Right On Time, Talking About Something I Revisited

I was rewatching Azumanga Daioh a few weeks ago, because I hadn't in 3 or 4 years. It's still one of my favorite series, even though a decent chunk of its jokes don't land for me. Some of them are a lack of understanding on my part, the joke being a cultural reference I don't get. Some of them have a cadence that doesn't work. There are frequent jokes where the punchline seems to be an extremely drawn out silence, or someone (usually Osaka) repeating a phrase they'd just said while another character looks on incredulously. Which seems like it could be funny, but it usually doesn't work. Maybe it's a culture gap, too. There were also a couple of bits I realized probably wouldn't work now, like where they debate what a panda looks like, and they don't have smartphones to look this up on, since I think the time when this series was taking place is roughly contemporary with my years in high school. I'm going to try not to think too hard about that.


I read a description of the series once on TV Tropes that it tends to focus too heavily on Sakaki. Which is true in the sense that she does get a lot of time front and center. I tend to like her character, so I don't mind that, so I can't really say if she dominates the series. I think Sakaki gets the majority of the long-running plot threads (Tomo and Osaka are around a lot, but more in the brief joke scenes), with her love of cute animals, which runs smack up against the fact almost all cats seem to hate her. Also her own apparent discomfort with herself. She's very focused on the fact she's not "cute", and this is something she very much wants to be. Everyone else in the school thinks she's a really cool "lone wolf", but she's mostly just shy and awkward. I'm not terribly surprised she got more screen time than some of the other characters, given that.

There's also what I'd call a fair amount of fan service involving her, since she's a bit more developed than most of her classmates. Which is especially awkward, considering how uncomfortable she's presented as being every time someone makes a comment or reference to the size of her chest. She isn't even particularly comfortable when it's pointed out how tall she is, probably because it makes her feel even farther away from her conception of cute (which child genius Chiyo pretty much exemplifies). Then you throw Mr. Kimura in there, and that makes it even more awkward to watch.

Kimura is that kind of stock, "creepy older guy" character that a fair number of animes have. The first time we see him, one of his students asked why he became a teacher, and he loudly proclaims, 'BECAUSE I LIKE HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS!' Which sets the tone of him behaving entirely inappropriately around female students and other teachers. There are a couple of sequences where we see him doing nice things outside school, or the girls meet his kind, if absent-minded, wife, and she tells them what she likes about him, which almost seems like the series is chiding us for judging him on being a creepy pervert. But then it usually deliberately undoes that by having him do something which reaffirms him being creepy.

So I'm not sure what was being driven at there. If it's strictly that the creators think it's funny, and that's it. Or if I'm meant to think that when his wife says she thinks he's cool, but in a way that isn't entirely in fashion these days, that all these weird comments and actions are really him trying to be funny, or hip, and he's just incredibly bad at it. That happens a few times, where he seems to be trying to be funny, and instead is shown to be scaring the hell out of people. But you'd think at some point he'd pick up on the fact he was getting a poor response. Or that the series is poking fun at the part of the audience that also likes high school girls, telling them, "even if you are actually a nice fellow, this is what you're like." But that brings us back around to the sexualizing of Sakaki by the same creators that would be making fun, so ooo. They wouldn't be the first to try eating their cake and having it too, but either way, it ends up making for a lot of scenes that are really awkward.

All that said, there's still quite a bit I enjoy about the series. The friendships we see in particular, both the ones that develop over the course of the series, like Sakaki and Chiyo, and the ones that were already in place that we see the rhythms they have, such as Tomo and Yomi, or Yukari and Nyamo. Even the attempt by Kagura to strike up a friendship with Sakaki, which is always kind of awkward because they share basically no interests, is interesting to me precisely because of how it sputters and stumbles along. The episode where Tomo, Osaka, and Kagura try teaming up to study for finals as The Knuckleheads makes me laugh. The Culture Festival and Sports Fest episodes that come around more than once will reuse certain jokes, but with a different slant, or approached from a different angle, so it ends up working well. The final relay race is one of my favorite bits in the whole series.

