osaka. Tomo, expecting her to act like the stereotypical Osakan (loud, exuberant and fond of bawdy jokes), quickly chose for her the nickname "Osaka", although Ayumu's behavior could not be more different from the "typical" Osakan. Ayumu considers her label "too simple" and "icky," but she lacks the energy or motivation to dispute it. Unlike the stereotypical Osakan, she seems slow and easily distracted, but she merely has a mind that works quite differently than most people. This makes her prone to daydreaming, absentmindedness, and non-sequiturs, but it also makes her unusually good at answering very specific types of riddles. She gets very bad grades at school as she sleeps through most of her classes, much to the irritation of her homeroom teacher, Yukari. She is also very bad at sports, being the worst in her class and possibly in the whole school. She is also easily amused by things that most people would consider bizarre. During the Sports Festival, she had made a big deal out of running the obstacle course because she thought the event of sticking her face in flour to get a piece of candy was funny and had a giggle fit when she got there. The manga also revealed that she actually likes to run outside and play in typhoons. Her unusual way of thinking gives her a very vivid imagination and a unique way of seeing the world.