I am currently rewatching Azumanga Daioh 5 years after my initial viewing. Back then I thought the show was pretty good, though my taste geared towards the experimental and psychological rather than the serene or the slice of life (I still very much enjoyed the genre, however). In these past years however, I have seen Azumanga Daioh morph into this symbol of comfort for me. It’s this memetic monolith of 2000s internet and anime culture, the characters have been so immortalized through 2000s memes, AMVs, YouTube videos and 4chan posts that when you think back to western anime fandom around that time, chanced are Azumanga Daioh is going to be one of the first things you think of. Whenever I see Kimura Sensei my brain just starts playing Little Girls by Oingo Boingo, and whenever I see Tomo a smile instantly appears on my face as I associate her with the legendary Caipirinha video. Anyone who knows me is intimately aware of my obsessive fascination with 2000s internet culture, especially within otaku communities. The ways in which anime was celebrated feels like it was in a much more pure and genuine way than it is now. Where in the last half decade or so, it seems like ironic self deprecating has poisoned otaku, seen through obnoxious FBI loli jokes, the ever present incentive to call anime “trash” or even the term “otaku” continuously being replaced with “weeb”. To contrast this attitude, 2000s anime posts felt almost militant in its defense of the medium. The cultural stigma against anime was so strong that it felt like you had to fight tooth and nail for anime to be seen as anything more than those perverted cartoons from Japan. Now I don’t advocate for those attitudes to return, but I am vitriolically pro-sincerity, and Azumanga Daioh stands to represent a more sincere time in anime fandom, and as I saw that sincerity fade over time, the more I came to appreciate anything that retained an excited attitude towards anime. Azumanga Daioh was THE anime (other than Lucky Star) to embody that attitude, casuing me to go out and buy the manga on my 17th birthday back in early 2020 and consider it one of my most important possessions (still haven’t read it though due to my dislike of reading anything physically).
Though, that’s not the only thing that preserved Azumanga Daioh in my mind. My long time best friend Lily started adopting the character Osaka as a sort of pseudo-kin situation. She started posting Osaka clips, memes and screenshots everywhere and has adopted her as her profile picture. She has been very consistently doing this for almost a year now. The best part about this is that she actually resembles the character very closely. Her humor and manner of speech is almost a one to one image, not to mention her slow, spacey nature. So this person who is immensely close to me just adopts this persona modeled after one of the most beloved characters in Azumanga Daioh. Everyday when I go onto Discord and see her pfp, I am instantly reminded of Osaka. I’m then motivated to watch Osaka clips on YouTube, which of course launches me into the endless pit of Azumanga Daioh clips on YouTube.
I started making plans to rewatch the series, which gave me the bright idea to invite my friend who lives a mere 5 minute walk away from my place to watch the show with me. The year prior we had planned to create a Genshiken, in which we meet up and watch anime every week, something I have dreamed of doing since I became an otaku. It was promptly canceled once Covid hit. We found ourselves with another chance over a year later, and watched the first 4 episodes in my room, surrounded by anime posters, laughing at every time Tomo did something stupid or Osaka said something nonsensical. At that moment, all that context came to a budding climax. That Otaku excitement was truly felt with another person who was just as excited as me. That’s not all however, as 2 more of my friends got into the show really heavily around the same time. Azumanga Daioh over the last year has slowly infiltrated my life, where all my friends are genuinely obsessed with this anime that I had already considered an important part of my life. So as I lay here, finally rewatching the series on my own, every single frame that appears on screen hits harder as they contain all this context of Otaku culture and friendship.
The point of me explaining all this is to illustrate the point of how shows change in your mind over time. The ways in which we appreciate art all depend on what the art makes us think about. When I hear someone say that liking a show based on nostalgia is bad because you’re not seeing the show for how it is on its own is so misguided in so many ways. No art piece exists in a vacuum. When you consume something, you consume it alongside all the other information your brain is taking in. When I remember when I watched certain anime, I don’t just remember the anime, I also remember how old I was, how I was feeling, what time of year was it, etc, etc. A show can really hit hard for you because you were in a certain situation at the time, but later on not really mean that much to you because it’s lost that resonance. Or, it can stand as this thing that brought you a lot of comfort at some point, and continue to bring you said comfort because of that initial association. Both of these scenarios have happened to me, and have probably happened to the vast majority of people. To try and see if art can “stand on its own despite (x)” is missing the point of art. It’s also attempting to grade it on some objective level, and to that I say objectivity doesn’t exist, please stop trying to say it does, not only is it a futile effort, but you’re sucking all the fun and personal intimacy away from experiencing media. This is mostly said about nostalgia, along with how nostalgia culture is bad or whatever. While I can agree that nostalgia culture can be harmful, I think it’s also just another way to appreciate something. As stated previously, 2000s nostalgia culture played a huge role in my appreciate for Azumanga Daioh. The aesthetics and spirit of anime culture is well embedded into that show. Of course, if all that context wasn’t there I would probably still enjoy the show. The writing is air tight, it makes me consistently laugh out loud, every character is a beaming with a unique personality, and can derive all these great interactions out of the characters, the atmosphere while mostly gag driven gives way to a peaceful and fleeting aura, especially when it incorporates those moments like when Chiyo, Osaka, and Yomi are marching with Tomo in a cat suit, or that time at the end of episode 9 when all of the sudden you get this beautiful scene with all the main characters just running and having fun in this dream like sequence, or how the show’s color palette just invoke a dreamy nostalgic feeling in it of itself, or how it can do those long, drawn out, minute long jokes really well when most other shows can’t even dream of (cough family guy cough) or how Sakaki is a precious baby that just loves cute things and whenever I see her get bitten by a cat I genuinely get heartbroken because I just want her to be happy because she must be protected, or how Osaka is just the fucking best, like oh my god everything she says is just comedic gold, or how the dream sequences are like the most realistic portrayal of actual dreams from the visuals to the dialogue to the strange atmosphere, or how Kimura Sensei is just explicitly a creep in the funniest way, or how Kaorin is just a walking ball of gay anxiety, or Chiyo and everything about her and her FUCKING DOG SHOUTS OUT TO THE DOG BRO, or how the show just looks consistently amazing.
See, if I was watching Azumanga Daioh for the first time I would enjoy it a lot, but as time goes on I would remember Azumanga Daioh as that classic show I put off for 5 years that ended up being an absolute classic. That context I have it in my head as would change gradually, and I think that’s cool. I have always been reluctant to rewatch anime, but I am really trying to change that. Revisiting favorites as you grow older is very interesting to me, and there’s a handful of shows I just haven’t seen in 3, 4 or even 5 years that I still consider “favorites” and that doesn’t sit right with me. The ever changing relationship with individual anime is what draws me to write about it, as I like keeping an archive of my feelings on my favorite narrative medium. So revisit your favorites, update your relationships with them, maybe dust off an old show that you forgot about and watch the memories come back, or maybe find that it doesn’t connect with you anymore, and that’s fine too. Maybe I should finally do that Lain rewatch I’ve been meaning to do for the past 3 fucking years, lol.