For all the jokes or bits that fall flat with me, there are plenty that make me laugh, or at least chuckle. Chiyo getting frustrated and acting more like the child she is, rather than she typically collected prodigy they usually depict her as, always works, precisely because they don't go to that well too often. Chiyo's reaction to Tomo's impression of her, or Chiyo's irritation at being a second-year student getting cooed over by a bunch of first-year students, are the two that leap to mind.

The Language Hoops They Jump Through

Rewatching Azumanga Daioh again this week, partly for kicks, partly to study it some more. This time, though, I'm watching it in English. The previous two times I watched it in Japanese with the subtitles. The first time there wasn't an option, since it was a fan-subtitled version of the episode in Japanese, and the second time, well, I was used to watching it in Japanese*.

One of the things I wanted to see was how the English voice actors would handle the characters interacting with foreigners. See, the girls are high school students in Japan, and one of their classes is English, so there are a few occasions where they meet someone they have to try and speak English to, because that person doesn't speak Japanese. And because they've been speaking Japanese so smoothly up until then, they struggle to find the right words in English feels believable. But if the characters are already speaking English easily, you can't have them meet someone else who speaks English and have them suddenly not know how to say something.

The answer was to change the language the foreigners speak, which I suppose is obvious. Interestingly, they seem to use a little of all sorts of European languages. When Kagura sees a guy struggling to carry his heavy luggage, she tries to communicate with comments like "Helpo with your luggage-o", and I know she switched to German at one point because I heard her say "helfen".

The other thing they did was change Yukari from strictly an English teacher to a 'language expert'. It's kind of funny, because part of me thinks they could have just flipped it, and had the "foreigners" speak Japanese, and the English voice actors could appear to struggle with that, mirroring the Japanese voice actors "difficulties" with English. But I guess the problem would be that even though the characters would be speaking English, we'd know they were Japanese and fluent in Japanese, so the idea they couldn't speak that, even though we hadn't heard them do so throughout the series, wouldn't wash. Thus, they have to struggle with Spanish or Italian.

The other thing I found interesting is that Osaka, in the English version, has a distinct Texas accent, which sounds very different from all the other characters. It makes me wonder how different an Osakan accent is from a Tokyo one, since I couldn't tell a distinct difference when watching the Japanese version. Also, it amuses me that they decided to equate Osaka with Texas. I guess it makes sense, as the students describe Osakans as being brash, loud, enjoying spicy food, and not shy about breaking rules (with the joke being "Osaka" is none of those things).

* Typically, whatever version I watch first, that's what I prefer to stick with. So Japanese for Excel Saga and Scryed, English for stuff like Trigun.

I'm Never Quite Sure What Will Entertain Me

I have a few wallpapers I could have picked to lead the post with, but I went with this one because a) it makes me laugh, and b) I actually know where I found it, so I can properly credit its creator (my old IBook was always very good about recording the web address I saved an image from, but I've not figured out how to get my PC to divulge such information). So, the wallpaper comes from Desktop Anime, for the record.

A month ago I picked up a box set of Azumanga Daioh, as I enjoyed it when I watched fan subtitled episodes years ago, and I figured I ought to get around to actually paying some money for some DVDs. I've spent some of my evenings this week watching it again, and I wanted to start laying out some thoughts on it.

The series is based on the comic by Kiyohiko Azuma, who went on to create the comic Yotsuba!, which I've seen receive some fine reviews around the old comics blogowhatchamafloogle. I haven't seen nearly as much about Azumanga Daioh, though whether that's because I'm not looking in the right place, because it's an older work and so most discussion of it passed a couple of years ago, or because it just wasn't as good and so didn't garner as much attention, I don't know. Some of the reviews I've read about Yotsuba! have lead me to think it might be the third one, as I know Chris Sims read that first, then went back and tried AD and didn't quite dig it as much. I haven't read Yotsuba!*, so I can't compare the two qualitatively.

Azumanga Daioh is unique amongst animes I've actually watched all the way through, due to its complete lack of sword fighting, shooting, giant robots, people screaming while they power up in impressive colors, or anything like that. It's mostly a comedy, so its closest comp amongst series I watch is probably Excel Saga, but that series is considerably more, insane? Unfocused (intentionally, I think)? AD follows six girls (and a couple of their teachers) as they progress through their first, second, and third years of high school up to graduation.

