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This is the WMG for Azumanga Daioh

It's really a reminiscence.

Azu got together with the girls 15 years later and spent an evening buying them beer and got them to talk about the years they were in high school together. He recorded it all, sorted it in time order, and showed us what they said. The reason it's surreal is that they were teasing one another and telling tall tales, and Azu shows us the result. That's why all the characters seem extreme. Osaka was spacy but not the total space cadet we're shown; however, the other girls tease her about being a space cadet. Chiyo was definitely smart and cute, but not as smart and as cute (or as rich) as we're shown. Tomo was rambunctious, but not the out-of-control maniac we're shown. But as the girls tell stories about each other, they exaggerate the ways that each of them was unique. And Kimura wasn't really anything like what we're shown. He was just a bit odd, and the girls were afraid of him.

• So, for example, at the beach Tomo was flailing her arms and accidentally knocked the key out of Chiyo's hand into the weeds. Fifteen years later, the other girls tease Tomo that she did it on purpose, and that's what Azu shows us.
• This troper officially loves the series more now that she'll be re-reading it with this in mind.
• For further proof, this troper and his friends were remembering our own high school days... and I realized that it could be summed up semi-accurately as "Azumanga Daioh WITH BOYS". Seriously, some of the antics are freakishly similar, and got embellished in the same way. The "instant nickname" thing in particular actually happenend.
• That One Player? Azu himself.

"Raspberry Heaven" (the ending theme) is being sung/performed by the cast.

Sakaki and Kaorin singing vocals, Tomo on drums, guitar by Kagura, Yomi on the bass, Osaka on the electric guitar (it's there, listen to the full version), Chiyo on the flute, and... Nyamo and Yukari on strings, I guess. But really, think about it. It works.

Osaka is based on Lisa del Giocondo.

Osaka's features are arranged similarly to those of the Mona Lisa, she's spent much of her life moving around, she's not really worldly but she's enigmatic and in an odd way charming... It's very similar to the historic profile of Lisa del Giocondo.

The incident where Osaka comes into Yukari's room with a knife was an actual attempt on Yukari's life that was aborted.

The fact that Osaka rode in The Yukarimobile alone is motive enough. Heck, the threat of having to deal with that on the way back might be argued self-defense; Osaka had to if she wanted to ensure her own survival. Combine it with the rest of the indignities Yukari put Osaka through... face it, Osaka is far from the only one in existence that would attempt it.

Kagura developed a crush on Sakaki after meeting her for real.

She starts out reserved, only showing enthusiasm for sports (if it can be called enthusiasm) and competing against Sakaki in particular, but eventually starts opening up while walking home along the same route as Sakaki and even after becoming friendly with other classmates remained closest by far to Sakaki (staying near her at the festival, adding to Sakaki's textbook doodles after borrowing the textbook from her in the first place, and rarely if ever interacting with other classmates outside the Bonkuras'/Knuckleheads' stunts [including vicious competition with Tomo] and group activities). Whether it's a het-crush, If It's You It's Okay, or something else is up to the individual reader (note that this is not incompatible with the Asexual Kagura theory).

• • Perhaps Sakaki's increased interaction with Kagura towards the end of the series proves that the attraction is mutual. She seems willing to open up to Kagura, sharing quite a few heartwarming moments with her.

When Kimura said "What I wouldn't give to watch them changing," he wasn't talking about the girls

He was talking about the traffic lights. He just has a strange fascination with street lights.

• I wonder what the name of a traffic light fetish is?
• This would require him not to know that traffic lights changing is really easy to watch happening. Unless... he meant that he wants to watch them changing the bulbs...?

Chiyo-Chan will bring about the Apocalypse in a forthcoming omake chapter (possible frontcover)

• In exactly the fashion of Narutaru, the intro (and the anime at first) is happy and cheerful but audaciously foreshadows the future plot in deranged little clips. In the last part of the intro (beginning @ 1:17), a Chiyo-Chichi-The-ICBM is shown launched from an underground silo into the dark, blood-red sky, followed by Chiyo-Chan bringing down a literal curtain (the last frame) on the world.
  • In volume 2 of the manga, some of the chapter breaks have a couple of the main students or teachers with their heights in centimeters. After the July special, we see that Neco Coneco has infinite height -- which is curious but not terribly important to this -- while Chiyo-chichi has the number 51461367522. If this is his height in centimeters, it's a few hundred thousand miles high. Alternatively... access code?

What'll Chiyo do in America?

She will study biology, esp. cloning technology, and become a kind of Mad Scientist, just much cuter. When she's visited years later, she's perfected cloning technology, and flooded America with her clones.

• The machine that makes the clones is called the Chiyomatic. It has to be.
  • She will meet Rebecca Miyamoto in MIT and become rivals with her due to their diametrically opposed personalities. When they both return to Japan they enter a Dr Light/Dr Wily relationship. Each enters a high school as a teacher in a bet to show who is the better educator in one of a long series of one-upsmanship duels. Chiyo naturally returns to her alma mater.
    • Where she will be reunited with Osaka Kasuga-sensei.
      • OH MY GOD! Someone remembered Osaka's name!
• I disagree. When she's 16 years old she will perfect time travel, realise everything in the future is going to break and will attempt to stop it by enrolling into a local high school, assuming the name "Asahina Mikuru".
  • This Troper finds that this statement makes entirely too much sense (based on the anime).
• There was a picture based on this. Chiyo changes her name to Penny and is adopted by Inspector Gadget.
• While Chiyo is in America, she'll meet Honey and between his brawn and her brains they'll become a Battle Couple and Fight Crime.

Osaka will grow up to become a murderer.

It sort of makes sense if you think about it.

• Osaka already is a murderer. She smothered Chiyo's father with the orange cat-thing, and his ghost took its shape to enter dreams.
• So would you say Osaka qualifies as an Uncanny Valley Girl then? She does seem kinda similar to Ryoko Asakura at times.

Their class reunion is to go see Toy Story 3.

Eight years have passed since the girls graduated in 2002. Sakaki is now a veterinarian and living happily in her own home with Maya, Tomo is currently part of the Interpol, Yomi works as a highly accredited business woman, Kagura is now a full time swimming and fitness instructor, Yukari and Nyamo are still teaching and still single, and Osaka has recently joined them as a Creative Writing teacher. As for Chiyo chan, is now 19, has graduated from Stanford, obtained a PHD and recently returned with Mr. Tadakichi from their stay in the United States. But they've been keeping in touch over the years and decide that for 2010, they should all meet up to see each other again. They meet up at their old high school and then head off to the Toho Cinema Theater. There, Sakaki sneaks in Maya and Yomi convinces the theater patron that Mr. Tadakichi is a seeing eye-dog for Tomo. They then sit down for the long awaited animated sequel to one of their favorite childhood films, Toy Story 3.

• • I am intrigued by your ideas and wish to subscribe to your newsletter. Though I think Kagura is a swimming instructor at the same school as Osaka, Nyamo and Yuakari

Tomo does eventually join Interpol. And she rocks at it.

In the future, a grown-up Chiyo-chan is abducted from her home, because of her rich parents and tiny stature, and taken abroad so her kidnappers can hold her to ransom. Except who could it be flying through the window into their hideout but Tomo! Unfortunately, she seems to be her old idiotic, overly aggressive self, to the point that the thugs don't even take her seriously ... until she proves how foolish they were to underestimate her. Asskicking ensues.

• • So her Action Girl fantasies of being Fujiko Mine are in a way satisfied.
    • Better yet, the reason she joins Interpol is because of her desire to be Fujiko. She has a thing for Lupin, and what better way to meet him than to help Zenigata track him down.
  • Tomo becomes a Warehouse 13 agent (she's a bit like a male Pete) with Claudia as her boss. Hell, why not Yomi as well?
  • There is at least one fanfic on fanfic.net detailing this. Its rather good, if you can hunt it down.

Sakaki will have to put down Mr. Tadakichi in the future

All things considered, dogs don't live very long. By the time that Sakaki graduates from veterinary college and becomes a veterinarian, Mr. Tadakichi will only be a few years away from his end. Chiyo will also have graduated and gone back to Japan from America. Chiyo wouldn't want just any veterinarian to help her.

Chiyo-Chan's pigtails are subject to a bizarre sort of displaced Gainaxing.

Watch the intro to the five-minute short where Osaka is daydreaming. Chiyo-Chan is riding on a her dog, Mr. Tadakichi, and her pigtails bounce perkily with each step the comparatively-massive animal takes. Then, in the short proper, Osaka is tempted to wrap her hands around them, just reach out and touch them, and falls victim to a pigtail-lust-induced daydream that swiftly turns into a nightmare. Clearly, there's some sort of pigtail fetish involved on Osaka's part, and it's being mocked by fate.

• Pigtail fetish? Maybe Osaka is the alternate universe version of Paul from Wayside School.
• Maybe she just thinks they're weird.
  • Maybe she just wants them to herself. Remember her New Year's dream where she killed Chiyo for them?
    • In Osaka's defense, it was an accident.

Kamineko just really likes the way Sakaki tastes.

Think about it. Why else would he keep luring her to him and then biting her? Why does he always seem to crop up wherever she's headed? He wants to snack on her tasty, tasty fingers. But once she starts trying to shake him off, he can't get his teeth through her hand, and gives up. This is also why he rallies the neighborhood cats, hoping that by attacking as a group, they can finally overpower her, like lionesses taking down a gazelle.

