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Reviewing Azumanga Daioh in 2025 is difficult. It’s impossible to ignore the elephant in the room, that its success is pretty much singularly responsible for the development of “CGDCT” as an independent genre. Moe had not yet broken containment as a term, nor had iyashikei. One can see the symptoms here of what was to come, but Azumanga Daioh on its own is a refreshing delight.

Adapted from a 4-koma manga, Azumanga Daioh originally aired with each of the five segments running Monday through Friday, with the compiled episode airing on the weekend. Looking back on it now, more than 20 years later, it feels ... strangely empty in its lack of anything <i>but</i> slice of life: there’s no gimmick, no club or interest or raison d’etre that ties the characters together. The only thing approaching this is Chiyo, the 10-year-old skipped into the tenth grade, who is the protagonist if anyone is, but the series can hardly be said to center around her. Instead, it’s the entire cast who is the center of the story, such that it is. I remember this being compared to “Seinfeld” when it first came out, because it is a show about nothing (remember, we did not have a word for anime like this then) and in 2025, I could again make the comparison with the circulating meme that “Seinfeld isn’t funny” (because in its innovativeness it seems bare in retrospect).

I could not watch this show one episode right after another because it is, at times, wearying: the characters can be grating, and for the most part do not grow and change. Chiyo is still innocent, Osaka is still a space cadet, Tomo is still annoying. However, I found the experience of finishing the show rewarding. We follow the girls through their entire high school careers, in a world where very little bad happens. The most developed character is actually Sakaki, originally regarded by the others as aloof and unapproachable, but eventually becoming a real part of the friend group. It’s really the group that’s the main character, after all—a strong friendship growing from disparate classmates, which becomes obvious as fewer and fewer stories later in the series are centered around school life milestones—the summer vacation episodes are the best ones, as is the class trip which has a rewarding development for Sakaki I won’t spoil, if anyone is somehow genuinely reading this to decide if they would like to watch this show.

It really does find its stride as the friend group is fully assembled and developed; the ending is warm and hopeful. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a show where nothing bad happens. There are problematic elements here, namely Kimura, whose fixation on one student is played for laughs, and the show overall is really not very funny—I think it does show how the slice of life genre begins to diverge from comedy, which at the time was the best place to put it. Art, animation, and music are all perfectly serviceable. The value in this show is in being with the characters and their friendships. It isn’t conscious of being groundbreaking and is in itself perfectly harmless. And that’s OK.

I couldn't help but feel I was missing something in this manga. Perhaps it is simply not to my taste--the anthropomorphic animal elements (I hesitate to use the word "furry" when I'm not part of that community as I don't know if it strictly applies here) leaves me cold, and most of the BL dynamics/tropes portrayed here are not for me, and that's fine - I am not the target audience.

I did enjoy the diversity of characters and relationships portrayed, as well as the hints of worldbuilding we get. We spend too short a time in this world to engage in heavy worldbuilding, though ... some elements were intriguing enough to make me curious to see more - we're teased at the end by the revelation that humans do exist in this world, but live completely separately from the demihumans (a continually dissatisfying translation choice because what group of people names themselves in comparison to another?) but the manga doesn't feel empty for its light worldbuilding. In fact, it feels cozy, and I enjoyed seeing the characters from previous stories reappear. I would certainly recommend this to those who are intrigued by the demihuman aspect and who are deeper fans of BL for BL's sake than I am - it's like a warm cup of cocoa, just not my favorite flavor.

This is more a warning than a review - this two-episode OVA is clearly meant for readers of the manga, as was very common with OVA manga adaptations when this came out. Manga readers knew all the backstory and wanted to see their favorite characters in anime form. As a result, this OVA just drops the viewer in media res - we're told a few sentences of backstory but there's no room to breathe or meet the characters before things start happening. Which is fine - that is not what this show was meant to do! But that makes it probably not worth watching in ... 2024 especially when a TV adaptation also exists. (We'll see when we get there, I suppose, but if it's anything like 99% of situations like this, that will actually build up the story.) It's difficult to review this as we're nowhere near the beginning of the story: we're told Maze turns into a boy at night and we see a few scenes of this. (Another warning worth mentioning here is the high level of ecchi here veering into sexual assault which may not be palatable these days.) We get a cursory introduction to their traveling companions but we barely get a hint of their personalities. I'm just going to write this one off and go to the series but I thought it prudent to make it clear to anyone stumbling across this that this is definitely more of a manga supplement OVA than a standalone.

