manga review: Azumanga Daioh. Ghaaa!

[slr2moons]

After doing the bare minimum of quota, I cut out early. I've been running on fumes for the past three days, and tonight I decided to call it quits as soon as I could. But I was too brain dead to work on the gift pic or the original manga I'm developing. So I decided to finish the manga I've been struggling through for the past two weeks. It's definitely been a struggle to read it. I even had to take two breaks and read something else b/c I couldn't take it any more. But now I'm done, and thank the manga no kami that it is over. UGH.

 

Azumanga Daioh, by Azuma Kiyohiko. The story of 6 girls and two of their female teachers as the girls progress through high school. I am so very very glad to have reached the end of vol 4 so I can toss all four books into the "trade me!" pile. With relish. And if vol 4 isn't the end and Azuma has done more volumes, I don't care. I'm NOT reading them.

I know that this manga was quite popular in Japan, enough so that they made an anime out of it pretty quickly. I also understand the anime was quite popular. But...I DO NOT GET IT. It isn't the short four panel strip format I don't like. And it isn't the stock storyline. No. It's the characters.

I read stories for engaging characters. Whether I love them or hate them doesn't matter. As long as they are interesting and engaging. But to be perfectly clear about one thing: I do not like stupid characters. They hold no appeal to me whatsoever, and I cannot see why other people might be so fond of them. And unfortunately for Azumanga Daioh...there are FOUR of them. FOUR stupid, moronic people who dominate the series, contribute nothing but cheap laughs, and take page time away from the four characters who ARE interesting and actually progress the story. Yes. This manga has 8 main characters, and half of them are stupid. To make things worse, one of them is a teacher. She is the most horrible of the lot, since not only is she stupid, she is also petty, selfish, and mean. This is a comedy series, but I do not find those things nor the characters' antics funny AT ALL. My irritation with the stupid characters finally reached the point that I skimmed any panel with them on it, only pausing to actually read if one of the four non-stupid characters made an appearance. (And amazingly, I never lost track of the story. Confirmation they didn't add anything to the plot?? Check.)

In an attempt to make this review not completely negative, here's what I DID like about the characters in the series: the first girl we meet, Sakaki, is not what you'd expect from a shounen comedy. She's very tall, quiet, kakkoi, self-possessed, and loves cats even though they don't love her. Then there's Yomi, a more outgoing girl with glasses who is constantly worried about her weight and is the most normal of the bunch. Notably of all 8 characters, Yomi receives just about the least amount of screen time. Which is unfortunate, since she's the most interesting of the lot. (One of the stupid girls, Kagura, receives the least page time. Though I suspect that's only b/c she is upgraded to being a main character half-way through the series. I suppose three stupid main characters weren't enough, thus her promotion. Ugh.)

Probably the most famous of the characters is Chiyo. Or at least, she's the one I've seen featured most prominently in ads for the anime. Chiyo is a child prodigy with the stereotypical pigtails, a 10 year old who enters high school in volume 1. She's sweet and kind and quite likable. But the poor thing almost always bears the brunt of the stupid characters' "funny" antics. She is probably the character with the highest page-time in the series, no doubt b/c of her cuteness and inevitable ensuing popularity. I don't mind Chiyo-chan, but she isn't very smart when it comes to avoiding the stupid characters. You'd think the first time their "funny" antics made her cry, she'd have learned something from it.

There are three notable things you won't find much of in Azumanga Daioh that make it rather unusual:

1. Male characters are nonexistent. The only even slightly regular male character is a perverted teacher with a chronic scary expression and an unhealthy addiction to buruma. The school is said to be co-ed but male students are apparently on the verge of being extinct. You can occasionally find one in the background, and sometimes they even SPEAK. Wow, imagine that. Boys can talk!!

2. Fanservice exists, but it's surpirsingly subtle and limited to tight shirts and swimsuits. No panty shots, no pesky gusts of wind under skirt, no shower scenes, no braless moments, no boob-grabbing to compare sizes. It's kind of refreshing to read a shounen series without all the fanservice. Or maybe I'm just jaded after slogging my way through all 14 volumes of Love Hina. *pained expression* That experience was so traumatic I couldn't even blog about it.

3. No romance. AT ALL. No love letters, no crushes, no dating, no marriage fantasies, not even any silent admiration from afar. Except for one minor girl's cute fixation on Sakaki. But we only get to see that four or five times out of the whole series. I suppose the lack of romance isn't surprising, since this IS a world with apparently 5% male population density, and even the perverted teacher is already married. (To someone beautiful and kind, of course. 'Cause it's predictable funny.) Not even the two female teachers (the good one and the stupid-mean one) ever have man woes. Like the fanservice, it's kind of nice to not have the standard boy obsessing going on, but...it isn't very realistic, is it? These are high school girls, after all. They should have boys and dating on the brain. Come on, the odds are at least ONE of them should. O.o

I think it's safe to say that Azumanga Daioh is not my cup of tea. In the slightest. I definitely will NOT be watching the anime. Now you might be wondering why I read all four volumes when I obviously didn't enjoy it. To explain, the reasons are b/c it's a short series at only four books, I wanted to see what happened with Sakaki and Yomi, and I had the vain, pointless hope that maybe one of the stupid characters would learn something and stop being stupid. (No such luck.)

Oh, and this is the first manga I've read that was released by ADV. Color pages are good! But...too much Americaniziation, though it slacks off as the series progresses. The in-bubble lettering is okay (better than Tokyopop, not nearly as good as Viz) but outside bubble lettering was just sad. *shakes head*  Can no one on the books' editings staff read Japanese??? O.o Where was the quality control?? Mmph. No real FX touchup to speak of. Without the original handy I can't offer any true opinion on the translation (aside from the obvious over-Americanization), but I can say this: at least ADV doesn't indulge in the rampant padding and improvising that Tokyopop utilizes in their translations, which is one of the reasons Tokyopop lettering always looks so terrible. They cram two or three sentences in a word bubble just big enough for three hiragana in Japanese. But that's a rant and review for a different post.)

Azumanga Daioh, by Azuma Kiyohiko. Read it if you want, but I'm not recommending it. :P Urgh. I think I'm going to go read something else to cleanse my manga sensibilities...