Azumanga Daioh

[A Black Falcon]

I just watched the whole series... in a week... I'd rather have broken it up some, but I had to if I wanted to watch it before school starts, since I was renting it... great series. This is another anime that makes me wish animes went multiple seasons more often, though... I like stories that continue, and it's always sad to see things end, especially when, like this one, there is so little structure that it'd be easy to make it a lot longer... :(

Great show, though. Very well done... the "short stories with a cast of set characters" formula works very well. This show doesn't have much in the way of character development... it makes it feel more like a comic strip, where everything always stays the same (even though in this case time does pass, but the characters' looks don't change to reflect that). Which is also fine. :) It's just a great show... simple and easily understandable, but lots of fun to watch. Certainly one of the better animes out there... far better than Record of Lodoss War and Martian Sucessor Nadesico, of which I watched some episodes recently (though I also rented disk 1 of Inuyasha (eps 1-9) and liked it just as much as I like it on Cartoon Network... (and I like it on CN)).

If I had a complaint, though, I guess it'd be 'why have a 7th character (Kaorin; not counting the teachers) when you barely use her'... oh well. Oh yeah, and the ending is appropriately sad-yet-happy... but I was kind of wishing for the final episode to do something totally weird, like the crazy final episode of Excel Saga... :D ... okay, maybe not like THAT... it was just an example, okay? :)