• This could be taken further; Kamineko isn't hungry for her flesh, but her pain. The cat loves to tease, then dash her hopes, with a little physical pain as garnish. Could be taken to a spiritual level, with Mayaa appearing to be her guardian.
  • This could even be tied into Tomo and Yomi's discussion about living in the post-war era. Remember, Mayaa first appeared in the episode set on Okinawa, where Japan lost the final battle. It is actually possible that Sakaki's story is some sort of weird metaphor for Japanese history, at least in some spiritual way.
    • Let's see...Sakaki=Japan, Kamineko=America (he's mean to her, but she does provoke him...), Mayaa=Britain, which fought the Japanese at Okinawa when the Americans were on Iwo Jima and which convinced the American government not to destroy Japan entirely? That actually works.
    • No it doesn't, there was never a point in time where Britain needed to convince America not to "destroy Japan completely". I understand that the whole world hates us but we big, bad, boisterous, boorish, undereducated, hateful Americans don't have genocide on the brain. If we were gonna snap and wipe a civilization off the map don't you think we would've done it by now. Britain wasn't involved at all after Japan's surrender, and Sakaki never "surrendered" to Kameneko anyway. Before America entered the war, Japan had committed several extreme war crimes. Ever heard of the Nanking Massacre or "The Rape of Nanking"? Essentially, it's the Japanese equivalant of the holocaust, on a much smaller scale mind you, it has it's own deniers and everything. Sounds just like Sakaki don't it? And your metaphor for Japan and America's relationship at the time is "America is mean to Japan but they provoke it"? The Japanese BOMBED the U.S! And they did it to force America to enter the war. Ever hear of Pearl Harbor? I know they took that out of Japanese textbooks but it should be there in whatever country you're from. And America helped Japan rebuild itself of their own accord, they weren't convinced by another country to do it. When exactly did Kameneko help "rebuild Sakaki"? So your metaphor is a) historically inaccurate, b) doesn't work, and c) quite frankly offended me. Go to That Other Wiki and look up "Empire of Japan" and scroll down to the section on the Tripartite Pact, figure this stuff out for yourself.
• Kagura did ask whether Sakaki's hand smells like fish.
  • <Insert obvious Jill-off joke here.>
    • I will not. Such a joke would be in bad taste.

Kamineko is an abandoned housecat.

The usual reaction of a scared cat left outdoors is to run away quickly or scratch. Biting is rare, unless a cat is declawed. This suggests Kamineko was probably owned by someone and abandoned, which may explain his rotten personality. Unfortunately, abandoned cats are the sort of sob story that would keep a softie like Sakaki from ever holding a grudge against him.

• Didn't Chiyo say the family with the gray cat moved away?
  • That was to say why Kamineko was now in power of the street cats; a power shift.

Kimura has a nose injury.

Think about it. If he's just drooling over the girls, why does he never close his mouth, even when alone?

• I don't remember in the anime proper, but in his first couple appearances in the manga, his mouth is closed. He could've suffered the injury after those, though.
  • Indeed, his mouth is always open in the anime, but in his early appearances in the manga it's closed. I believe it's suggested he has some sort of mental breakdown (although I forget what the exact cause is, it probably involves high-school girls) which causes his subsequent expression.
    • His mouth is closed ONCE IN THE ANIME. We see it closed in the family photo she shows the girls when he proves that the woman they encountered is indeed his wife. ... and he's smiling! Maybe it was taken years before the anime started, and he got a nose injury shortly after that photo, and his mouth never closed since.
  • To be specific, his mouth is shut during the first three strips he appears in ("CAUSE I LIKE HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS!") and the following two ("Tuck your gym shirt into your shorts"). It is open at all times afterwards. It's probably Art Evolution, similar to how Chiyo-chan's pigtails go from shaggy to teardrop-shaped.
• He had a stroke and lost control of his facial muscles (yet somehow still has no problem talking intelligibly).

Chiyo is an orphan but deludes herself and others into thinking her parents are alive.

Consider the following: In the episode which shows her morning routine, she claims to wake her parents and have breakfast with them. All we see is Chiyo standing in a door opening and then sitting at the corner of a table, eating. The camera goes out of its way to avoid showing the parents supposedly sitting next to her. The beach trips start at her house, but her parents never come out to see the girls off. In the case of the other girls, there are never any on-screen situations in which it seems odd that parents are not seen. And the parents supposedly let a bunch of teenage girls and two women-children have free reign of their beach house and custody of their preteen daughter without coming along to keep an eye on things. Chiyo's genius intellect has allowed her to keep up the charade by forging signatures, synthesizing voices on the phone and paying people to pretend to be her parents. Perhaps she even murdered them herself, though given Chiyo's personality, this is unlikely. The idea that a girl her age would be traumatized by the death of her parents to the point of psychosis, however, does seem plausible.

• Another piece of supporting evidence is Chiyo-chichi (the weird flat cat thing). He must be some kind of supernatural entity, because he's appeared independently in more than one character's dreams, with the same claim about being Chiyo's father. Maybe he's the ghost of Chiyo's father, dropping by once in a while to thank Chiyo's friends for looking out for her.
  • ...Wooooow. I can buy that.
  • Perhaps his strange reaction to the color red is from his particularly bloody murder? I dunno.
  • Purely in the interest of throwing fuel on a fire: in the manga, Chiyo-chichi spazzes out about the idea that Sakaki had made hats based upon his head, saying "If you cut me from here [indicating a line below his eyes but above his mouth] upwards, what would happen? ... To die in such a hated way ..."
    • There IS a Japanese folktale about a vengeful female ghost who had been raped and killed with her face slashed all the way across. This seems to be plausibly the basis for Chiyo's reaction.
  • Well there is some evidence against this in that the door of her house is clearly being held open by something when she leaves for school and the same something can close the door as well.
  • Perhaps, given the wealth Chiyo-chan enjoys, she has a butler taking care of the estate and assuming guardianship of Chiyo-chan. The others would then assume the parents are just never around when they visit. Or that they're in different parts of the mansion.
• Maybe Chiyo-chichi ascended at some point? That would allow everything above to be true while taking Chiyo's cheerful personality and apparent lack of trauma into account. I can see her being very proud of her father if that's the case.
  • Did the government pay for this?
    • Yes. And he flies at Mach 100.
• Alternatively Chiyo is an orphan but the rest of the cast (at the very least Nyamo and Yukari) deludes her into thinking her parents are alive, no one could bring themselves to tell her.
  • It does raise the question though who Nyamo bows to when she thanks for the car hired by Chiyo's parents.
    • Nobody. She chose to play along rather than try to act as a psychiatrist.
• I think I remember hearing Chiyo's mother calling for her from offscreen once. Though, if I'm remembering correctly, Chiyo was the only one in the room, so it might've been her imagination.
• However, she said that her parents ordered the car for the second summer house trip. I doubt that a twelve-year old girl could convince a company to dispense a car to her house. Apart from cleaning said house, keeping the stock up, etc.
  • As said above: "synthesizing voices on the phone and paying people to pretend to be her parents." And for the work, there are maids and cleaning services after all. It's not like she wouldn't have inherited all of it.
    • There has to be some legal guardian looking after her. Even if she managed all of the household work, someone involved in delivering food or other regular stuff would notice a ten to twelve year old girl who seems to always answer the door and takes all the stuff into her home without help. Some store owner would get concerned about her always shopping alone if she shops outside. And that's only the people she doesn't know. What relatives would leave an eleven year old girl on their own? Either they never visit and don't know about the circumstances, Chiyo is the last of her line, or on a more sinister note, Chiyo has very good reasons for avoiding her relatives. Yukari hovers above reality occasionally, but she'd start to wonder why her parents never show up to parents meetings. Failing that, Nyamo would certainly notice the parents absence at sports events. And after all that, one of the five teenage friends she has would ask the "Where are your parents?" question at some point. Get round that one. Of course, maybe thats why Chiyo is so quick to ask to go out or suggests holidaying at the beach house. After that, there's the issues of billing, registering with new schools, taxes, and other stuff no child could do for age reasons, and finally just the fact that there's this strange little girl who you never see the parents of. Someone would ask a question for which an answer didn't exist. Finally, there's going to university. Another massive stumbling block... On the other hand, to throw further fuel on this fire, consider Chiyo's personality. She's constantly cheerful and smiling, thats for sure, but she's also hugely self-reliant and responsible. She has a job, always pulls her weight in projects, even in things like sports where she's physically outmatched, has more common sense than the vast majority of teenagers and many adults, and she's a friggin genius. Its obvious she's both smart and works hard. Concievably, she could pull this off by being careful who she talked to and mastering just about every kind of fraud in the book... the question is, why would she? Are there reasons she has to?... sinister things are a foot in WMG today!... er... just got hit by the Fridge Logic... as to why she mentions her parents... she's lying to us? (Ok now we're moving out of unlikely and into meta.)
      • The answer to everything in this paragraph is that her father is either Heihachi/Kazuya Mishima or Gendo Ikari...
      • Or alternatively, the answer to everything in that paragraph is that her parents are just really neglectful, but Chiyo's alright with that because she assumes they give her space because she's really mature/smart. I could see her folks just ceasing to raise her when it became apparent they didn't need to. Maybe they treat her like a roommate instead of a daughter.
• Chiyo is actually God who just likes to surround herself with Bishoujos. Probably because the class is so incredibly funny she wanted to be a part. Her Dad is a self insert of the Author, who is quite literally the thing closest to a father for a In story God. After they graduated she went "abroad", well probably because she doesn't want to spend too long on a planet with only so much action.
  • Something here sounds a little familiar.
    • If we go with a "Chiyo is a Haruhi" theory, you could say that she was born into a family with abusive parents who she hated, and so they conveniently died. She has butlers, maids, and Tadakichi taking care of her, and tons of money to live off of, etc. Anything she wants where she wants something that would require a parent she can create a convenient substitute for, possibly Chiyo-chichi.
    • That may explain Chiyo-chichi's appearance in Osaka and Sakaki's dreams/daydreams as well. After all, those two are the ones who seem to be closest to Chiyo...
    • Wouldn't she end up being taller if what she wanted came to pass?

The door? Nobody wonders? A Wizard Did It!

• Ah, clearly that means they are alive... but have tragically lost their minds, (violin music starts) being just sane enough to wave goodbye... with distraught little Chiyo looking after them and herself alone, because she's afraid if she tells anyone that she'll be taken away from them... secretly struggling with adult life while maintaining a brave face to the world...

The orange cat thing really is Chiyo's actual father.

She just has a really weird family. Continuing in this vein, everything that has ever been claimed about him is true. He really is Santa Claus, et cetera.

• And this means Chiyo-Chan isn't human, and thus those aren't pigtails... those are her ears. They're attached to the same place on her head as her freaky ghost-cat father's are on his, and they occasionally perk or droop as befits her mood, like the ears of many animals, such as dogs and cats, do.
  • Except we do actually see her with her hair down at least once.
    • This troper counts thrice: the two times we see her in bed, and one occasion when Tomo imitated her by pulling her own hair into pigtails, which Chiyo mocked by undoing hers.
    • Er... Osaka's right and they're really detachable?... Er, well, that one time... Yeah, I got nothin'.
  • Well, if it works for the Ferengi...
• Tadakichi is translated into English as a Mr, but there's nothing inherently masculine about "san". MOM???
  • CANNOT UNSEE.
  • In English, Chiyo calls Tadakichi-san a "perfect gentleman" (manga) or a "man of character" (anime). Is there anything inherently masculine about the term jinkakusha?
• This would also explain her Implausible Hair Color. Not quite the same shade, but the Cat-Thing is orange-ish.

