Does Azumanga Daioh hold up?

 

The cover for the first volume of Azumanga Daioh. Found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azumanga_Daioh.

Azumanga Daioh‘s so much older than I remember it being. The year on my edition of the first volume is 2000. An omnibus has since been released, but 2000 – that’s 14 years ago!

But what is Azumanga Daioh? It’s a manga (and anime) that follows a group of girls as they make their way through high school under the tutelage of two particular teachers. There aren’t any interdimensional beings, no magical clubs or magical girls, no aliens, no interstellar origin stories.

The best way to describe the series and the manga is that it’s Japan’s answer to Seinfeld. As far as manga series go anyway. It’s the manga about nothing.

It could also be categorized as “slice of life.” That’s fairly accurate, since the series does just present these characters lives in four panel slices. Though it does take the occasional break for something that spreads over a few pages.

The most important label for Azumangah Daioh, though, is comedy.

Every one of the four panel comics that comprise the book are designed to make you laugh, chuckle, or at the least grin. Most of the humour is situation based, though there are definitely some jokes that are probably more “Japanese” than “international” or “North American.”

The bigger question, though is whether or not this comedic manga about nothing still holds up fourteen years after its initial release.

I think it definitely does. The sight gags, visual punch lines, and quirkiness of most of the humour in volume one give it a kind of timeless quality.

Actually, it makes me wonder if there’s some sort of formula for timelessness that involves taking something mundane and adding just the right amount of quirk to it. Earthbound springs to mind as another piece of culture that does something similar to Azumanga Daioh in this regard.

Though, I get the impression that Azumanga Daioh wasn’t originally written in full manga form. Or at least that the comics that make up the book weren’t initially printed all together.

Things like the English class initially being a Spanish class (probably to get around the translation in English) but by volume’s end being just an English class, and the transfer student Osaka’s on again, off again Brooklyn accent suggest that the individual strips were probably done over time and then collected into a single volume. (Wikipedia confirms this.)

Maybe things will get more consistent in volume two.

In the meantime, what do you think? Does it bug you when you’re reading something that was serialized after its collected into one place and you find glaring inconsistencies?