Home :: DVD :: Animation  

Anime & Manga
Comedy
Computer Animation
General
International
Kids & Family
Science Fiction
Stop-Motion & Clay Animation
Azumanga Daioh:Entrance

Azumanga Daioh:Entrance

List Price: $29.98
Your Price: $26.98
Product Info Reviews

<< 1 2 >>

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The funniest DVD I've ever watched!
Review: If there is anything that I can watch over and over again, and laugh every single time, this would certainly one of those things. The series Azumanga Daioh, taken off of the creator's name (Azuma), is about several high school girls in the home room class of Miss Yukari, who is more than a little unstable. You have a ditzy girl, a quiet girl, a hyper girl, a girl who is worried too much about her weight, and a very cute polite 10 girl who is smarter than everyone else and is filthy rich. Now you have some of the funniest events in the 3 years of highschool you'll ever see. Yes, 3 years of highschool. (Small Japanese culture note) In Japan Elementary school goes up to grade 6, middle school goes from 7 to 9 and highschool from 10 to 12.

Azumanga Daioh gets *****/***** for the simple fact that I can't put **********/**.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Beast who cannot be named...is sooooo cute!
Review: No one, and I mean no entity in all the planes of existence, does cartoon insanity the way our friends in Nippon do cartoon insanity.
I have friends who generaly prefer mixes of the bizare and childlike...and they ended up as puddles.
Buy this demonically cute and singularly surreal work, buy it and be afraid to say 'what the HELL!' for fear that HELL may actually have something to do with it.

And trust me
you'll want to say:

WHAT.
THE.
HELL?!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Osaka Rules!!!
Review: Now this is a very, very, very enjoyable series. I've seen the whole thing in japanese and I can't wait for this to come out. The basic story revolves around these crazy highschool girls, each one with their own eccentric personality (my personal fav Osaka!). There isn't much drama, no crazy actions scenes, and no romance stuff, just really funny and extremely cute. It reminds me of the Sunday Funnies, in 30 min segments and a whole lot funnier.

When I first started to watch I was expecting some generic plot, and started to get confused. I asked myself "what's the point of this cartoon?". Well before I knew it, I fell in love with the characters, and couldn't stop watchin'. So what exactly does a day with the Azumanga Girls involve? Well it could be anythin' from classroom hijinks, fierce competition in the school athletic festival and culture festival, a day at the beach house, or just hangin' out at Chiyo-chan's mansion, it's all in great fun!

This series is great for any age group, and for anyone. This is definitely a one of a kind cartoon, I know I've never seen anythin' like it. Five stars indeed!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Simply the Best - Sakaki Roxx !
Review: Sometimes life itself can tell the greatest stories - And so does Azumanga Daioh. From the first episode on I fell in love with the series, showing the every day lives of 6 school girls (and their teachers), Chiyo chan, Osaka, Sakaki, Tomo, Yomi and Kagura. Azumanga is the best example that an anime doesn't need to have an overcomplicated plot or mega-action... Daily situations,funny reactions and mimics and especially the girls's unique charachteristics give the anime a huge amount of spice, fun and humour.

There is Chiyo chan, a 10 year old genious girl who cares for her friends by inviting them to her (summer)house, but due to her age and small stature she sometimes suffers from that handicap ( for example in P.E.). It is indeed difficult for her to be among others who are 6 years older than her, but apart from that she is really cute and everyone likes her.

Osaka, the clumsy and sometimes slow girl is one of my favourites. Azumanga Daioh shows also that funny dialogues can be very dominant in the series - Osaka's quotes are just stunning.

Tomo - Who always hypervantilates on almost everything, she wants to be in the center, by yelling, jumping, shouting and making rude jokes, sometimes really hurting ones.

Her closest friend seems to be Yumi, a calmer person who always tries to loose some weight, but she is ashamed and doesn't tell anybody. She is the one who yells at Tomo to stop being stupid. Yomi and Tomo have a love-hatred relationship.

Kagura is also quick tempered but not as intensively as Tomo. She spends her free time by jogging or swimming and sees a sports rival in Sakaki.

And last but not least there is my ultimate favourite character : Sakaki. The tall,shy and quiet girl, who is very good at sports loves animals (cats especially) and always gets "weak" when she sees one. This combination of a calm personlity and endless passion has captured my heart and I was also always touched when there was a scene with Sakaki becoming "weak" when she saw a cat.

There are also the teachers, Yukari sensei and Nyamo, and don't forget Kimura sensei, the pervert teacher who has a (clumsy) wife, but apart from that he loves watching girls in swim suits and tries to impress the poor Kaorin, aaahh don't miss Kaorin!

Music and animation are great. Watch out for the piccolo and the octave flutes which are to find in almost every music track in the series. I have all soundtracks, I just love them. The tracks are inspiring, they carry the cuteness and the feelings just perfectly.

