This is a list of characters from the manga series Azumanga Daioh by Kiyohiko Azuma, later adapted to anime.
Azumanga Daioh chronicles the everyday life in an unnamed Japanese high school of six girls and two of their teachers: child prodigy Chiyo Mihama and her struggle to fit in with girls five years older; reserved Sakaki and her obsession with cute animals while certain ones seem to hate her; spacey Ayumu "Osaka" Kasuga with a skewed perspective on the world; Koyomi "Yomi" Mizuhara's aggravation at an annoying best friend; Tomo Takino, whose energy is rivaled only by her lack of sense; sporty Kagura and her one-sided athletics rivalry with Sakaki; their homeroom teacher Yukari Tanizaki; and her friend, physical education teacher Minamo "Nyamo" Kurosawa. Secondary characters include Kimura, a creepy male teacher with an obsession with teenage girls, and Kaorin, a female classmate with a crush on Sakaki.
Four of the girls were included in Newtypes top 100 anime heroines of 2002: Osaka was awarded 7th, Chiyo 11th, Sakaki 21st, and Yomi 78th. Together they made Azumanga Daioh the 2nd most popular series of 2002 for female characters.
Major characters Students The students have a variety of different personalities.
Chiyo Mihama , usually called Chiyo-chan, is a child prodigy, having skipped five grades to 10th grade (the first year of high school in Japan) at the start of the series, yet she is still at the top of the class. Such grade skipping would be unthinkable in Japan, and the series humorously explores its potential consequences.Case study: The Educational System in Japan . Accessed December 16, 2006. The other characters find Chiyo amazingly cute, but sometimes take advantage of both her youthfulness and her scholastic abilities. However, it seems her classmates are mostly nice to her, with the exception of Tomo, who seems to enjoy teasing her. Her diminutive stature leads to her having a lack of confidence, particularly in sports where she fears she is a burden to others. Chiyo is frequently viewed with envy by fellow students, initially because of her intelligence, but later also because of the discovery that her family is exceedingly wealthy (they own an enormous mansion and a summer house, which Chiyo invites her classmates to visit on several occasions). The stylistic rendering of Chiyo's pigtails allow for several visual gags in both the manga and anime: Osaka often imagines them to be flapping wings, that they can be detached and replaced, they control her, or even that they are entities independent of Chiyo herself. At home, she can almost always be found in the company of her Great Pyrenees dog, Mr. Tadakichi. Because of her small size, she can even ride on his back as if he were a horse. Of all of the girls, she is the only one who does not sit through college entrance exams, as she intends to study overseas in America.
Ayumu "Osaka" Kasuga , commonly known as , is a transfer student from Osaka. Tomo and Yukari expected her to act like the stereotypical Osakan (loud, exuberant, and fond of bawdy jokes). She is in the Volume 2 DVD. Tomo was quick to choose her nickname, although Ayumu's behavior could not be more different from the "typical" Osakan. Ayumu considers her label "too simple" and "icky," but she lacks the energy or motivation to dispute it. Unlike the stereotypical Osakan, she seems slow and easily distracted, but she merely has a mind that works quite differently than most people. This makes her prone to daydreaming, absentmindedness, and non-sequiturs, but it also makes her unusually good at answering very specific types of riddles. She gets very bad grades at school as she sleeps through most of her classes, much to the irritation of her homeroom teacher, Yukari. She is very bad at sports: the worst in her class and possibly the whole school. She has almost no flexibility in her body; when stretching as a warm-up exercise, she cannot bend at all. She is easily amused by things that most people would consider bizarre. During the Sports Festival, she made a big deal out of running the obstacle course because she thought the event of sticking her face in flour to get a piece of candy was funny and had a giggle fit when she got there. Additionally, when participating in a bread-eating race, her concentration was trounced when the commentator listed the flavour of breads available, causing her to spend too much time deliberating which flavour to pick and, hence, coming in last. The manga revealed that she likes to run outside and play in typhoons. Her unusual way of thinking gives her a very vivid imagination and a unique way of seeing the world. In the English adaptation of the anime, she is given a distinct Houston accent.Azumanga Daioh Volume 1: Entrance translation notes from DVD booklet.
Osaka later appears in the sixteenth volume of Yotsuba&!, making her the first Azumanga Daioh character to make an appearance in the series. Osaka is revealed in this volume to be working as a teacher.
Tomo Takino is extremely energetic and competitive, despite being nonathletic and a slacker at the same time. She randomly challenges people to competitions she can't win - mostly Sakaki in sports and Chiyo in scholastics. She tends to irritate everyone around her, but especially Yomi, who has been her classmate since elementary school. Tomo's character is extremely impulsive and she never considers nor cares about the consequences of anything she says or does. She is the only one of the main cast who picks on Chiyo. During the second trip to Chiyo's summer house, Tomo actually grabbed Chiyo's house keys and threw them into the forest because she wanted to see what would happen if they had lost them; which, of course, was a very bad idea. However, on the occasions when Tomo has actually been inspired to concentrate on something, she has demonstrated that she is quite capable. She succeeded in gaining the grades needed to qualify for the same high school as Yomi, though it was only after Yomi ridiculed her and openly said that there was no way that she could do so. Once Tomo began attending high school however, she returned to her lackadaisical ways.
