Sleep Is For the Weak

First of all, despite it looking like a shoujo (all the school uniforms and whatnot), Azumanga isn’t a shoujo. Most of the shoujo that I’ve seen (or in the case of Fushigi Yuugi, been forcibly subjected to) contain a plot involving romantic entanglement of some sort. Azumanga has nothing but a one-sided schoolgirl crush between two of the students, but that has as much impact on the show as Smither’s love of Mr. Burns on The Simpsons. Azumanga is technically a seinen, aka a manga for boys aged 18-25, and is largely tied to the voyeuristic but non-romantic “moé” love of adult men for adorable girls. Now that that’s explained, I will never utter that poisonous word again.

Now, I think I’m a pretty mellow guy–I’m the human embodiment of Zen (except for that humility thing), and I have the song “Yellow Mellow” on my computer. But if anything, the Azumanga anime is too mellow even for me. Before I harp on Azumanga’s repetitive jokes, I think that its slowness is a good thing. As a guy, I mostly watch action anime, where anything below 30 frames a second of full-intensity animation is seen as a direct insult to the viewer and requires para-military style retaliation against the director and his family. But Azumanga is different–it has no problem with having a 5-minute bit of Osaka dreaming about Chiyo-chan flying by means of her pig-tails across the screen, over and over again, saying each time “I’m 12 years old!” Of course, while this is funny the first time, it drags on when used repeatedly. There are plenty of times when it seemed like the animators were bored and decided to spend 2 minutes having the characters say the same word over and over again. I suggest buying the DVDs (put out by ADV) which, I assume, have a chapter skip function.

Structurally, each episode is divided into three or four loosely connected segments. A typical episode takes place mostly in the girls’ classroom, with a few sojourns to the outside world and a field trip to Okinawa. This allows for a minor theme, like the hic-ups, to propagate through three untreated story lines. This matches up with the original manga’s basic format (explained below) and works out quite well.

The show is fantastic animation-wise. Everything is crisp, clean, and bright. While some animation is re-used (such as the above flying Chiyo example), I think this is one of the better-looking shows that I’ve ever seen. For once it’s nice to see more attention put into the design of a girl’s dress than how much her breasts jiggle.

Manga

I hesitate to use the word “manga” here. The word manga conjures up the image of a traditional comic, with a story spread over multiple boxes and consecutive pages. Azumanga, written by Kiyohiko Azuma and the flagship product of ADV’s new manga division, is more of a traditional newspaper comic than a dime store one. Think Garfield rather than Jughead (except, you know, funny).

Azumanga is made up of four-panel jokes, each with a build-up in the first three panels and a punchline in the last. While some stories transverse a few strips, none more than a dozen on the same topic, there are just as many one-strip ones. The humor is exactly as it is in the anime–random jokes based around absurdity and the girls’ personalities. While the drawing is fine, it’s nothing compared to the anime; one only has to read Bill Waterson’s diatribes on the state of newspaper comic art to realize that drawing in four 2 by 2 inch panels is not the easiest thing in the world. At the end of each volume of the manga, however, there are 3 or 4 pages of traditional comics that show that the manga-ka knows his stuff.

I have to take issue with ADV’s translation, however. I’m not usually one to quibble over translator semantics, but they chose to translate Osaka’s Osaka accent into a Brooklyn one rather than the more traditional Southern accent. As Osaka is Japan’s south, filled with southern styles such as weird fried foods, hot weather, and Ted Turner, it usually makes sense to translate it into a southern drawl as ADV did with Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi. This isn’t a huge issue, but it’s still one that struck me, and I know I’m not the only one in the fan community who’s brought this up. But regardless, I love this manga; it’s one of the funniest things I’ve read in awhile and I highly recommend it.

Fandom

There’s not much fandom for Azumanga, but there’s a reason for that–I have liquidated my vast, vast fortune to setup a squad of assassins (they call themselves the Deadly Viper Fist of the 5 Valleys of Ice) trained to kill anyone who would write a dirty Azumanga fanfic or doujinshi. Much like the assassins of White Cross, except that they are real men and not flower boys, these murderous entities forever search the web to find those sick people who write horrifying slash stories and kill them in a variety of ironic ways. My favorite one involves mashed potatoes; I’ll let you fill in the details.

Anyways, there are still a few gems out there in Azumanga’s weeded-out fandom. Great King Shezotaku has a very complete episode guide and a great FAQ that includes a few things I didn’t tell you about. It’s not that I don’t think these things are important, it’s just that every time I have to type the words “Vibrating Plushy” I die a little on the inside. Wonderland is also a hefty and informative place, and if you want to check out the 40-odd fanfics who passed my sniping team’s rigorous requirements, visit the always great fanfiction.net.

Overview: Azumanga is the best school comedy around. You should be watching it, if only for the two very different kinds of cats…oh, and for the opening lyrics which include such memorable phrases as “the temptation of wheat.” 4 out of 5 Stars.

Lianne: The anime has one minute of very funny humor for every four minutes of Osaka staring blankly into space, so it could’ve used some work. The manga, however, is excellent. I’d average it out to 4 stars as well.