Kimura's wife is on the school board.

She knows about her husband's schoolgirl fetish, and pulls strings to keep him from getting fired.

• Or maybe he just has tenure
• Maybe she married him for his money. He has enough to freely make very generous donations to charity on a regular basis.
  • He did donate 10,000 yen on New Years, Book 4, and wished for world peace... Frightened a Miko, maybe?
  • Or maybe her door swings both ways, and shares his schoolgirl fetish....

Minamo Kurosawa had a short-lived crush on Mr. Kimura.

Minamo Kurosawa even wrote him a love letter when he was younger and better looking, but lost interest in him before having a chance to mail it. Yukari Tanizaki found the letter before she had the chance to burn it, and threatens to out her whenever she needs to keep Nyamo quiet about something.

• See volume 4, page 78.
• Hmmm. In episode 4 he does use her nickname, Nyamo. Normally only Yukari calls her that. Suggests they know each other well.
  • Perhaps, but he also calls Kaori "Kaorin" over her objections. On the other hand, Minamo doesn't object to it, even though she does tell Yukari to stop using it at school... but that could just be because she had more important things to yell at him about.
  • Outside of that occasion he always calls her Kurosawa-sensei, so he was probably just being his inane-self and pulling his "Can I call you by your nickname?" stunt like he does with everyone (so in other words, *never* let him find out your nickname!). In any case, if anyone was ever involved in a love-letter incident with Kimura, then it was Yukari [1]

Kimura isn't a pervert

... Just an *******; the reason he focuses his harassment on Kaorin is because he finds her utter revulsion hilarious.

• ...This makes more sense the more I think about it. The maniacal laughter...
  • My favorite fan-theory is that he did it so the boys would respect and listen to him and the girls would be scared/revolted and listen to him. And that he only targets girls that would never return the 'feelings' i.e. Kaorin. This troper's own theory is that he does it to make girls realize that they are Schoolgirl Lesbians.
  • It would also explain the pool water incident. He was telling Kagura to wear a swim suit to pick on her, and then asked her to get pool water to creep her out.
• FIIIIIIRST PLAAAAACE VIIIICTOOOORRYYYYY!
• This goes back to the theory that his wife is either on the schoolboard or he has a lot of money. Way I figure it he went into teaching to try and pass on knowledge to the next generation (from his actions he probably is extremely idealist) but became cynical in that regard when he realised that most school students really don't care and will most of the time choose the most self-serving route. Because he's basically stuck with his career decision and can't get fired, he acts like an ass to try to both vent out his frustration and find the humor in the situation.
• Alternatively, Kimura is putting on the act of Chivalrous Pervert in an attempt to endear himself to the students, however he is not quite Genre Savvy enough to realize the combination of overdoing it and his slack-jawed, disheveled appearance give the impression of 'just plain pervert'.
• He has a strange form of Tourettes Syndrome that makes him say perverted things that he doesn't mean, his expression is one of shock and embarrassment.
• He's actually a nice, if bland teacher. At one point, he imitated a character from a TV show he liked, "BECAUSE I LIKE HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS!", but noone got the reference. He continues to do it, because he's more popular now.

Osaka's dilated pupils are proof that she's constantly on drugs.

According to The Other Wiki, dilated pupils are caused by "disease, trauma or drugs". She looks healthy and she can't have spent the entire show with head trauma, so clearly she's on something.

• The obstacle race scene where she repeatedly faceplants in white flour for fun in episode 15 may be a nod to drugs.
• Duuuude... that explains so much!
• Perhaps she's on Ritalin. If that's what she's like on the meds...
• Or she takes meds against depression. This troper takes them, and her pupils have dilated quite a bit as a side-effect (better than the headaches, nausea, derealization and fatigue from before, I guess).
• Perhaps she takes some sort of anti-hyperactivity medicine, similar to Ritalin. It could explain her weird behavior; it's a side-effect.
  • Unless I'm gravely mistaken, Ritalin and such (Dexedrine, heck, even caffeine will do in a pinch) don't work that way, even for ADD or ADHD kids. Attention deficit disorders result from the relevant glands not producing enough dopamine: Ritalin and other stimulants are chemically similar and thus, in the proper doses, can supplement the deficiency. On meds, an ADD kid's behavior is pretty much indistinguishable from anybody else's.
    • You seem to have never been on Ritalin for long periods of times. Yes, it can turn you into Osaka. Personal experience will vouch for this
    • My Brother takes ADD/ADHD medication, and he acts like a total Osaka when he doesn't take his medication. Maybe Oskaka is like my brother.

Kimura's wife is a literal angel.

Mr. Kimura appears to be a good teacher despite his Lolicon tendencies. However, the forces of Heaven saw that without some sort of restraint, he would ruin his own life and end up in prison by acting on them. One of the angels descended, took on physical form, and arranged to have Mr. Kimura fall in love with and marry her. She truly loves him ("an angel is love", Barbarella taught us), and as she has taken true physical form was able to give birth to a daughter. Her assignment on Earth is to act as a Restraining Bolt to Kimura through providing him with a family, thus making it somewhat easier to subliminate his lolicon urges into weird statements and occasional ogling. She's a bit of a Dojikko because she never has gotten the hang of having a physical body.

• Alternately: Kimura is also an angel. He and his wife were sent down from heaven to give their daughter a loving family. As to why he's always after HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS; well, heaven has considerably more lax sexual mores than Earth
• Shades of Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokuro-chan? I think he'd be a bit much for Belldandy to handle.
• Alternately: Mrs. Kimura literally is an angel. Being married to a being (somehow) married to an Eldritch Abomination looking creature, he uses an interest in high school girls, because honestly, why wants to sleep with an eye covered wheel?
  • Forgive me, but that made very little sense at all. Could someone clear this up?
    • That troper was saying that maybe his wife was an Ophan.

Kagura's full name is Kagura Kagura.

That's why no one calls her anything other than "Kagura".

• So Sakaki is Sakaki Sakaki?
  • No, Sakaki is San Sakaki -- no one calls her anything other than "Sakaki San".
• Kagura is at one point called "Kagura-san". Therefore both her last name and first name are "Kagura". QED.
  • Her first name is Asamu, I think... she's introduced fully when she first arrives.
  • No, you're thinking of Ayumu Kasuga (AKA Osaka).
  • San can be added to both last names and first names: look at Miyuki-san.

Nyamo and Yukari had a Romantic Two-Girl Friendship when in school.

This is almost Fanon. The "Loveletter" incident is about how Nyamo wanted a go to next level.

• It still doesn't explain why Nyamo would be so embarrassed about that letter, since it's pretty ordinary for girls in a Romantic Two-Girl Friendship to do stuff like that. Yukari would have likely done some lovey-dovey stuff herself then. It would explain though why Nyamo has such a high tolerance for Yukari's childish behavior, since she might still have some of the old feelings for her.
  • Nyamo's embarrassment has a couple of explanations, for one there's a bit of difference between not being ashamed of an old romance and wanting the kids you teach to know who you used to be into. Alternately, would you feel like owning up to having fallen for Yukari, to kids who've had her as a teacher?
  • Or it could have been extremely recently. You see Nyamo get angered when Yukari mentions that she wasn't single last summer. Maybe she didn't want the students to know because they think of Yukari as odd. Perhaps they agreed to just be friends and never speak of it again? That also explains why they never mention the love letter to the rest of the group because that would mean acknowledging the relationship. Come to think of it, one would wonder how far they got in their relationship and ****it I'm aroused now.
  • They may or may not have gone on a date [2] And [3]
• There's been at least one Fanfic implying that the main reason Nyamo has stayed by Yukari's side for all these years is a lingering feeling on her.
  • The feeling may be reciprocrated. In that episode where Yukari and Nyamo are having dinner with that chick and her two single co-workers, Yukari may have said they were boring to drop hints and Nyamo. That, and it seems she scared then off. maybe deliberately.

Chiyo-chichi is the author, Kiyohiko Azuma.

It all makes sense now! That's why he calls himself Chiyo's father -- he created her. That's why he can appear in every character's dreams. That's why he's omnipresent, floating around in every other scene. That's why fictional bullets can't harm him and he can knock fictional baseballs out of the park. He can do anything he wants because he's writing himself doing it. To top it off, when Barasui drew an omake depicting his meeting with Azuma, he drew Azuma as Chiyo-chichi.

• Holy crap, that's it!
  • Pretty much confirmed by Word of God, as this is his Author Avatar. I guess he appeared in Yotsubato too, in a few panels, but not sure about it.
    • He appeared on the front of Fuuka's shirt. The other characters comment on her lack of fashion sense.
      • And as a stuffed toy, to which a cup-and-string telephone is tied so each end can be in a house.
      • This raises another question: Why does the Azuma appear directly in this show, but not Yotsuba&!? Perhaps the Azumanga Daioh universe is less stable, prompting more intervention?
    • So Azuma chose to be voiced by Norio Wakamoto? Good taste.

Chiyo-chichi is Chiyo's father, but she doesn't know it because she's adopted.

Chiyo was adopted by her parents when she was a baby and they haven't told her. Chiyo-chichi is her biological father, and he is from a species that can travel through others dreams. He worries about Chiyo and because Sakaki is protective about her already, revealed himself to Sakaki. Osaka was able to buy a Chiyo-chichi doll for Chiyo because another member of the same species, or even Chiyo's father himself, had gone into a dream of the designer accidentally and inspired it. Osaka dreamt him because the idea was already in her head, from Sakaki muttering about Chiyo's dad when seeing the doll and designing the hat. Chiyo doesn't know because her father wants her to have as normal a childhood as possible so he's waiting to reveal himself. Also, Chiyo-chichi doesn't really look like that, that's just how he looks when he's in other peoples' dreams. He actually looks rather human.

