While this series almost fully leans into its comedy 99% of the time, Azumanga Daioh is an incredibly sweet and heartfelt journey through the silliness and mundane charm of that weird period of youth in between being a kid and being a “grown up”. Strengths and weaknesses as fair opportunities, the complications of finding an identity while trying to fit into a social “norm”, changing bodies and body image issues, self-doubt, forming meaningful friendships, mentorship, maturity, growing up too fast, and the general feeling of simultaneous hyperactivity, confusion, and sporadic feeling that make adolescence so challenging to navigate. Having an ensemble cast (friend group) is the perfect way of portraying these ideas. While Osaka and Chiyo do get some more attention than the rest, all of the girl’s distinct personalities get equal opportunities to shine, and all of them experience these hurdles differently. I was a little shocked when they began to really dive into Yomi’s self doubt, since it pertained to her weight and her appearance, while the other girls don’t care much about that. They did a good job with it. Similarly with Sakaki’s reserved nature and coming out of her shell more. They are my two favorite characters walking away from the show. It was also cool to see the students contrasted with Yukari and Nyamo being grown adults, who still have the same struggles; you don’t grow out of your adolescent problems, they just take on new forms, which was a very unique presentation of that idea as well, and not seen often. It also has a neat structure. The short story format is great, you can see where the original comic strips were split up, but each episode being themed and cohesive is very consistent. The narrative has a really solid flow. Azumanga loses points mainly in the fact that there was always a story that was “weaker” than the others, which made that cohesion waver a bit. And for the creep trope inclusion. Kimura really sucks and I don’t enjoy most of his bits, even though the girls do always triumph over his weirdness to shut him down. Other than that, I really have no qualms with this show. I’m glad I watched it. It may not be perfect, but it has a lot of love and a lot of passion.