This is sort of a mixed bag but once I started picking up what it was putting down, I enjoyed it. You just kind of have to get what it’s saying.

In many respects, you “had to be there,” and I wasn’t even there. Bakuen Campus Guardress is a supernatural comedy OVA from 1994 and definitely leans into the comedy/parody aspect in a way that may be jarring at times. Many tropes are sent up in this but you do have to realize it’s a sendup—the ambiguously not-related siblings, the over-the-top action and fanservice, is as much as reflection of the anime landscape in 1994 ... as anything else.

And when it is funny, it is very, very funny. Not just the entire school, but the entire town, is in on the plan to protect Takumi. School goes on, even after it’s been destroyed. Also, the characters’ emotional lives feel real even if the world they live in is satirical. Indeed, the tone may be so subtle that it can take some time to pick up on. There are certainly dated aspects—the incest teasing and some of the offensive villain designs have aged extremely poorly. There is some gratuitous fanservice, but this is Akahori after all. The ED theme is absolutely dire. But there is some heart here. At only four episodes, it’s not a deep time investment, but that has the downside that there really is no room to breathe. The time allotted is used effectively, but there’s very little downtime to get to know the characters beyond Hazumi.

I wouldn’t go so far as to call this a hidden gem but it wasn’t a bad way to start my day.

This web special predated the main TV series and is a fun individual little story to bring the characters to animation for the first time. Chiyo brings a video camera to school and chaos ensues once Tomo gets hold of it. Tomo’s rampage is captured in a series of brief cuts. The use of the camera’s POV is interesting and well handled, and the very short runtime is used efficiently to cover most of the familiar characters, with everyone doing something characteristic. It’s stylistically somewhat different from the TV series, with a different cast so it has a different feel, and the punchline at the ... end is hilarious.

This is definitely worth watching for fans and is even enjoyable as a standalone, but why would you keep it as a standalone?

This is a scant overview of what can be expected in the then-upcoming series. For manga readers, it’s a lovely run through already-familiar scenarios and characters: Osaka's dream about Chiyo's pigtails, Sakaki daydreams about the cat and so on; for new viewers it’s a preview of what’s to come. It probably isn’t required viewing now as it has outlived its usefulness as a preview of the TV series but it’s so short it doesn’t really matter.

The standout here is the animation, as this was shown in theaters, so it's theatrical quality animation. Watching the characters is the main appeal of this short, otherwise there ... isn't much new here.

This was an unexpected hidden gem! A blend of parody comedy with some heartwarming moments, it's not a standout classic but definitely enjoyable for fans of parody anime.

Akahori Gedou Hour Rabuge is sometimes billed as an anthology series, but that's not quite correct. It's really more of a parallel dual POV story, following two sets of characters.

Aimi and Kaoruko are an aspiring manzai duo, who happen to have secret identities as sentai "heroes" Love Pheromone, though they cause more destruction than they prevent. The five Hokke sisters are the focus of the other half of each episode. They're the daughters of sentai-style minions ... who are determined to follow in their parents' footsteps as examples of excellent evil.

The series blends the silliness of Aimi and Kaoruko's struggles with the heartwarming story of the Hokke sisters. The blend of humor and poignancy does make the Hokke sisters' story better; I might have liked to see an independent series following them. Otone working to support her family is compelling as are the interactions among the sisters, though Aimi and Kaoruko have their own warmth from time to time. They are definitely the comic relief here. The show excels on absurdity, parody, and situational humor. The formula might have gotten old with a longer show but in 1 cour it doesn't wear out its welcome.

The series does require a tolerance of a certain level of fanservice and some sleaze particularly Kaoruko's shotacon tendencies. The character designs are cute, the voice acting is good. This seems like a labor of love, or at least that the staff and cast are having fun.