Rating: 
Summary: Disappointingly mishandled
Review: Having seen rudimentary translations of the anime and manga of this series, I was excited to hear that ADV would be releasing both the anime and manga. Unfortunately, the manga is marred by "Americanizations" that change the humor and in a few cases completely change the original intent. I won't bore you with technical details, but some examples: the character "Osaka" is given a Brooklyn accent, English teachers become Spanish teachers, foods are given different names and a few jokes dealing with Japanese culture are completely rewritten, changing the meaning entirely.
The question is why does ADV bother to print the manga from right to left and display Japanese sound effects if they are going to make so many drastic changes?
Luckilly, there is some hope. The second half of this volume is closer to the original intent and meaning, leaving me to hope that the subsequent volumes will be of this quality.
Rating: 
Summary: Simply Hillarious! For any otaku with half a funnybone!
Review: I must admit that I was a bit skeptical when I first picked up this title, but a fellow otaku assured me that it was pretty funny, and so I decided to give it a whirl. And now, I'm grateful that I did, because this is hands-down, one of the funniest manga I've ever read since Love Hina! It follows the daily lives of several high school girls, and is told in comic strip panel format. Each ot the characters has their own set of ... ::ahem:: "interesting" personalities, and so there's a favorite for everyone: from the absoulutely ADORABLE 10-year old prodigy, Chiyo-chan, to Sakaki, the mature, tough girl, with a soft spot for cute (and psychotic) animals. The closest manga series I can compare it to would be Love Hina, although this is in no way a romantic comedy. Still, it retains the same frenetic level of insanity, although on a smaller scale. Bottom line: it's just pure, mindless comedy, and IMHO, will tickle the funnybone of even the most jaded otaku. Sure, a few of the jokes and the situations have been "americanized," and as unfortunate as this is, it doesn't occur very often. But for a good laugh and an overall good feeling, this is the manga to buy! It would've given it a 5-star rating, but unfortunately, ADV seems to have rushed its release, and has offered very little to no information about it on the back cover. Still, the cute and attractive art, and insane humor are a wonderful combination, and makes it a perfect next manga to get, or for the neophyte, a great first manga. I can't wait for the anime to be released next year, and after reading the manga, any otaku will be waiting with just as much impatience!
Rating: 
Summary: Like a drug
Review: I picked up the first volume out of curiosity, because I'd heard about it somewhere. I thought I might read it when I went away to Baltimore for a couple of weeks. Of course, walking out of the store, I started reading the first few pages...By the end of the week, I had bought and read _all four volumes_, and then went through a period of severe withdrawal.Azumanga is almost supernaturally cute, funny and human; the characters are sharply drawn but avoid obvious stereotypes; the art is crisp and perfectly evocative. Surely Osaka is among the finest characters ever inked or written. The one things which seems strange, though, and sort of funny, is the suspicious lack of any romantic involvement on the part of any character through four years of high school.
Rating:
Summary: Good Stuff
Review: I've heard Azumanga Daioh described as a Japanese Calvin & Hobbes, a very analogy. Some of the most hysterical fun can be found in the most ordinary events. Buy it. Now. I can't quite give this book five stars due to the Americanization. (The Brooklyn accent for Osaka is appropriate, but most of the other changes were not.) Fortunately, It doesn't affect too many strips. Further, there's less of it in book two, and by volumes three and four, any alterations are carefully explained in the copious translator notes. So at least ADV figured out what the fans want eventually.
Rating:
Summary: Azumanga the Great
Review: Oh, Azumanga Daiou. Where to begin? How about the plot? Plot? I didn't notice. Azumanga is a story about absolutely nothing that manages to be about absolutely everything under the sun. Get it? How do I describe the humor? Can't. Too hard. Words probably can't describe this series. Maybe they can. So what have we learned? Azumanga Daiou is about nothing and everything and you can't describe the series with adjectives very well. And it's about seven girls and their three teachers. A story about nothing and everything, can't describe with adjectives, and about students and teachers. Particularly odd students and teachers. First up, Osaka: An odd transfer student from Osaka, real name Ayumu Kasuga, but got the nickname Osaka due to her origins. She's extremely odd, crazy, isn't the best student, and deserves an award for her delicate and elegant breaking of chopsticks. Then there's Sakaki: A beautiful high school girl who's body seems to have matured quite a bit faster then everybody else. She plays it cool and never lets her inner emotions show. Well, sometimes. So what are her inner emotions? She's extremely shy about her body, and has an extreme passion for cute things, especially cats. It's too bad every cat she meets (except one) bites her every time she tries to pet them. Then, there's Tomoko Takino: Tomo, Tomo, Tomo...Ugh, Tomo, Tomo, Tomo...the most psychotic and nutty person you can ever hope to meet, but I highly doubt you want to meet her. She has a habit of hitting Chiyo-chan, and competes with Chiyo at tests and with Sakaki at sports (of course, trying