• Alternatively, the Chiyo-chichi we see is an avatar of a super intelligent psychic with the powers of levitation and dream travelling. Chiyo inherited the intellect but not the psychic abilities. He is watching from afar, but a terrible incident caused him to appear as he does on-screen, although he still has the physical form of a human. He looks different in actuality, but the rendition appears as so because the camera cannot capture it accurately. Fearing for his daughter, he left her up for adoption and has been watching her through her friends ever since. When he appears in the reality of the characters, he is there to indirectly ensure Chiyo stays out of harm's way. It was the Chiyo-chichi that got them enough time to finish the second culture festival preparations and led the Maya to rescue Sakaki and Chiyo. The dolls shaped like him are talismans through which he exerts the power to ensure his daughter's safety. If he does show up and Chiyo appears to have been hurt anyway, it was to test her guardians for a future peril; for example, he flies by the school just before Chiyo is hit on the head with a baseball from a great distance, but she was none the worse for it in the next scene thanks to the quick response from her friends.

Both of Chiyo-chan's parents are in important, high-paying jobs.

Thus explaining both the Big Fancy House and the fact that we never see either of them. Their work ethic seems to have rubbed off on Chiyo herself, too, if her job at the Magneton Burger and her incredibly good grades are anything to go by.

Chiyo's friends from primary school.

Noone has an idea why they look like child versions of Nyamo and Yukari? They even have similar names. Come on, there must be some kind of connection...

• Theory one: A nefarious cloning experiment.
  • The Patriots have cloned Nyamo and Yukari to create the prefect slice-of-life high school teachers!
• Theory two: Both Nyamo and Yukari got knocked up when they were 14 or thereabouts, each had a daughter strongly resembling themselves at about the same time, and both were adopted away and by coincidence wound up in the same class in school.
  • Possible Sequel Hook: By the end of the series, they will enter high school as freshmen. They enter the same school and get their respective lookalike teacher for homeroom. Or the reverse. Does hilarity ensue or not?
• It's not inconceivable that the Azumanga Daioh universe is cyclical or temporally recursive. * User:Blink Dawg checks all the volumes for Ourobouros symbolism*

Sakaki's family is almost as rich as Chiyo's

During her explanation her day to day life Chiyo mentions that Sakaki lives in the same neighborhood as her, and while that doesn't neccessarily mean that the Sakaki's are wealthy generally speaking you don't have a mansion in the middle of a slum. While Sakaki may not be as well of as Chiyo, the fact that they live in the same neighborhood strongly suggests she is by no means lower class. As well, Sakaki shows a lot of traditional knowledge. Her first suggested cure for the hiccups was an old folk remedy, and she was the only person besides Chiyo who knew how to properly dress in a kimono, including their teachers. She also has a great deal of knowledge about flowers, and while we don't know if she actually practices it flower arrangment is a very traditional art form and could explain how she learned so much about flowers. This suggests that not only does her family have money, but that it's old money. Which then leads to the next WMG...

Sakaki is descended from samurai.

Besides her possible wealth, Sakaki is very physically capable, and because Lamarck Was Right this shows that her ancestors were also very physically fit. Sakaki has also shown that she almost looks natural with a weapon in her hands during the summer festival. She also has extremely good reflexes as shown when she catches the snowball and hurls it back and a lot of her classmates are intimidated by her at first, before they get to know her better. This is because Sakaki is a natural born warrior, descended from a long line of such warriors, and the traits that made her ancestors a success before Japan westernised haven't quite left yet.

• * pictures Sakaki in Samurai armor and with a katana* Sweet.
  • Further evidence of this is Sakaki's hair. Daughters of samurai families grew their hair long and never cut it. Sakaki has rather long hair.
  • Also, her inability to connect with cats is a result of actions by her ancestors. When he or she was in mortal combat with a cat demon and won, the demon cursed with his dying breath that his brothers would forever torment their line, and their descendants would be inevitably drawn to cats even though they would be hated by them. Since the demon was specifically a iriomote cat demon, only an iriomote cat could accept Sakaki and lift the curse. Then Sakaki met Maya and the rest is history.
    • I demand to see fanfic of that. And fanart of the battle.
    • Enjoy. https://web.archive.org/web/20110811035857/http://cartoonlion.deviantart.com/art/A-Samurai-s-Battle-132835442
  • We never find out her full name. I propose that she is Ishikawa Sakaki, daughter of Goemon. He has a weakness for beautiful women, and fathered an illegitimate daughter at some point. He sends a portion of his income to her, explaining her possible wealth. Sakaki inherited her fathers pure genetic badassery (which we already know goes back 13 generations) as well as his quiet stoic nature.
    • • ...That is awesome. I demand it become fanon now.
      • Me too. Sakaki with a sword.....droool.

Osaka has narcolepsy.

Do I need to explain this? When she stops in the middle of the sidewalk to daydream about America run by miniature Chiyos, she's actually asleep, even though her eyes are still open. I'm told that waking sleepwalkers can lead to injury, which is probably why Yomi advised against it.

• Thought she had some sort of autism, but yet, your theory might be plausible.

The nature of Tomo and Yomi's friendship is ambiguous.

Consider what we know about their friendship from the series:

• They have been friends since grade school, long enough for Tomo to tell stories about themselves.
• Despite continued physical abuse to one another, they still consider each other friends.
• Almost all of the yelling in the series is between them.
• Yomi allows Tomo to copy her homework and even hang out in her bedroom at night.
• Yomi trusts Tomo enough to ask her to tape a television show.

I've been considering various possibilities about the start of their friendship and only one of them makes sense. While it appears that Yomi is the dominant figure, the role must have been reversed when they first met. Yomi has self-esteem issues that could have been rooted in her childhood. While they manifest mainly in concerns over her figure in the series, it could have been much worse earlier. She was bullied for being the smart one in first grade, being called the Japanese equivalent of "four-eyes" and such. Being berated so much may account for her present tendency to snark angrily. Tomo, hyper as always, defends her. I can see Tomo as the mean girl type as a child, playing rough with the other children with little regard for their safety. (Consider how hard she attacks Osaka when trying to stop her hiccups in the anime or her lack of guilt when she brains Chiyo with the volleyball at the start of the series.) Yomi, in gratitude for Tomo always looking out for her, clings onto her and allows her to copy homework, oblivious to her annoying hyperactive behavior. The inverse is also possible: Tomo has always copied Yomi's work and felt compelled to protect her, for as long as she was well, she could keep copying her. The net result is the same: Yomi thanks her with her trust. As time passed, Yomi grew up and Tomo didn't, gradually causing the friendship to evolve into the form we see now. By the end of middle school, Yomi appears to have gotten over the co-dependent phase but not the sense of companionship, as she is apparently indifferent to Tomo's aspiration to enroll in the same high school as her. When she learns that Tomo has indeed been accepted into the same school as her, she is surprised as Tomo claims but not angry. Tomo in turn did it not to annoy Yomi as she says but because she wanted to stay by her side. There aren't any signs of disappointment or surprise when Tomo ends up in the same class as her every year in high school, suggesting that she secretly hoped for it.

When Tomo is about to tell a story from their past early in the anime, Yomi calls her out on it, as if to stop her. When she instead chooses to tell the moldy bread incident, Yomi takes Chiyo with her away from the scene, breathing a sigh of relief in the process off-screen. As for why she didn't tell something more interesting, either she knows enough not to open old wounds like that or she simply forgot. The latter is more likely, as Yomi denotes that Tomo "has always been like that". The former is supported by the few times when Tomo leverages Yomi into allowing her to copy her homework simply by reminding her of their friendship.

• No one's brought up Schoolgirl Lesbians yet? In the Azumanga section of Fanfiction.net, there are probably almost as many Tomo/Yomi Slash Fics as there are Konata/Kagami fics in the Lucky Star section. Both couples have a similar Boke and Tsukkomi dynamic. Lest we forget Azumanga is noted on the Everyone Is Gay page...
  • More fuel to the fire: Tomo has made references to Yomi sleeping in the nude. How would Tomo know about that?
    • Um...where is that from? It would help with our...wild mass guessing.
      • When they were planning on going to Magical Land, Yomi bought a guidebook and stayed out late reading it on a bench. She caught a chill, then a fever which kept her from going when they planned. The first person she is shown telling is Tomo. When the rest of them went to ML (instead of visiting the sick), Chiyo called Yomi to find out how she was doing, and chided her for falling asleep naked. Tomo was the first one Yomi thought of who would tell Chiyo that ("Koyomi's Ordeals").
  • It's entirely possible that Tomo is a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, but the series doesn't usually involve situations depressing enough for the Heart Of Gold part to shine through. Yomi would logically have seen that side more often than us.
• Regardless of their actual relationship, there is evidence that either Yomi is, in fact, into girls, or she has some sort of strange combination of an inferiority complex (mostly her weight), narcissistic personality disorder (mostly her need to lord her intelligence over Tomo, likely a result of all the other stuff about which she is insecure), and masochism (being the Tsukkomi to Tomo's Boku character type). That is, the reaction she had at the final-year sports festival to Kaorin saying, "You look so cute in your cheerleading outfit
• Perhaps Yomi developed deep feelings for Tomo at the end of grade school, and that's why she is willing to put up with all of Tomo's antics. We don't see Tomo's heart of gold moments towards Yomi.

Kimura's daughter is dead, and Kaorin is his unwitting replacement.

Kimura's daughter doesn't show up other than in the photo (as far as I've seen), so perhaps his creepy behaviour is just a misguided attempt to substitute Kaorin for his daughter. The sudden appearances at the pool, for example, might just be him trying to do what he thinks a father should do, ie cheer their daughter on.

• This has now entered my personal cannon as a fantastic starting point for humanising the man, the tragedy is he never even considers that what he says could be interpreted sexually because in his mind he's talking about his daughter.
• The daughter does appear in the manga during one of the sports festivals, albeit off-screen.
  • She appears on-screen in the anime, I'm afraid. Same episode as we see the photo.
• Kimura loved his wife a lot. He must have loved his daughter~ But his daughter died, so Kimura tries to get every cute girl to become his lost daughter. He isn't a pervert, but a man with a broken heart. He probably has been trying for 5 years. Later, he will probably focus on Sakaki.
  • He wasn't wishing for world peace! He was wishing his daughter luck in the afterlife! Or maybe asking the shrine's patron god to bring her pocket money.
• Maybe Kimura had another daughter before the one we're shown. For extra drama, maybe she's long dead or died only recently but if she were alive, she'd be the girls' age. Maybe he focuses on Kaorin specifically because she reminds him of her. Maybe she looks or acts like his daugter, or they have some other similarity, perhaps they have the same birthday, or Kimura's first daughter had a crush similar to the one Kaorin has on Sakaki. Or all of the above. His other advancements are something that he sees as fatherly and may just be a desperate cry for help.

