Azumanga Daioh

Azumanga Daioh is a manga that was written and illustrated by Kiyohiko Azuma, released in 1999. It was adapted into an anime, Azumanga Daioh: the Animation that was aired in 2002 in Japan. Azumanga Daioh is a comedy based on the lives of a group of high-school girls and their three years together as classmates.

The title of the series has no particular significance to the story. "Azumanga" is a portmanteau of "Azuma" (the name of the series' creator) and "manga", while "Daioh" comes from the magazine in which it was originally published, Dengeki Daioh. Daioh is mentioned at the end of episodes, during the next episode previews, used in context to mean "king," or "great king".

The Azumanga Daioh manga is short, totaling four volumes. Both the manga and the anime follow everyday Tokyo lifethrough a Japanese high school which is never explicitly named. The audience follows the trials and triumphs of six girls and two teachers make up the main cast alongside a few secondary characters, including a creepy male teacher with an abnormal obsession with teenage girls (Kimura-sensei), another girl (Kaorin) in the same grade who seems to have a crush on Sakaki (the most distant of the main characters) and a friend of hers with a relatively small role in the story (Chihiro). Sakaki's obsession with cute animals, Chiyo's struggle to fit in with an age group far above her own, Osaka's perspective on the world, Yomi's patience with a playful best friend, Tomo, whose energy is rivaled only by her total lack of sense, and Kagura's efforts towards sports, school, and her friends.

Amongst the students there is a variety of different personalities. Several of the girls have a fondness for horror stories. Tomo, Osaka and even Chiyo, who is easily scared, have told at one time or another; Osaka's method of telling a horror story is especially disturbing, since she tells stories about serial killers. Tomo's "The Terror of The Moldy Bread" is more science fiction than Osaka's stories. Oddly enough, what bewilders Chiyo is "dirty stories", of which Tomo seems particularly fond.

Azumanga Daioh spans three years in which accounts of tests, culture festivals and athletic events are seen at the school. After school life plays a role in the story at the nearby shopping district and Chiyo's large house. Chiyo's summer home on the coast, an hour-long drive from Tokyo and the nearby theme park, Magical Land, are seen as places visited between school terms.

Besides the anime adaptation, there were two other episodes released: The Very Short Azumanga Daioh Movie, a six minute trailer released to movie theatres to publicize the upcoming television series, and Azumanga Web Daioh, a pilot episode under four minutes in length that appeared on the official Japanese Azumanga Daioh website for a limited time. Azumanga Web Daioh was originally intended to gauge whether there was enough interest to warrant creating a web-released series version of the manga; overwhelming demand resulted in the decision to abandon the original web-release plan in favor of television release. As a pilot, it featured different voice actors and music from the regular series.