To put it in a nutshell: I highly recommend Azumanga Daioh. You'll make a very cute and wonderful experience you'll probably never forget. One of the best animes I have ever seen.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Need Something Fun? Here's Your Ticket
Review: The plot of Azumanga Daioh has already been summarized numerous times on this page, so for our purposes let's say "Azumanga Daioh is about a cadre of high school girls and their day-to-day travails."

With that in mind, understand that Azumanga is not a deep anime. It will not provoke your thoughts, nor lead you to ponder the deeper meaning of life. However, provided the proper mindset, what it will do is draw you into its simple world where the most ordinary problems (the hiccups, the appearance of a new "rival") can be the most challenging, and everything is fair game for absurd comedy.

As several reviewers mention, Azumanga has no sustained plot line per se, even each individual episode goes through several smaller events which are not necessarily connected. But this need not be a weakness; instead, it allows the show to be flexible and decide what it wants to do next irrespective of what has gone before. The jokes range from overt slapstick humor to bizarre extended word-plays, and if you watch the series long enough (the first disc has a relatively generous five episodes) you're likely to find at least one or two gags that will make you smile.

I was a little disappointed to find that the show does not offer much in the way of new material to those who have read the manga (released in English by ADV Manga), and if you already know the girls' adventures from their print form, the main draw here will be the clean, bright animation and the excellent acting from the Japanese cast. (The English dub? Well, it's not awful, but how much it agrees with you will probably depend on your tolerance for dubs whose overall quality fluctuates throughout.)

Azumanga Daioh is surely worthy of the attentions of an anime fan at least for one disc, and even moreso if you happen to enjoy comedy. It won't awe you with its insights, but it will delight you with its simple, innocent sense of fun.

~

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Finally! Anime about the triumphs of high school!!
Review: This anime pretty much follows the comic book - a series of short stories, everyday events, within a Japanese school. We follow the daily lives of a group of female students - Chiyo, the cute one, Osaka, the girl from Osaka, Yomi, the girl with glasses, Kaorin, who has a crush on Sakaki. Sakaki is the tall, cool, well developed girl, while Tomo is the loud girl and Chihiro...is a girl who they didn't bother to name until later in the manga but they needed more girls in the background to fill in the seats. Ha!
They worry about everything, from breast size, dodging volleyballs, to what to do on summer break, just like in the books. It is for 13 and up, but I think it has more cussing and drinking than the manga. With five episodes, cool extras and a 12 page booklet with translator notes and staff comments, the DVD itself is a great buy.
Just a warning - it might be TOO cute. Stars the voices of such greats as Kira Vincent Davis, Monica Rial and Tiffany Grant.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Hillarious
Review: Very funny, fast paced anime. Sometimes I was laughing so much I missed the following scene altogether. The show is character driven, so each episode can be considered an independent unit. This is an anime about nothing in the same way Seinfeld was a sit-com about nothing. Enjoy.^_-

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: OMG is this funny!
Review: Volume 1 of Azumanga Daioh was worth the wait - if there's one series to pick up this year, get this one. It's that good. The Amazon reviewer clearly doesn't "get it" - maybe he was as clueless as Ayumu Kasuga.

The Japanese cast is outstanding, with the voice actresses stretching the limits of their usual typecastings (especially so for Ms. Matsuoka as the wifty Kansai-jin Oosaka and Ms. Kuwashima as the dense-as-plutonium girl jock Kagura). Haven't heard the dubbed version yet. It should be noted, however, that a Kansai-accent is an URBAN one. Southern white trash dialogue does not cut it.

Notable highlights include the volleyball game in volume 2; Oosaka's run-in with hiccups; Yukari squatting at Nyamo's; and the locker room scene at the pool (where Sakaki is classified as an "American").

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: OMG is this funny!
Review: Volume 1 of Azumanga Daioh was worth the wait - if there's one series to pick up this year, get this one. It's that good. The Amazon reviewer clearly doesn't "get it" - maybe he was as clueless as Ayumu Kasuga.

The Japanese cast is outstanding, with the voice actresses stretching the limits of their usual typecastings (especially so for Ms. Matsuoka as the wifty Kansai-jin Oosaka and Ms. Kuwashima as the dense-as-plutonium girl jock Kagura). Haven't heard the dubbed version yet. It should be noted, however, that a Kansai-accent is an URBAN one. Southern white trash dialogue does not cut it.

Notable highlights include the volleyball game in volume 2; Oosaka's run-in with hiccups; Yukari squatting at Nyamo's; and the locker room scene at the pool (where Sakaki is classified as an "American").


<< 1 2 >>

© 2004, ReviewFocus or its affiliates