Sakaki is an Impossible Thief.

We already know that she's been stealing Chiyo's height, and for most of episode 16 she was stealing Osaka's weirdness. We can also assume this is how she is so athletic without trying: she stole the skills of all the other students. Here's something else she stole (right side).

• Is it really theft if she doesn't mean to take it, and, indeed, doesn't even want it? Being tall has ruined her self-image... Why would she do that to herself?
  • Maybe it's all a trick to confuse the viewer. Maybe she's faking everything, and wants to be even taller!

Osaka is autistic.

This Troper has seen this brought up on other boards.

• Not really. Social skills are too good, and she shows WAY too much facial expressions. I could go on, but in short: No, she doesn't have autism, not even Asperger's.
  • She might have a mild form of Asperger's.
    • Not even Asperger's.
    • It's possible. There's a reason AS is a spectrum disorder, you know, and people who do have AS (e.g. this troper) can learn those social skills in time.

Osaka is some form of zombie or other undead.

She acts zoned out all the time because of it, but when she is sleepy, the old assassination commands given to her back when either her creator was alive or she still had the paper command scrolls attached resurface. She understood the point of the riddles perfectly because other undead controlled by her creator were of the types that tell riddles all the time. That's also why she's so unfazed by the Yukarimobile (she was still sick, because she's a zombie, not a ghost, but she didn't fear for her life like Kaorin or Chiyo-chan).

Chiyo passed out of school completely, and just went to high school because she wanted to.

It was like her getting a job at the cafe when the others did. Going through high school was just one of the things she wanted to do because everyone did, and she thought that staying in elementary school wouldn't be challenging enough to be worth it. That's the real reason she doesn't have to take a test after senior year: she already took it (many American colleges do require a score on one or one of several standardized tests before entrance).

Tomo has been sexually abused by her father

In the anime, while changing into a kimono for the summer festival, she tells the girls about how her dad she plays the "Oh Please Little Lady" game with her while putting on a kimono. The others then look at her strangely, as if this "game" was something fathers shouldn't do with their daughters. This doesn't seem to be in the manga, however, the manga does have a scene where Tomo tells Kagura that her dad tells her, "You're real good at pounding my back." She then tells Kagura not to act like she's feeling sorry for her.

• It might explain her aggressive nature and Jerkassness.
  • I disagree. If Tomo acts just like her father-as has been mentioned elsewhere-it's entirly possable that it really is 'just a game' to both him and her. It sorta ties into the theory of Kimura being perceived as a pervert on accident.
• Regarding the yukata thing: That was a reference to a scene in a play called "Yoi de wa nai ka?" (Isn't It Good). Tomo's family is just strange and classically educated.
• According to the Hidamari Sketch translator's notes, it's an apparently common skit to pretend to be an evil warlord chasing a beautiful woman. In the skit, the warlord pulls the obi, which not only makes the wearer of the yukata twirl around, but also makes it much easier for it to come off. How far these skits go, I'm not sure, though.

Kagura is asexual

Since none of the cast ever seem to interact with men, it makes sense that there should be at least one asexual cast member. The other characters have their own reasons, so Kagura is the most likely candidate.

• I've actually wondered if Sakaki is asexual, mainly because of her extreme shyness and her embarrassment at Nyamo's "lecture". Kagura seems to give off slight Les Yay vibes around Sakaki, if you asked me.
  • Not sure about Kagura, but Sakaki is definetly not, at least in the anime. In episode 5, the first summer vacation episode, Sakaki leaves to go upstairs when the girls tell scary stories. But when Tomo switches to dirty stories, Sakaki turns around and goes back to the table, and when it looks like Nyamo and Yukari are going to talk, she even goes so far to (stealthily) edge closer to them.
    • This troper is Asexual and would react like that too. It sounds pretty interesting and it fuels curiosity.
    • If Sakaki didn't want to hear it, she would of walked away, like she did with the scary stories in episode 5
• I remember Kagura telling Chiyo that she couldn't see herself getting married, but she followed that up with "not yet, anyway." Not sure if that helps or hurts the theory. Maybe it depends on whether you think the "yet" may mean she'll find it foreseeable in the future, or if she doesn't know, or if she just doesn't want to explain the concept to a 12-year-old.

Tomo is in love with Osaka but has no clue how to say it.

Look at the third supplementary chapter. Tomo gets Osaka up early in the morning (repeat, gets Osaka up early in the morning, which she does not like at all) to go insect hunting with her alone. Admittedly, there are other reasons that Tomo might want Osaka, but then this is compounded by Tomo trying to get Osaka on her own to see the sunrise over the sea, and is really annoyed when the rest wake up.

• Come to think of it, she does treat Osaka with a bit more respect than normal. She does her Jerkass routine with everyone else, including her ten-year-old classmate, but with Osaka she acts more like a real friend would.
• Or maybe she just doesn't want to die.
• This troper thought Tomo choosing Osaka (and only Osaka) to watch the sunrise was significant, although not in a romantic sense. Additionally, in the main series, Tomo doesn't try out for Yomi's college of choice (which would seem natural), but Tomo and Osaka team up to get into their college of choice. Since they both succeed, it's easy to see them being roommates.
• I think that Tomo might have some respect for Osaka. Tomo acts jerkishly toward Yomi and Chiyo because she's jealous of their smarts and good grades. Osaka doesn't do well academically either, but she's fairly well spoken when not spaced out and is knowledgeable of obscure kanji. So, she's not smart enough to earn Tomo's ire, but just smart enough for Tomo to be impressed.

Chiyo's father is a perfectly normal telepathic human.

He just likes screwing around with high school girls' dreams. If he's also telekinetic, or her mother is, that would explain the door closing with nobody onscreen (aside from the obvious "their hand was on part of the door that wasn't onscreen", but this is Wild Mass Guessing).

Sakaki is in some way related to Kimura. Also, maybe Sakaki was a bit more cheerful when she was younger

If you look at the photo of Kimura's family, his daughter bears a striking resemblance to Sakaki, at least in the manga. Oddly, she looks a bit happier than Sakaki. Leading on from this, maybe Sakaki was a more open and less emotionally repressed when she was younger. Its quite common for a Cheerful Child to become increasingly serious as they grow up.

• Sakaki could be his niece.

Which vigilante superhero is Tomo Takino?

Her dual life makes more sense the more you think about it. For one thing, she's a f*** ing genius, quite capable of outdoing Chiyo Mihama academically if she applies herself... but this could be due to a brief slowdown in crime. If she only studies between patrolling, this makes sense. All she has to do to bring her grades up or pass an entrance exam is let the city fend for itself for a day or so while she studies.

• Who says she has to be a vigilante? I like to think that she applies herself and joins Interpol, where she is paired with a certain Inspector Zenigata.

Osaka used to be a child prodigy like Chiyo-chan.

When she was ten, she went to high school back in Osaka, but the stress of being a child prodigy and having so much expected of her (especially in Japan's workaholic society), caused her to have a total mental breakdown. She institutionalized for a few years after that, and subconsciously feigns stupidity due to fear that if people realized how smart she was, she'd feel all the pressure all over again. When she was released, her family moved out of Osaka to take a new start, but Osaka is still fully medicated (see the theory on her being on drunks above), which has an occational side-effect of hallucinations. She's good at puzzles and tricks and such because she figures it's a stress-free way for her to be smart.

• Spooky, but didn't she only move to Osaka a few years before High School?

Kimura and his wife are the same person.

• Think about it! You never see him or his wife in the same place at the same time, right? So, here's the most logical conclusion: Kimura is wearing some woman's skin and pretended to be his own wife...who never existed in the first place! Same deal with his daughter! He's very, very good at wearing skin!
  • Furthermore, this theory could extent to the rest of the cast! Kimura is everyone! He's just very, very quick when changing clothes, skin, his own bone structure, etc.!
    • And that theory could be linked to the afterlife theories! Kimura is, in fact, the last man alive! Chiyo's dad is a hallucination/imaginary father figure, and "Raspberry Heaven" is about Kimura's delusions of the perfect world he's trying to create with his Buffalo Bill antics! It all makes sense in context! PERFECT SENSE!
      • Above theory Up to Eleven: The entire series is Kimura's paranoid hallucinations After the End, as he assaults, kills and skins each of them... I'm going to hell.
• I'm pretty sure there's one scene where they both show up. That still leaves the possibility of the daughter though...
  • Yeah, he's on that platform giving his "speech" for the third year while his wife is off the platform to the side. If he's disguised as his own daughter, though, he graduated from the same school of disguise as DON PAOLO.

Chiyo has a story like Batman and fights crime.

Springing wildly off the "Chiyo has no parents" WMG, this would explain the secret: having a legal guardian would curtail her crime fighting abilities! It totally could happen!

• NANANANANANANANA CHIYO-CHAN! She could throw boomerangs shaped like her pigtails and ride in the Tadakichi-Mobile! Her nemesis is the Hoaxer - Tomo dressed up in an elaborate clown-like outfit. CRIMEFIGHTING ENSUES!
  • Why am I all of a sudden wishing there was a spin-off series based on that idea?

Chiyo-chan's parents are Russian.

It would explain:

• Why she has red hair (a recessive gene).
• Why she learned English so well, and a bit of Okinawan so quickly--she knows Russian and Japanese already, and has experience with learning languages. Extending that, she could've even picked up a bit of Ainu as well.
• Why we never see her parents--they're always on business trips. (Look at Mayu Miyuki from Ai Yori Aoshi.)
• Why she doesn't seem to be worried about getting a passport to go to America.
  • Well, her being foreign may make some sense from that angle, but why specifically Russian? As far as this Russian troper can tell, Russia does not have an above-the-average percentage of red-haired people and Mihama is not a common surname for a Russian. Also, as someone who has lived in the US for a year, I know that it is actually very difficult to get an American visa if you are Russian, considering the on-again-off-again relations between the two countries. Speaking of which, the Russo-Japanese relations are not that smooth either, the two countries have not even ratified a formal peace treaty after WWII. Not saying that there are no Russians in Japan, just that I find it hard to believe that they would never bring that up if she were in fact Russian.

Almost everyone is a clone or possibly Ridiculously-Human Robots.