isn't winning). The only test she ever beat Chiyo at was a health test that she spent all night studying for, and of course, didn't study at all for the harder, more important test that day. Speaking of Chiyo...Chiyo Mihama: A child genius, started going to high school at age ten, and is still smarter than all of her classmates. She's rich, cute, and has pigtails that scare the hell out of Osaka. Then there's Koyomi Mizuhara: Possibly the sanest of the group, though she does worry a bit too much about her body (which looks fine to me). She and Tomo have been friends since they were kids, and there's nobody better to keep Tomo from going completely insane. There's also Kagura: Self-proclaimed rival to Sakaki, if anyone can beat Sakaki at sports, it's her (though she can't). At times almost equally as crazy and competitive as Tomo, Kagura finishes off the main band of girls with a sharp edge. And finishing off the students, the less-important, appears-every-now-and-then, Kaorin: Kaorin, the cute girl with a mad crush on Sakaki, easily gets jealous, which can cause her to be driven to the point of acting like a rabid dog. And, starting off the teachers, it's Yukari Tanazaki: The least liked teacher at the school, our girls homeroom and English teacher, she gets drunk on a daily basis, has been tardy more than her students, is lazier than a sloth, and she's cheap to boot. Then there's Minamo Kurosawa (Nyamo): The physical education teacher, Ms. Kurosawa seems like the perfect teacher; kids like her, teachers like her, and so on, but through personal visits we can see she might have a rather embarrassing past. Rounding off our cast, it's Mr. Kimura: The perverted classics teacher, he always tries to involve himself in things that are none of his business in order to see some of his pretty students in a way that could give him a bloody nose. So, clearly Azumanga Daiou is one of the funniest mangas you'll ever read, and there's no reason not to love every second of it. My only problem is that ADV has catagorized it as comedy/action. Action? No. I wouldn't consider Tomo punching people action. So anyway, this manga is for anyone with a sence of humor and whose taste is not for action or a deep plot, but rather for anything that's good, since I highly doubt you have a taste for sstuff like Azumanga Daiou, because there's nothing else like it. Also, some reviewer said it was like Love Hina...please, ignore that review. It's nothing like Love Hina. I mean, Azumanga Daiou's a comedy, and the two mangas have a completely different sence of humor! Personally i don't think you can compare Azumanga Daiou to any other series, manga or not. Just because a manga's funny doesn't make it an Azumanga (and I personally don't find Love Hina that funny).
Rating:
Summary: Very Funny!
Review: One day, I was surfing the net and somehow stumbled across an image of a little girl in a red school uniform who had, in my mind, the most bizarre and adorable pigtails I'd ever seen.
"What the heck?" I asked myself, and so clicked the link pertaining to the manga.
The little girl was Chiyo-chan and the manga was Azumanga Daioh. At first glance, Azumanga Daioh looks like shôjo manga, which, even though I'm female, makes me think of elaborate love stories (love twists, love triangles, love quadrangles, love octagons) deep, drawn-out relationships, and so on. Nothing wrong with that - I'm a Chobits enthusiast and I've enjoyed Mars and Kare Kano from time to time, but I prefer my Shonen Jump magazine, thanks.
Forget it, people. Azumanga Daioh has no central romance. Nay, no romance at all - well, unless you count Kaorin's crush on Sakaki - and absolutely no fluff or flirting for those who can't stomach it. In fact, there's only one male character in the entire series, and that's Kimura, the middle-aged pervert of a teacher. (And he's married - all he ever does is gape at girls.)
Azumanga Daioh is all about its characters. You have Chiyo-chan, child genius. You have Tomo, who's constantly hyper. You have Yomi, Tomo's sarcastic childhood friend who doesn't always get along with her. You have Osaka, a space case who delivers a delightful dose of randomness to the manga. You have my favorite character, Sakaki, an introverted but soft-hearted loner. And later on, you have Kagura, Sakaki's polar opposite.
And along the way, you have Yukari and Nyamo, two young teachers who remind you surprisingly of Tomo and Yomi. You have Chiyo-chan's dad, an oversized talking plush cat. You have Yomi on constant diets. You have Sakaki trying to pet a stray cat that keeps chomping down on her fingers. You have Osaka wondering, out of the blue, why they call them a "pair" of panties when there's only one. You have Tomo trying to beat everybody at everything, failing every single time. You have a heck of a good laugh, my friend, because the series is laced with humor and chock-full of those moments that just make you feel good.
You'll be skeptical until you try it - believe me. And once you try it, you'll be hooked. Girls, guys, teens, adults, everyone... you will fall in love with this non-romance. Read a single volume of the manga and you'll feel better for the rest of the day; I guarantee it. So if you're still unsure... just buy the first volume. If you don't like it (although I'd be hard-pressed to name someone who wouldn't), you don't have to read the rest.
The best part is that Azumanga Daioh is only four volumes long, so it won't clean out your wallet, and all four volumes are in print. They're available in bookstores, but you wouldn't be on Amazon.com if you were looking to buy them in a bookstore, now, would you?
So go ahead. Indulge. You deserve it.
~Tamara Raymond
Rating:
Summary: Wow.
