Ask John: Why is Azumanga Daioh So Popular?

Question:
I fail to understand why so many people are such rabid fans of the anime Azumanga Daioh. I mean to me it just looks like a cheap clone of Lucky Star. So why all the popularity?

Answer:
I, personally, have difficulty comprehending anyone not falling in love with Azumanga Daioh; however, I can understand especially new anime fans perceiving AzuDai has a less impactful version of recent “cute girls doing nothing” anime like Lucky Star. The Azumanga Daioh anime excels at an assortment of characteristics. Its cast consists of a large variety of distinct personalities that compliment each other while never feeling disparate. Despite all of the girls having such different personalities, the viewer never has a sense that these girls don’t belong together or wouldn’t naturally congregate. Their diverse personalities also allow a large variety of viewers to empathize and choose their favorite girl to follow. The show’s humor is witty and subtle. It picks up on small, natural quirks that seem believable but just a bit more interesting than most people’s real daily lives. Then the series occasionally traverses into wild, delusional fantasy that’s briskly paced and highly amusing. Unlike the dream sequences of the Lucky Star OVA or GA Geijutsuka Art Design Class television series that feel a bit dry, the fantasy sequences of Azumanga Daioh are fanciful enough to be charming rather than dull. Like many cute-girls-doing-cute-things anime, the art design of Azumanga Daioh is attractive, and the character design is memorable and pretty. And like Lucky Star, K-On, and Manabi Straight, the musical score for AzuDai is fun, memorable, and very effective at enhancing the animation.

With the recent explosion of bishoujo slice of life anime including Manabi Straight, GA Geijutsuka Art Design Class, Lucky Star, K-On, Seitokai no Ichizon, and Sora no Woto, the 2002 Azumanga Daioh TV anime may be overshadowed and now seem even a bit quaint in comparison. But that status, in fact, may be precisely what benefits the show most. AzuDai is the progenitor of the modern bishoujo slice-of-life anime. The earlier To Heart and Boys Be anime may have exhibited some thematic and narrative similarity, but those shows were primarily romance anime in the vein of contemporary shows like Amagami SS. Azumanga Daioh is the series that introduced otaku to the present day slice-of-life bishoujo comedy, so for many fans first love remains a sweet memory. Furthermore, Azumanga Daioh is more accessible to typical anime viewers and a larger variety of anime viewers than its decendants, which refined their characteristics to a sharp focus aimed at very specific demographics. Later shows like Manabi Straight, GA, Seitokai no Ichizon, and Sora no Woto may be too stylized for specific niche audiences to gain a lot of mass appeal. Lucky Star is rife with otaku in-jokes, which certainly makes it appealing to hardcore otaku but may make it less accessible and appealing for viewers that find a show like AzuDai easier to understand, enjoy, and appreciate. K-On, possibly the most successful of Azumanga Daioh’s decendants, is widely accessible. However, the sense that it’s consciously trying to be cute and stylish and fun is more pronounced than it Azumanga Daioh, which feels effortlessly engaging.

Doubtlessly some loyalty lies in whichever show the fan first watched. Viewers introduced to Lucky Star may find Azumanga Daioh a less intensely concentrated stylistic sibling. Viewers that watched Azumanga Daioh in the years before Lucky Star and K-On burst onto the scene may appreciate the natural and effortless charm of the original, or find different appeal in the later incarnations of the concept. Regardless, the AzuDai anime does have enough technical merits of its own to justify its popularity irrespective of later, more popular retreads of the concept, including Lucky Star and K-On.