Yukari and Nyamo are mirrors of the personalities of Tomo and Nomi, and Chiyo has two younger friends who look like little versions of those two. Kimura's daughter looks like a younger version of Sakaki. So, the way I see it, the series is After the End, and no longer able to reproduce, people order clones from a set number of versions (a Tomo, Yomi, etc.) The two seeming exceptions are Chiyo and Osaka. I figure that Chiyo is some kind of advanced Artificial Human, hence the red-hair and cat-creature for a father, and Osaka is either the same thing, or maybe her model is more popular in the Kansai region of Japan.

• Osaka is the only ordinary human in the class. This is why everyone thinks she's weird.
  • Who's Nomi? Yomi's BETA?

Nyamo is a lesbian and is in love with Yukari who hasn't noticed or forgot/thought she moved on.

Or Yukari does know and is playing with her emotions. Both explain their behavior toward each other, the love letter incident, etc.

Osaka is very blatantly heterosexual.

During Nyamo's infamous version of The Talk, just observe how all the girls react with some amount of shock and embarrassment... except for Osaka, who looks like she's completely focused (for once) and committing everything to memory. Moreover, she's always the one who immediately thinks of a relationship-related angle on a situation if it's there (like Tomo's hairstyle change).

• • Expanding on this: Osaka is the only one who actually has a boyfriend, and in fact has one for the majority of the series. She just never brings him along when she hangs out with her friends because she thinks it would be awkward and any time she tries to bring him up it gets misinterpreted. And the ero-doujin Azumanga Remake (In which the previous was the actual case) is totally canon.

Kimura's wife is visually impaired.

That explains why she's such a Dojikko and how she can accept Kimura's looks. She can't see properly, which leads to her getting into tons of accidents. Kimura is her caretaker as well as her husband. But that still doesn't explain how she can still allow Kimura to chase after high school girls...

Osaka can read minds

Remember when she played "The Telepahy Game" with Tomo? She guessed with incredible accuracy what Sakaki was thinking. She doesn't know she can do this, and did it completely by accident. Being Osaka, she probably never figures it out, though it'd be pretty awesome to see what would happen if she did.

• This kinda makes sense, actually. She's so spacy and weird because she's constantly picking up on other people's thoughts. Either the idle thoughts of others cause her to have weird thoughts of her own, or her weird thoughts are a sort of defense mechanism; she subconsciously distracts herself to drown out the psychic noise. This would also explain how Chiyo-Dad, who originated in Sakaki's daydreams, wound up making an appearance in Osaka's as well.

Chiyo-chichi is a result of a rudimentary hive mind that arose from the characters' interactions, and possibly one or more characters' psychic ailities.

See various guesses above (and likely below, eventually) for the psychic ability, but Chiyo's Dad arose through paralell evolution or psychic communication in the minds of multiple members of the group (primarily including Sakaki and Osaka) and later became an in-universe meme or in-joke. Chiyo-chichi does not actually exist, could not fly at Mach 100 until someone got the idea that he did, and is not Santa Claus.

Chiyo-chichi is just a stuffed doll.

That's all. Just a trippy orange surfboard/cat-shaped doll, which had been sitting for a long time in a display window on the way to school (that's why it appears in the girls' dreams, because they see it everyday). Nobody had cared about buying such a weird plush toy, until Osaka (who else?) finally got it as a present for Chiyo.

Osaka is God

The entire series is created by Osaka because she gets so bored of everyday life. She creates interesting friends for herself so that she can have fun all the time. The anime, at least, gets more surreal as time goes on, with more occurences of Chiyo's father (who is actually Osaka's boyfriend/husband). A few people are unconsciously aware of her awesome power, and seek to control it (remember in the third sports episode? Yukari "gets" Osaka and is really upset when that power is taken away from her). Of course, with great good must come great evil. In this case, Yomi, the only serious character, is a manifestation of the lack of fun which Osaka thinks is bad. Alternately: Yomi is Satan.

• • In other words, this entire universe was created by Haruhi Suzumiya after she got bored with the previous one.
  • OMG. Yomi means "underworld"???
• Ahem. Have you ever read up on your kanji? If so, you'll know that the kanji for her actual name, "Ayumu," is an unusual (but not unheard-of) reading for "Spring Day." What's the more standard reading for that kanji combination? Haruhi. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
  • Holy CRAP SHE IS GOD! RUUUUUUUUUUN!!!

Tomo is a Stepford Smiler.

She is abused, or was abused. Her constantly going to Yomi's house is a way to escape her parents and relax.

Sakaki's other name is dangerous

Sakaki shares the true name of God. To hear Sakaki's name would kill you / send you into a near comatose state, etc. (No, not literally 'dangerous'. Though that would be pretty cool too. Sakaki. Dangerous Sakaki. )

Chiyo is American and adopted

Adopted at a young age, had her name changed, knows this, and wants to go to America. That explains her old look compared to the rest of the gang. Either that or she's some sort of European.

• That could also explain why she's so good at speaking English.

Kimura (still) isn't a pervert

Going back to the aforementioned "*******" theory and heading in the other direction with it, what do we know about Kimura other than his schoolgirl fetish? Well, he has beautiful wife and a little girl, he regularly makes rather generous contributions to local charities, and he spends his free time picking up litter with no apparent benefit for himself. In short, he is a model citizen. With this in mind, it seems more likely that, rather than being a good person with one glaring personality flaw, he is actually a genuinely good person, and said "flaw" is simply an act, performed for the benefit of his students (though, admittedly, I have no idea what that "benefit" might be). This explains such things as why his wife doesn't have a problem with it (she knows it's not true), why there have been no incidents (he doesn't act on his feelings because they don't exist), and why he hasn't been fired (he previously went before the school board to present his idea, and gained their approval before the series began). Also explains Kaorin: Kaorin has an obvious crush on Sakaki, but she is either too closeted or too insecure to admit it. As such self-denial isn't healthy, Kimura took it upon himself to use his false persona to scare Kaorin into being honest with herself.

Kimura only has a fatherly attraction toward Sakaki and Kaorin, and that's the only way he expresses it

Overprotective Dad? Sakaki does look like his daughter..

Kaorin is a lesbian

It seemed quite obvious, but the front page has a "Bi the Way" for her, and she's noted as having a Single-Target Sexuality, so it may not be. It seemed as if that "I'd date her if she was a guy.." thing was her trying to cover up her sexuality, and failing miserably. Likewise, her "I wouldn't mind if Sakaki were a guy" comment.

• Yeah, this is one of the most believable WMGs of this page.

Chiyo-Dad is a time traveller that went back in time to warn the girls of all the horrifically dark WMGs tropers have come up with on this page. .

Except that due to a freak accident involving lasers he can only communicate cryptically through Sakaki's and Ayumu's minds. He's trying to keep them off drugs and other nasty things...or something so that the WMGs don't become a reality. Or something like that.

Osaka has an obsessive compulsive clean neat freak disorder.

Think about it. During the cleaning day scene, Osaka cleans very slowly, moving in small spots. She moves slowly, from spot to spot, so as to not miss even an inch of dirt. She's like the Joan Crawford of Japanese anime, substituting knives for wire-hangers!

Chiyo-Chichi is the slender man.

Exactly Wha****aysOnTheTin. He watches the girls everywhere they go, and messes with Sakaki psychologically whilst waiting to strike. Also helps to explain the Chiyo-Chichi-apocalypse presented in the opening.

• In this Troper's opinion, Kimura fits the role better. He lurks so that he can watch the girls/unnerve them (if the WMG is to be believed), the same way Slender Man does to weaken his victims. His glasses cover up his lack of eyes (the Slender Man was said to have only white circles where his eyes should be), he's fairly tall and thin, and his attraction to young girls meshes pretty well seamlessly with the Mythos. His consistently open mouth lends a resemblance to one of Victor Surge's earlier images (the one with good ol' Slendy in front of the staircase with someone running upstairs). However, you could be onto something with how Chiyo-Chichi is constantly popping up in the strangest places. Maybe they're working together?
  • Slender Man doesn't have (visible) eyes. The closest it has had to eyes was/is when he had/has an illusionary, difficult-to-remember face that {{[[[The Blank]] doesn't show up in photos and videos}}.

Kimura is a Cloudcuckoolander without the benefit of ever seeing what goes on in his head.

Rather than a Dirty Old Man, Kimura is a nice guy with a very loose grasp on reality who doesn't realize the way people could take the things he says and does; his "reason for becoming a teacher" was just making a joke, but he was too spaced out to realize that people took him seriously. The other things he does are trying in his own strange way to befriend his students while unintentionally creeping them out. Although it's possible he's both a weirdo and the above-mentioned ******* theory.

Osaka is a human-like robot.

This is why she sinks like a stone when she tries to swim.

The stuffed Chiyo-chichi doesn't look like Chiyo's dad, it really is Chiyo's dad.

He doesn't mind Chiyo and her friends using him as a pillow, since he's so soft. The pillow form may even be his Sleep Mode Size, and he can only fly at Mach 100 when in his 5-or-6-foot-tall (Dream World) form.

Osaka is using Obfuscating Stupidity.

In Osaka Simulator, Osaka can sneeze on a regular basis. Sneezing on a regular basis is a symptom of either allergies, chronic dry sinuses, or a cold. Idiots Cannot Catch Colds. Since allergies are often treated as colds in Japanese fiction for the purposes of Idiots Cannot Catch Colds, Osaka is either not an idiot or has chronic dry sinuses (possibly comorbid with her dry eyes). Q. E. D.

Osaka is the Ultimate Evil

One phrase. Hail Osaka!

Minamo Kurosawa doesn't like marriage/is bisexual

The impression given off by Minamo/Nyamo in the series/manga is that she likes the prospect of marriage more than actually getting married itself, since she always seems to hesitate about relationships (IE. for the double-date, she looks like she doesn't want to go through with it). Even when an arranged marriage comes into the picture, which would fix her situation pretty quickly, she still isn't sure if she wants to do it in the end. In that episode the theme was about 'freedom/doing what you want', so Minamo seems to be the type of person who doesn't really want things to change (not even for a better job) since she's happy with how things are already. When Yukari tells her that her life is her own, that's when she doubts the arranged marriage idea. It's like she *wishes* she could get married or find the perfect guy, but doesn't want to go through with it when push comes to shove.

If we add in the time from when she got drunk and said "screw men" ('truth in the wine...'), and from when Yukari tells her that she can "never finish the job" regarding marriage, then it really makes sense. I can't think of why someone like Minamo wouldn't be married/have a bf already otherwise. She might be looking still because of pressure (family, reputation, society, etc.). She seems to be someone who always worries about what others think of her as well, so being known as an "old maid" doesn't sound very flattering.

