Mini-review: Azumanga Daioh

As I hinted at back in the beginning of September I said I might do a mini-review on Azumanga Daioh when I finished it. Well, here it is!

Azumanga Daioh is a bit of a weird slice of life/comedy series. The pacing is a bit sluggish but it fits with the theme very well, as it is revolving around spending time with friends and taking it easy. For me it took some time to get used to the pacing and to get really into the series, but when I did it I got a lot more invested into this series.

Saying that though, it may not be just the pacing that will determine if you'll like it or not. You got to like the characters! A lot of the humor comes from the characters, and how they interact with each other. If you end up not liking one of the characters, it will most likely be detrimental to your enjoyment. This is where Tomo comes in to the picture for me.

"Time to annoy someone!"

As the series went on, she became more and more annoying. She would do stuff like throwing away house keys, annoy the other characters, and say rude things with no compassion towards others, and then act surprised when she hurt their feelings. She's also a slacker, despite being energetic! The only time she doesn't slack off is when she can do something that she knows will annoy someone, or make (what she thinks) is a good joke.

Kaori, unaware of the horror to come.

Employee of the Year?

I wonder if this is someone's OTP... O_o

Luckily though, this series balances out Tomo, with a magnitude of other great characters, like the teacher Kimura (which, for some reason has managed to not lose his job) and the student Kaori (often called Kaorin by Kimura). Kimura, despite being a happily married man, makes several (and somewhat creepy) advances at Kaori, like giving her a cute nickname, planting a sign in the flowerbed saying "Kimurin and Kaorin's flower garden" and dancing with her at the sports day festival, to name a few. This is luckily, all just played for laughs, and it is several times stated that he loves his wife and daughter.

Another great character I want to mention is Sakaki. She's tall (taller than many of the boys), and because of that has never considered herself as being able to be cute, and instead gives off an aura of "cool" in public. She loves animals (cats especially) but can't keep any because her mom is allergic. Seeing her luck with the cat she meets on her way to school several times, this is probably a good thing, as she gets bitten fairly often. This changes later on, when she is allowed to keep a wildcat, at another characters house.

"I've played GTA 5, I got this!"

The last character I'll go into some depth about is the teacher Yukari. Or rather, her driving skills. Yukari drives a car in the same manner as her personality is porttrayed. Reckless. Her car consists of dents and traded paint for the most part. She'll ignore traffic signs and pedestrians to get where she is going, fast. There's even a joke about how one of the characters got traumatized from riding in her car!

To wrap things up, Azumanga Daioh is a very good series that I'd recommend if you want something slower paced, and full of comedic relief, to take a break from the action or drama. If you enjoy the Slice of Life genre, this is a must watch, if you haven't already.

Final Verdict: 8/10

Pros:                                                                          Cons:
- Characters that work well together                               - Tomo can be annoying
- Clever and funny jokes                                                - The slow pace can require some
- Doesn't take itself too seriously                                     acclimatization

Hard times ahead.

Hello again! I'll just cut right to the chase here. Ace Combat Infinity didn't have a release date on September 25th after all. Rumors abound, some say it got delayed, others that it was the date for the Japanese beta-test.  Massively disappointed, and I'm sorry for just adding fuel to that fire... Anyway, at Tokyo Game Show just a few days ago, they put out a new trailer, this one with some length and story elements in it.

I've been studying some more Japanese recently, after a break on two weeks (mostly due to work). I've gotten around to learning て-form (Te-form), and I've started to work on Katakana. I thought Hiragana was bad when it came to characters looking a lot similar, but Katakana is much worse, haha. Seriously, just look at Ke ケand Ku ク. Damn. Well, it's not like you can learn any language in a day anyway, right? Got to put in some work for that reward.

On the anime front, I actually completed WataMote today, which marked my 150th completed anime according to My Anime List. That's a pretty big milestone, but at the same time I've seen a lot of people with tons more completed anime on their lists. I found WataMote to be really, REALLY funny, but I was slightly disappointed in the ending. Definitely worth a watch if you want something short to just laugh to. Ended up giving it an 8/10 (That's the equivalent of "Very Good" as I use the same scores as My Anime List). It's a series I could re-watch at a later time with someone who hasn't, purely for the laughs.

What?! No perfect 10?!

I'm not even halfway done with Azumanga Daioh, so there's still quite a wait time for that mini-review I'm afraid. Sorry! Anyway, that's it for this post. Stay tuned for more, and stay safe!

MAL is down, let's return to Comona Islands!

Yes, you read that right! Comona Islands is apparently making a grand return in Ace Combat Infinity when that pops out on September 25th! Some screenshots and a new teaser trailer were released, and I was blown away!

                                                              I cannot wait to try this out!

One thing a lot of us Ace Combat fans will notice, is that they remixed the song from the mission over Comona Islands in Ace Combat 4, and from what's heard in the trailer, it sounds great!

As you also read in the header, MyAnimeList (MAL) is down due to a DDOS attack. That's right, someone with too much time on their hands decided to DDOS a website made for people who want to keep their watched anime and manga in a neat list and discuss them with others. I'm just hoping no one loses their entire list...

Other than that, I got my new memory for my PC yesterday, and I started watching Azumanga Daioh. I can't really say anything about it yet, might give it a mini-review once I'm done with it. For now, I believe this picture explains Azumanga Daioh the best.

                                                                             :D

Back to the topic of the memory, I'll do a bit of testing and such. If it all works out properly I can start capturing gameplay again, in hopes of finding some great footage! Stay tuned for more!