Koyomi "Yomi" Mizuhara , commonly known as Yomi, is a grade-school friend and general antithesis of Tomo. She is the voice of reason of the series, carrying herself as the most mature and sometimes bitter member of the group. Though smart and athletic, she is constantly dissatisfied with herself due to her weight and is always trying various diets in an effort to become thinner. She can never seem to stick to these diets however, as she finds herself constantly tempted by her favorite foods. Another weakness of Yomi's character is that while she is above average in everything else, she is an awful singer, yet karaoke is one of her favorite pastimes. While usually functioning as Tomo's "straight man", she sometimes manifests a rather cruel sense of humor, such as tricking the cat-tongued Osaka into eating an extremely spicy croquette. Compared to most of her peers, Yomi uses more masculine Japanese speech patterns, especially when dealing with Tomo's antics. Yomi also has an uppercut that Tomo is usually on the receiving end of whenever she pushes Yomi too far. However, even though she likes to think that she is well above the immature behavior of some of her classmates, Yomi has demonstrated on certain occasions that she can be just as childish as the rest of the characters, such as trying to get Chiyo to infuse a shrine charm with some of her intelligence so that she could pass her college entrance exams.
Sakaki is a tall, soft-spoken girl uncomfortable with her height and busty physique. Because she is so shy, she seldom speaks, and her reticence is misinterpreted as being mysterious, or cool. This reputation has been compounded by the fact that most of the school's sports teams try to recruit her every year in the story because of her natural athletic ability (she's usually stronger and faster than most of the male students in school), but, for the most part, she has no real interest in sports. Most students think that because of her demeanor, that she dislikes anything and everything adorable and cute. In contrast to what the other students think of her, Sakaki is in reality a very emotionally sensitive person who holds a secret longing for all things cute. She loves animals, but the neighborhood cats dislike her, and her parents do not allow cats in their house because of her mother's allergies. Sakaki ends up spending a lot of time with Chiyo upon finding out that Chiyo's dog, Mr. Tadakichi, will let her pet him. This friendship actually shows the irony of their circumstances, as Sakaki wishes she looked more like Chiyo, so she could openly pursue her interest in cute things, and Chiyo wishes that she looked more like Sakaki so people would take her more seriously. Later in the series, Sakaki also befriends an Iriomote kitten that she meets on a side trip to Iriomote Island during a class trip to Okinawa. Later, the kitten loses its mother and proceeds to seek out Sakaki in Tokyo. Since Sakaki was in danger with the neighborhood's cat leader and the cat's kitty band, the kitten saves her and they soon become close friends. Kagura, at one point, drew over Sakaki's cat drawings, much to Sakaki's dismay. Sakaki is bad at art (shown by small pictures of cats in her note book) and loves Neco Coneco.
Kagura is a later acquaintance, joining Yukari's class in the 2nd year (Yukari selects her as a ringer to win the school athletic competitions). She was originally in Nyamo's class and displays a very competitive spirit with her peers in all things (though she has little success in academics). She devotes most of her time to the swim team (which is why she has a tan most of the time) but is an all-around good athlete, and genuinely nice to her classmates. She has a slight obsession with Sakaki, whom she sees as an athletic rival. This is mostly due to the fact that while Kagura trains constantly to stay in shape, Sakaki is a naturally gifted athlete with no training at all. Like Tomo, Kagura tends to be quite impulsive in her actions (although unlike Tomo, Kagura is consciously aware of this and makes a genuine effort to keep it under control). With the arrival of Kagura, a trio of underachievers — together with Tomo and Osaka — is formed called the "Bonkuras" (which roughly translates to "Team Idiot" or "Blockheads"). Kagura has a sensitive side, which the audience sees in episode six of the anime following her homeroom's defeat in the sports festival, and the final episode following graduation. Kagura and Yukari enjoy playing video games. Like Sakaki, she is quite busty (and Tomo teases both of them about their large breasts), but more tomboyish (in contrast to Sakaki's more elegant nature). She has also made it perfectly clear that she will not tolerate the antics of Mr. Kimura.
Kaori , also known as Kaorin, is a girl infatuated with Sakaki, whose unrequited feelings are a frequent source of anxiety. Her friends seem mostly unaware of her crush on Sakaki, and it is unknown whether or not Sakaki can reciprocate her feelings if she knew about them. In the 2009 manga Azumanga Daioh: Supplementary Lessons, Osaka asks Kaori if she is homosexual. Kaori becomes embarrassed and protests that it's "one of those things peculiar to puberty". Kaori then attempts to prove Osaka wrong by saying she would feel the same way even if Sakaki were a man, which confounds Osaka.
While her given name is Kaori, she is almost always addressed by her nickname of (nicknames are often formed by changing the end of a name in this way to sound cute). Kaorin's surname is speculated to be Aida, judging from a panel in volume one of the manga, however this is still unconfirmed.