For the love letter thing, it's possible that she had a little something for Yukari in the past (especially in an all-girls school), which is why she gets so embarrassed about it when it's mentioned (IE., everyone might think she's gay). There might be some remnants of those feelings in her still (who would want to hang out/put up with Yukari otherwise?) and so she's afraid of losing the opportunity to spend as much time with her as she now does if she gets married (even in their character song, she's the one who gets worried about their friendship if Yukari somehow gets a boyfriend). Going down that romantic route then, she's a bisexual that just doesn't really realize it/tries to bury the fact/etc. It seems like she has an attraction to men, IE the sex talk (which possibly included *everything* about that world, like lesbian stuff too), but can only form an actually deep connection with women in the end, beyond just a "best friend" thing, and does that with Yukari (lust vs. love sort of). They both are *so* different that it's hard to even imagine them as just mild acquaintances, but Minamo still keeps hanging out with her a good amount of time regardless, and wants to keep it that way.

Mr. Kimura's waifu is an ex-student of his

A friend of mine pointed out that Mrs. Kimura looks younger than her husband. This is plausible, and it could be that she was the only student not utterly repulsed by him.

Alternatively, they discovered that they have something in common

Mrs. Kimura likes high school boys. Think about it, we never see what she would do around a teenage boy. Maybe she's an ehebophile too.

All of the girls are lesbians

Let's see now... they are NEVER seen with males, they NEVER show interest in males, the thing with Kaorin and Sakaki... that's proof right there! They have to be lesbians with such evidence! Prove this troper wrong readers!

Chiyo is from a certain a royal family

These are tell tale signs that Chiyo Mihama is related to a certain rather popular royal family

• She's rich: Well this is probably the most obvious sign of her royal heritage.
• She's a child prodigy but lacks athletic skills: A high schooler at age ten, aces all tests without so much as breaking a sweat but sucks at PE.
• She has amazing leadership skills and charisma: being able to organize an entire class of teenagers to pull off two successful school festival gigs while being a ten year old tells a lot about her upbringing. She can easily earn people's attention and admiration simply by dressing in either a cheerleader outfit or a penguin suit, all for the specific purpose of furthering her goals.
• Her "Dad" is voiced by Norio Wakamoto: Who is an EMPEROR.

THERE CAN BE NO QUESTION!!!

The characters are in Heaven.

It's a peaceful slice of life show where everybody becomes friends and lives happily. What dangers there are -- Kimura, Kamineko, Yukari being allowed behind the wheel of a car -- don't ever actually end up hurting anybody; therefore, it's assumed that the characters were plagued by car wrecks, perverts and vicious animals in life, and are being shed of the fears that come with them by living in a peaceful, happy world where these things are only easily dismissed jokes. And the first ED is called "Raspberry Heaven". If they are in Heaven, however, Nyamo and Kaorin seem to have gotten celestially screwed.

• Then again, Nyamo and Yukari seem to occupy an odd position if this is, indeed, Heaven. Perhaps they are, in fact, working off their sins in life by assuming a caretaker role to the souls of the students. This would make their exit near the end of the series even more poignant, as the two have finally worked off their penance and are being admitted to their respective eternal rewards.
• If this is the case, then Chiyo-chichi is a good candidate for God. Or maybe an angel.
• Alternatively, Kimura's dead, and the rest of the cast are angels. This is his heaven.
  • Or, since he can never get any of the girls and fulfill his lolicon nature, it's actually an Ironic Hell. The reason he does good deeds in his spare time, like picking up litter or donating money to the shrine, is because it's part of his penance.
    • I wouldn't think he would want to "get" any of them. Have you seen that dude's wife?
      • Mai waifu.
      • One word: ORGY!
• Or, all of the characters are in purgatory:
  • Nyamo and Yukari are caretakers, maybe making up for giving homework over vacation or something.
  • The girls are also paying off something; Tomo doesn't seem to be making progress, but pulls it out anyway.
  • Kimura is there just for being himself.
    • Although he lusted after schoolgirls, he never actually acted out those lusts and was devoted to his family and faithful to his wife. He seems like an otherwise good guy (if a little creepy), but is an unrepentant pervert. Thus he was sent to purgatory instead of ending up in heaven or hell.
  • Chiyo's Dad is some sort of angel overseeing the process; it explains his appearance and how he manages to appear in people's dreams and such. His attachment to Chiyo implies that he's either giving her special attention (due to her age) , or she's an angel in training.
    • Or going off of that, he might be Chiyo's guardian angel specifically.
• The position of Nyamo and Kaorin may not be so bad, since they do get to spend time with the ones they love, perhaps even in a way that suits them best (a platonic friendship and a teenage crush - it could be worse).
• But the Yukarimobile's not old enough to have died and gone to Car Hell.
  • Yukari totalled it. Both she and the car died.
    • In that case... Sakaki got bitten by a cat and died of a subsequent infection (cat's teeth are sharp like needles, and some of the bacteria in their mouth are, as this troper read in a magazine, potentially lethal); Kaorin killed herself whilst wearing a wedding dress when she heard it. Also, Kagura, having lost her rival, deluded herself and trained harder and harder until she died from exhaustion. Yukari died in a car crash, naturally. Osaka zoned out in the middle of a street, and Chiyo tried to save her; Chiyo and Tadakichi-san pusher her out of the way but died. Yomi starved herself to death, and Tomo, having gone bat**** insane, found Osaka whislt having a knife and stabbed her whilst muttering the Tsukkomi punchline over and over again. The series shows them coming to terms with their deads; Sakaki getting bitten but finding an acceptable cat, Osaka pulling herself together, Chiyo growing up, Kaguran going over a rivalry into friendship, etc. Kaorin got screwed, though.
      • She just had an offscreen resolution
• The cast gets embroiled in a suicide cult after suffering severe depression after leaving school for good at the end of the series. The events of A.D. are their lives flashing before their eyes before they die. (Yukari really should have let Kagura have a ****ed desk.)

All of the series is in Osaka's mind.

She was hit by a car, or Yukari, before she entered school and she's comatose.

The whole thing was Tomos dream after a tragic trampoline accident put her in a coma. The last scene is her waking up 4 years later.

All the characters were bouncing up in the air in the first scene until Tomo gets whalloped from the side. Maybe the opening was her confused brain trying to process falling off a trampoline and cracking her skull open. After that, her memory starts processing her friends... Yomi first, then Yukari, Chiyo, Osaka, Sakaki, then Nyamo, Chihiro and Kaorin and finally Kagura, a person she wasn't on such great terms with. It sets up a dream to get hold of those memories again. The brain can't remember all their personalities however, so it spends the next 4 years trying to reestablish what they were like by creating a scenario where they all go through high school together. Some traits might be exaggerated: Chiyo was a very bright local girl who Tomo was aquainted with, but she only went up one or two years and certainly wasn't in high school. Sakaki was generally admired but often quite quiet and the fact that she was a cat lover was often forgotten: Tomo remembered the Badass who beat her at sports first and the gentle cat-lover came to her mind second. Yomi was, as always, the stable Straight Man to Tomos hyperactivity. An anchor to the rest of her memories. Her memory of her best friend would be pretty accurate. Osaka was a bit strange and had an odd tendency to space out, but she was never a total space case. Her memories of her teachers would be flanderised; Yukari was the teacher she identified most with but she still liked Nyamo because she reminded her so strongly of Yomi, so the two teachers true personalities would move closer to how Tomo percieved her own and Yomis personalities. Finally, Chihiro and Kaorin were two girls the six sometimes hung out with. Tomo might have suspected Kaorin of being a lesbian and exaggerated what made her think that, or alternatively Kaorin might have come out at some point (possibly telling Osaka first) and Tomo has forgotten. Chihiro might have been fairly quiet so Tomo wouldn't have much memory of her personality, meaning she doesn't appear much in the dream.

• • ...Who's Chizuru?
  • Chihiro, sorry! Changed it.

Azumanga Daioh takes place in 1991 - 2001

In episode 17 Tomo and Osaka say that next year would be the Year of the Snake. The last Year of the Snake was in 2001.

Azumanga Daioh and Ouran High School Host Club take place in the same universe.

Both series' take place in Tokyo and are full of wacky school related hijinks, which also happens to make crossovers between them incredibly easy.

Azumanga Daioh takes place in the same universe as Welcome to The NHK.

However, Azumanga Daioh would have taken place about 20 years later. Kimura is really Tatsuhiro after a name change and Kimura's wife (read Misaki) is still trying to make him seem normal. That would explain his creepieness and other odd traits.

• How did Misaki's hair change colour, and how did she become a dozikko?
• Technology comparison makes this seem a bit silly.

The characters of Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei are the evil counterparts of the cast of Azumanga Daioh

• Osaka and Kafuka are both Cloudcuckoolanders and play the role of Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant. Neither is known by their real name, and sometimes people think that one day both will snap and kill everyone.
• Yomi and Chiri
  • Alternately, Yomi is Nami.
• Tomo and Mayo
• Yukari and Chie are both sexy teachers, but the latter is a sadist
• Oddly, Mr. Kimura is the Evil Counterpart of Itoshiki
  • Or maybe SZS is Kimura's Ironic Hell. As punishment for being such a pervert, he becomes more attractive and a bunch of high school girls develop crushes on him, but they are all creepy and/or insane Evil Counterparts of girls he's had crushes on.
• How do Sakaki and Chiyo fit into this?
  • Sakaki is Kaere/Kaede (Osaka did say that she was "American") and Chiyo is Maria (both are younger than the other students and invoke Cuteness Proximity; while Chiyo is a genius, Maria is The Ditz)
    • Alternatively, Sakaki is Abiru. Her love of cute animals (which often causes cats to bite or scratch her) turns into an unhealthy obsession with tails (which causes animals to attack her). Also, Maria might not be as stupid as she seems.
      • Wow, can't believe I missed that connection. Abiru is kind of similar to Sakaki personality-wise, except that her seeming emotionlessness is often more like snark.
• Oh, well in that case Male Student #1 is obviously a combination of Kagero Usui and Jun Kudo, as both are male students in an otherwise female student classroom.
  • Nah, he's just Jun. Usui is also there, of course, but you can't see him.

