I follow this person on Twitter, and I'm sure she means this literally, and I'm OK with it.
this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2024
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Always relevant
That was really really good.
As a middle aged man, I almost wish the girls were a little less sexually drawn, as I think I'd enjoy the anime for just the comedy.
To me the style always seemed less sexualized and more "the animators don't know how to a booby"
if you look up the manga/DVD covers there's definitely some sexualization going on. but I haven't seen the show so idk if that extends too much to the actual content.
Well, how do you count "too much"?
yeah, I mean its not like a moral condemnation exactly, just that as an adult I'm not interested in sexualized high schoolers and am uncomfortable with the extent to which they are used to market to adult men. The cover being a character in just a swimsuit or with her skirt blowing up is at least a bit questionable. Honestly devoid of context maybe I wouldn't take as much issue, but I know how skeevy or worse outright pedophilic anime and manga sometimes are, so I have a hard time giving the benefit of the doubt when I see anything questionable. I definitely didn't get the vibe that ""the animators don't know how to [draw] a booby""
Really the only thing that I personally find offensive in Azumanga Daioh is this widely reviled recurring character called Mr. Kimura, who "became a teacher because he likes high school girls". He appears in episodes 1, 4, 6, 7, 10-17, 20, 21, 23, and 26, I think in most of these episodes exactly once — but obviously with a character description like that, even a very brief appearance would leave a bad taste in my mouth. Kimura also briefly appears in the intro — the intro is incidentally also where that "skirt getting blown up" picture is from, that's actually the character getting launched into the air and falling.
Nevertheless, Azumanga Daioh is rated G~PG in most jurisdictions around the world. I've watched the show cap-a-pie with my boomer mom, a bit with my brother, and my mom even wanted to show Azumanga Daioh to an even older relative of ours, too. So Azumanga Daioh is, like the planet Earth, mostly harmless. I have sometimes thought about torrenting Azumanga Daioh just to give Mr. Kimura the ol'
treatment, because without him, the worst the show gets is just a few eyeroll moments or maybe specific triggers for some people. You can check IMDb's parents' guide or DoesTheDogDie for more information.
By the way, the "manga cover" I think you're referring to is actually the cover of Dengeki Daioh magazine's August 2001 issue. Probably specifically the picture used at the top of the Wikipedia article for "Dengeki Daioh". So while it is plenty gross that that is in fact official artwork, it is not actually one of the manga covers. Those covers look like so (from eBay):
Edit: removed a gif in case it's an epilepsy trigger
I'm confused. The one in red is the teacher, and the one in blue, the student, has only her head and forearms exposed and isn't particularly chesty or curvy.
I've seen a few clips of this show in YouTube. It looks hilarious. But some of the scenes portray girls in very short skirts or with quite protruding chests. It's definitely not as bad as a lot of animes. It's just that I'm in my mid 40s, and I teach older girls, I just really can't find any of it pleasant.
I want to stress that I'm not bothered by anyone who enjoys the show. It's just me.
I for some reason assumed this comment chain was about Nichijou. Then Yotsuba&. And now finally I see it's Azumanga daioh. I'm not very bright today.
maybe try one of the two former if you haven't seen them, the humor is seemingly kinda similar (yotsuba& is related to azumanga daioh iirc, spin off or smth) and iirc they're less sexualized than that one.
I get the argument that always putting younger girl characters in skirts is just like, reflecting reality, that's a common uniform, so that shows up even in very nonsexual shows sometimes, but a legit reason I don't watch a lot of anime anymore is because of the way so many go out of their way to draw the fucking underage characters bending over in tiny skirts and such. Its fucking foul. They could portray a realistic skirt length and not be a fucking pervert about it, even if it maybe seems a little short to a foreign audience, but they mostly just don't. Not that american TV is amazing about that sort of thing but its not as pervasive.
Yotsuba& is only a manga. Its relation to Azumanga Daioh is just that it shares an author, Kiyohiko Azuma. The two mangas might take place in the same universe but that's just fan theories. There's a few uncomfortable scenes in Yotsuba& with Fuuka, involving Jumbo, from what I've read so far (~1.5 volumes)
Nichijou doesn't have anything uncomfortable that I can remember.
Azumanga is NOT the show that comes to mind when I think of “sexualized characters” hahaha
This scene isn't really a good example of that, Yukari-sensei is the teacher here. However some parts of the show are definitely weird that way, nowhere to the point of other shows fortunately.