The series starts by introducing us to Chiyo, who is 10-year old prodigy who was bumped up to high school. Chiyo is smart, cheerful, polite, a little naive, and frequently cute to an extent I'd expect someone to harness that cuteness as a weapon**. It could destroy civilizations***. She reminds me a little of myself at that age (though I wasn't bright enough to skip the 5th-9th grades) in that she's terrified of letting down or disobeying her teachers (forgetting to finish homework causes her to nearly break into tears). Chiyo's friendly nature means that she serves as the facilitator for many of the characters to start hanging out together, since she makes friends with Sakaki, the quiet loner that everyone is too impressed/intimidated by to approach, and Ayumu Kasuga, who just transferred in from Osaka (and is thus slapped with that for a nickname), and has to deal with being the new kid in school (plus she's a bit of a space case). So the group gradually forms around her, and things proceed from there.

Azuma takes advantage of the repetitive nature of life in school to use certain events as the basis for multiple episodes. So there are two episodes based on the annual culture festival, three on the similarly annual sports fest, and three about the group taking trips to Chiyo's summer home over their vacation. I think that's actually a good idea, because there are certain episodes that I feel lack any sort of connecting thread. Those seem to be more of a loose collection of short stories, grouped into a single episode. Which also works, they're usually amusing, but wouldn't work if you tried to stretch them over the length of an entire episode. The episodes with a common thread will also jump a bit, but they do have a greater sense of interconnectivity. So the series can change its pacing from episode to episode, which can keep things feeling a bit fresher.

OK, the humor. I remember that Sims, while discussing the manga, said that jokes had a tendency to hang there unfinished, as though there was no punchline. I think a discussion started up in the comments about whether this was a case of Sims not understanding Japanese humor, which I take it is not identical to American humor, but I don't know if any conclusions were reached. There are times watching where I'm left befuddled as to why characters react as they do, but the series delivers enough broad physical humor (usually in the form of hyperactive Tomo doing something over-the-top), or bizarre non-sequiters (that'd be Osaka's department) that I still find myself laughing quite a bit. Really, all the characters at times behave in either a silly enough, or angry enough fashion to provide some hilarity.

More serious moments occur occasionally, especially near the end, when the kids start realizing that once they graduate, they're all going their separate ways****. I know that bit hit me hard the first time I watched it, since I had just recently finished college, and figured if it went anything like high school, I was going to lose track of pretty much all the friends I'd made, which was not an uplifting thought. The fact that hasn't happened sort of muted the effect during the most recent viewing, but I can still recall feeling the same way once upon a time. The series doesn't do that often, though, and when it does, there's usually a point about focusing on what you gained from those times, not what you might lose as you go forward. Also a bit about not wasting time with regrets, though I think that's more prevalent with episodes that focus on the teachers, because they're farther along in life, and have more decisons to look back on.

I know that was a little scattershot, but I wanted to say something about the series, and the more intensive posts I've been considering were going to take too long to put together. They're somewhere in the recesses of my mind, so I'll dig them out, and get them polished up. Not sure when.

* I haven't actually read Azumanga Daioh either, only watched the anime, and I don't know how much the anime may have diverged from the comic. I read online that Kaorin had a much expanded role in the anime, and I think Mr. Kimura may have been more disturbing in the manga, though I kind of hope not. He was strange enough.

** Tragically, the practical applications of the cuteness as an energy source would be ignored. Until it was too late, of course.

*** Hmm, where is the Lantern Corps harnessing the devastating power of cuteness? Surely not all cats are acid blood spewing beasties?

**** Also, oddly enough, at the end of the first culture festival episode, when a few of the students have a 'victory parade'. The music includes what sounds to me like a kazoo, and the scene is always a bummer. I think it's due to the fact they really enjoyed the culture fest, and are trying hard to hold onto it, but they know tomorrow they'll be back to the usual grind at school. Time marches on.