Azumanga Daioh 24-26 + Final Thoughts
Sakaki finally wins out in the end! Closing out just after graduation was a good place to end things, and Wakamoto's English skills are beyond legendary. The show was cute, funny, and a lot of its jokes still hold up today. Maybe the one with Osaka comparing Chiyo's dad to a prime minister doesn't, but wordplay and goofy character interactions are universal. I can actually see a lot of what makes Nichijou its truest successor, but shows like Pani Poni Dash and Hidamari Sketch also inherit not just its humor, but also its more serious moments. Stuff like going to college and Sakaki's cat worries, even if interspersed with jokes, were treated with respect by the material.
I still don't see why Lucky Star and K-ON! and everything that came after them had to become punching bags. The level of cuteness:humor may have been different, or perhaps it was a different type of humor, but the DNA they share is pretty similar, even if they take it in very different directions. For example, some of Cocoa's wild imagination moments in GochiUsa are comparable to Osaka's, and the reaction Chiyo gets still echoes in how Alice was treated in Kinmoza, while Yuyushiki captures the offbeat humor. Its DNA spread in all sorts of different directions.
Yet even when something like Yuyushiki is well liked, it's never respected on the same level as Azumanga is. And that's sad. People can name more than one good mecha show, more than one good action show, more than one good magical girl show even, but when it comes to the daily life genre, Azumanga stands alone... and that's bad. It needs friends, other contemporaries. The anime macrofandom needs to not say "the best since Azumanga", but "the best alongside Azumanga."
Because putting it on a pedestal actually downplays just how much influence it had. I liked what I saw, and I feel like I'm up to date on an important part of anime history (as well as the source of several fandom memes). It's a really good, cute show. One of many, each tackling the material in a new and interesting way.
Do Sakaki's legacy proud. I also love the OP and ED, the former for its nonsensical lyrics and the former for its weirdly ephemeral imagery. Knowing it was aired over the course of a week as five shorts also reveals just how far anime scheduling has come. Shorts still exist, and have always existed, but now half-hour TV shows are more numerous than ever.
I wish I were a bird.
As much as I like tackling well-known anime for my backlog, I like tackling obscurities and curios even more. Which is why I'm watching Code-E and Mission-E next.
