Azumanga Daioh
Kiyohiko Azuma's Azumanga Daioh is a Japanese comedic manga. It was serialized in the shnen manga magazine Dengeki Daioh by MediaWorks from 1999 to 2002 and compiled in four bound volumes. In May 2009, to commemorate the manga's tenth anniversary, three new chapters were published in Shogakukan's Monthly Shnen Sunday under the title Azumanga Daioh: Supplementary Lessons. The manga is produced as a series of vertical four-panel comic strips called yonkoma and depicts the lives of a group of high school students over the course of three years. The book has been hailed for its unusual characters' witty humor, and Kiyohiko Azuma has been dubbed a "master of the four-panel form" for his art style and comic timing. It was converted into an anime television series by J.C.Staff called Azumanga Daioh: the Animation, which ran from April 8, 2002 to September 30, 2002. It was broadcast in five-minute chunks on the TV Tokyo network and AT-X every weekday, then repeated as a 25-minute compilation that weekend, for a total of 130 five-minute segments compiled in 26 episodes. Starchild Records released the compilation episodes on DVD and Universal Media Discs; the five-minute portions are identified by their own names. Several soundtrack CDs, as well as three Azumanga Daioh video games, were released.
Released: 2002-04-08