Review: The first thing one might notice in the first manga of Kiyohiko Azuma's 4-volume series, Azumanga Daioh, is that it consists of a series of four panel cartoons, something like one would see in the comics section of a daily paper. Each set of four panels is thematically titled. There are ten chapters here, beginning with the new semester in April through December. Each chapter consists of 14 to 15 four-panels. The first character to be introduced is Yukari Tanizaki, the homeroom high school teacher for Class 3. Her specialty is English. However, she is immature, selfish, gossiping with the other students, and once, when her bike chain falls off and a male student offers to help her with her bike, takes his bike so she won't be late!
Two transfer students, teeny-tiny Chiyo Mihama, a ten-year old so gifted, she skipped ahead five years to being a sophomore, and Ayumu Kasuga, an Osakan who's actually quiet and not rowdy as thought, bring fresh life to Class 3. However, Tomo, the energetic wildcat girl who's cheerfully loud, but at times a troublemaker, dubs Ayumu Osaka, because she's from there. Chiyo stuns everyone with her intelligence, and although she's not good in PE, she manages to beat Osaka in running.
Other standout scenes include the competitive sports festival, culture festival where the class put on a stuffed animal exhibit, a suggestion made anonymously by the introverted closet romantic and 170 cm tall Sakaki, the scene where a cockroach causes havoc in the classroom, the summer spent at Chiyo's beachside summer home, and Yukari getting sick of English and having a soccer and dodgeball tournament outside.
Some scenes that didn't make it into the anime include how Chiyo was chosen as class representative. It turns out Tomo nominated herself, Yukari nominated Chiyo, and the class overwhelming voted for Chiyo, who nervously accepts. Another is how both Osaka and Chiyo get summer jobs at Magnetron Burger, whose M logo looks suspiciously like McDonald's.
I have mixed feelings about the American translation. Osaka's words, such as "teacha," "pleased ta meecha," all to distinguish her Osakan accent from standard Japanese, have a black or Italian leaning.
The titles on the four-panellers, they are thematic, but some are funny. "One...one...one" tells how Chiyo and Osaka fall at the starting line of the three-legged race. Chiyo says they'll get up on three. However, at one, they fall splat back on the ground.
Some of the characters seem to be drawn somewhat rougher compared to later volumes. These include Chiyo and Osaka. Also, whenever Sakaki is bitten by the kamineko (biting cat), the cat's head doesn't expand with pointing teeth as in the anime. However, the scenes are funny, especially when she rushes to stop two cats from fighting. Both end up biting her. As in the anime, eyes closed in a painful expression are denoted with a lengthwise boldface X from ear to ear.
However, the stand-alone bobblehead drawings of the girls, located inbetween chapters and at the end, are cute, especially Osaka. Chiyo's bobblehead character has her holding a paper with a 100 on the left-hand corner. On the facing page, her word bubble says "Thank you teacher."
If the anime were done strictly in order of the manga, it probably wouldn't have worked. As it is, some scenes here didn't end up in the anime until the third or even fourth disc. Examples include the weird drawings of pandas Chiyo and Osaka make, and when the gang celebrate the end of the semester with a karaoke night. Osaka's theories concerning Chiyo's pigtails are scattered throughout the book and only in the anime were brought together. The presence of so many funny scenes frontload the first Azumanga manga, making it the best in the series, and it demonstrates how four-panellers can contain enough info and words to make it funny.
Rating:
Summary: picky, picky
Review: The first thing that I would like to say to the anime/manga "purists" out there is too lighten up. Do you think that it would be more interesting to show mangled English in an English translated book than Spanish? Yes the original was in English, but most likely the humor in this situation would be lost. The "Brooklyn accent" of Osaka does fit the character. Osaka is considering to be the tough guy part of Japan, so the accent fits. They had to do ssomething or the common reader of the series would not be able to understand that there is something meaningful about the character coming from Osaka. Let the people enjoy the book for what it is: comic entertainment, and it is a very entertaining book. A little episodic for my taste, but it is fun to see the characters get slightly fleshed out as the series goes on.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely hilarious.
Review: This has got to be the wackiest thing I've ever read. It's about a group of girls: Chiyo, a 10-year-old genius; Osaka, a total airhead; Sakaki, a girl who secretly likes Hello Kitty type things; Yomi, a compulsive dieter; Tomo, a hyperactive lunatic; and all their other friends and wacky teachers.
This is an awesome book, filled with all the cute, strange, and totally bizarre humor anyone could ask for. As my friend lovingly said: "It's like Peanuts on crack!". The art is nohing really remarkable, but it's not bad, either. After all, it's a four-panel newspaper type comic.
(...)
Rating:
Summary: very strange, but good
Review: This is a manga composed mainly of vertical comic strips that follow the Japanese right-to-left format. For a first-timer with this kind of format, this manga may be difficult to handle, since the publishers didn't put any kind of explanation of the format anywhere in the book. Basically, this manga follows the school life of a few teachers and their students. Just about everyone is a little strange, it seems. There's Miss Yukari, who is somehow a teacher in spite of the fact that she's more immature than some of her students, Chiyo-chan, the ten year old genius, and Sakaki, the girl who secretly loves animals and other cute things, just to name a few. I kept getting some of the characters confused, but I really enjoyed reading this.
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