Chiyo was a participant in the Liar Game

She competed against her parents in the final round. After she won the Liar Game, the LGT office "disappeared" her parents, and they also arranged for her to enter high school as a favor. It would also explain why she's so rich.

Chiyo-chan is from Sunagakure.

I hope I don't get flamed with various Die for Our Ship tropers, but here goes. Gaara and Matsuri have a daughter together. She has Gaara's red hair and is named Chiyo, after the elderly woman who sacrificed her life to resurrect him. Chiyo grows to be a child prodigy, and asks her parents if she can leave Sunagakure to study abroad (the same way she asks to go to America later). They are reluctant at first, but send a ninja dog (Tadakichi) to watch over her. The odd yellow cat thing is Gaara's genjutsu (with a modicum of reality-crossover power, like the genjutsu Izanagi) that goes awry and starts to affect other people. Its form was inspired by the Shukaku, especially seeing that it also has the protective role (see theories above). This explains why Chiyo is incredibly wealthy (daughter of the Kazekage) and why her parents are never seen.

Azumanga Daioh is an Alternate Universe version of Lucky Star

The transition between universes isn't perfect, there is some overlap or even transfer of some character's traits (for example, Tomo is a fusion of Konata's Genki Girl and Akira's Jerkassery). Here goes:

• Tomo is Konata (Genki Girl, Cosplay Otaku Girl, both are the most enthusiastic anime fans (Lupin/Haruhi) in their series and look remarkably like their parents), plus Akira's Jerkassery and minus Konata's athletic ability.
• Yomi is Kagami (Only Sane Man, Big Eater, worried about their weight), plus Miyuki's glasses. They even have the same type of relations to each other, with Tomo/Konata always leeching homework from Yomi/Kagami. Also widely rumored to have a major crush on Yomi/Kagami.
• Osaka is Tsukasa (Cloudcuckoolander, flat chested) plus the Kansai Regional Accent.
• Chiyo is a Composite Character made of the cutest and youngest character (Yutaka), plus Miyuki's encyclopedic knowledge.
• Sakaki is Minami (The Quiet One, Huge Schoolgirl, both are from rich families, unhappy about the size of their chest, albeit from opposite ends of the spectrum, and have the same kind of relation with Yutaka/Chiyo), plus the Animals Hate Her from Hiyori and athletic ability from Konata.
• Yukari is Nanako (Adult Child, Best Beer Ever, Christmas Cake, they're both teachers and gamers), plus Yui's Drives Like Crazy and minus the Kansai Regional Accent.
• Nyamo is Yui (Hinted Les Yay with Yukari/Nanako) minus the Drives Like Crazy.
• Kagura is Misao (Bokukko).
• Kaorin is Hiyori (Romantic Two-Girl Friendship) minus Hiyori's Animals Hate Her.
• Chihiro is Ayano (Satellite Character).
• Akira, being Jerkass incarnate, is transcended into Tomo.
• Kimura is Soujirou (Pervert Dad, creepy as hell with a thing for high school girls.
• Tadakichi-san is Cherry (Big Friendly Dog).
• Chiyo-Chichi is that weird cat thing (whatever they are, they ain't normal).
  • I've noticed that a lot of the traits are kind of redistributed between the two series.

And whaddaya know, the internet agrees with me.

Yukari's last name is actually Yakumo

She's pretty lazy and sleeps a lot...

• This is why she has everyone call her by her first name; it's less confusing than having to get used to a pseudonym.
• So "Tanizaki" -- the name that Kimura uses, and which she imagines the vice principal using when he(?) gives her "a nice long earful" for being late on the first day -- isn't her real family name?

Osaka will grow up to become Tsukiko Sagi.

She perhaps gets married, but quickly divorces after realizing that she's just not made for a relationship, and changes her first name and retains the changed last name trying to reinvent herself, but failing rather badly. Many people have noted the similarity between the characters; Tsukiko is pretty much Osaka after ten years, with her positive outlook lost forever...

Chiyo's mother is a Totoro.

We already know that her father is a strange Cat-Thing, it only makes sense that her mother also be a strange cat-thing. Or in this case, a cat-owl-thing.

Azumanga Daioh takes place in the distant past of the Andromeda Universe.

Chiyo Mihama is really a Paradine and the very distant ancestor of Captain Dylan Hunt. Noruchi and Yuuka, Chiyo's elementary schoolmates were kidnapped by the Vedrans and tesseracted back in time, roughly 18 years. By doing this, the Vedrans secured the timeline and the restoration of order upon the universe in the distant future.

Little by little, Noruchi and Yuuka were informed of their destiny. They trained and worked "hard" to become influencing mentors not only to Chiyo but also to Kagura (a very distant ancestor of Beka Valentine) and Yomi (the foundation for the gene pool of the founder of the Nietzscheans race). In fact, the main cast's future lineage would greatly influence humanity's exploration of space and eventual membership into the tri-galactic Systems Commonwealth. And Osaka-san is just tagging along, even though she really is the avatar of Earth's sun.

• Also, Osaka is Amaterasu.

LONG LIVE CHIYO MIHAMA! LONG LIVE THE SYSTEMS COMMONWEALTH!

Nichijou is how Osaka sees the world.

The robot girl is herself, and the Professor is Chiyo.

Blue Four is Chuck Norris.

Because Four Is Death.

Chiyo is Clannad's Ushio, Yotsuba&!, The Professor in Nichijou, and Chiyo-chan, in that order.

Chiyo started out as |Ushio, but shortly after After Story ended, there was a tragic accident causing the death of everyone in the town except herself. She was traumatized in a Heroic Blue Screen of Death even after authorities found her, so they used Laser Guided Amnesia to make her forget everything. They give her a new hairstyle, a new name, a new home, and a new life. She was now "Yotsuba". However, shortly after the events of the manga, another tragic accident occurred, and, well... Pretty much the same thing happened. This time, though, they decided to give her an overwhelming I.Q. as well as a mother/sister-like robot to avoid her from getting traumatized any further, although they regrettably neglected to give her a name. 2 years pass, the robot breaks down and The Professor is left with her adoptive parents who thought pigtails would be "simply adorable" and named her "Chiyo".

Azumanga Daioh's events pass. Chiyo lived to graduate college and found time to spend with her friends as an adult. On one fateful day, she and her friends went out, bought ice cream, etc, etc, when, as they're walking along, Osaka spots Chiyo walking down a dark alley. She's the only one that sees and, naturally, follows. As she peeks around the corner, she sees Chiyo stubbornly trying to help an old, homeless man. The man is actively protesting. When he gets at wit's end, he pulls out a knife and stabs Chiyo, killing her in one swift move, then retreating before he was caught. Osaka, who could not believe what she was seeing, reached out and pulled the knife out of Chiyo's chest.

By this time, the rest of the group noticed that the two of them were gone, and backtracked to that alley. What did they see? They saw Osaka, who's infamous for being a little wrong in the head, holding a bloody knife over a dead Chiyo, who was obviously stabbed in the chest. People screamed and police arrived, Osaka Yelling Chiyo's name all the while. It took this for Osaka to become truly insane.

The knife, of course, had Osaka's fingerprints all over it. In the court case, all evidence pointed to Osaka, who stayed silent, save for a "CHIYO!" here and there. It was obvious that she was not in a fit state of mind. She was taken to an asylum and stayed there for the rest of her life.

Also note that there is someone in Clannad, Nichijou, and Yotsuba&! who either looks or acts (kind of) like Osaka. In Clannad there's Fuko, in Nichijou there's Nano, and in Yotsuba&! there's Ena.

• Well. That was certainly an apparently unrelated and slightly disturbing WMG epilogue.

The girls are made of the ingredients of little girls

Chiyo: Cooking is so fun! Cooking is so fun! Now it's time to take a break and see what we have done!

Each of the main six from the third year have their own recipe:

• • Chiyo: One cup Everything Nice, half cup Sugar, dash Spice.
  • Sakaki: One cup Everything Nice, half cup Spice, dash Sugar.
  • Tomo: One cup Spice, half cup Sugar, dash Everything Nice.
  • Kagura: One cup Spice, half cup Everything Nice, dash Sugar.
  • Osaka: One cup Sugar, half cup Everything Nice, dash Spice.
  • Yomi: One cup Sugar, half cup Spice, dash Everything Nice.

Yomi: So that's why my diets always fail; I'm made of carbs!

• • • Kaorin apparently got a puppy dog tail.

These ingredients were imported to The City of Townsville and were used to make the Powerpuff Girls.

• • Blossom is mainly made of Chiyo's Everything Nice, thus they are the brains of their group and redheads.
  • Buttercup is mainly made of Spice. She shares Kagura's athletic discipline and skill and Tomo's golden jerkness, as well as a reversed hairstyle.
  • Bubbles is mainly made of Yomi's Sugar, thus they share the berserk-button nature.

Chiyo: Yay! It's ready!

Osaka is Allison Harvard in the world.

Both are strange Nightmare Fetishist Cloud Cuckoo Landers.

The series exists in a dimension parallel to that of El Goonish Shive.

Most of the characters are all there. Grace and Osaka, Ellen and Tomo, Susan and Sakaki, Nanase and Yomi, and now Kagura and Catalina. It's only a mystery why Sarah and Chiyo don't link up as well. Also, which character would represent Chiyo-dad?

• Tedd could be a gender-flipped, older but equally cute (though less innocent) Chiyo.
  • The loss of innocence is a result of him/her finally understanding the drunken lecture, which Tedd also experienced though under different circumstances. This means that when Chiyo in the Azuverse finally understands what Nyamo was saying she'll start thinking like a Tedd.
  • Huh. And when Chiyo loses her innocence, so does Chiyo-Dad, who takes on a slightly more human form. Also, if we consider Justin and Kaorin to be one and the same as well as Raven-Kimura, then that leaves only Elliot and Sarah...Yukari and Nyamo?
  • As a small child, Chiyo's dad was a squishy, loveable, cryptic, flying cat-thing. Now that Tedd's grown up more, he's Dumbledore. It makes sense. Maybe Yukari and Nyamo are Agent Cranium and Agent Wolf? Or they could be a bygone pair of schoolteachers that helped along Tedd's thing for lesbians. Or Elliot and Sarah, or Lisa and Amanda.
  • This NEEDS to be a crossover fic. Exchange program? I'll even contribute a Running Gag: Yukari-sensei turns out to be an excellent driver when transplanted to a place where they drive on the right.

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