Azumanga Daioh - Soramimi Cake

About

Azumanga Daioh (Japanese: あずまんが大王 Azumanga Daiō, lit. “Great King Azumanga”) is a 4-koma slice of life comedy manga by Kiyohiko Azuma. It was serialized in 1999 by MediaWorks in the manga magazine Dengeki Daioh and was later released in four volumes.

In 2002, the series was given an anime adaptation that was produced by the studio J.C.Staff. Both the manga and the anime gained a lot of popularity in both Japan and overseas. The Azumanga Daioh manga received numerous awards. It was named a jury recommended work of the sixth Japan Media Arts Festival in 2002 and was named one of the top 25 manga at the 2006 Japan Media Arts Festival.

The English dub for the show was also well received, earning six ADR Awards from fans voting on AnimeonDVD.com and Dubreview.com. Volumes three, four, and six won “Best Dub of the Month”. Four of the girls were also included in Newtype Magazine’s top 100 anime heroines of 2002: Osaka was awarded 7th, Chiyo 11th, Sakaki 21st, and Yomi 78th. Together they made Azumanga Daioh the second most popular series of 2002 for female characters.^[1]

Azumanga Daioh’s success is quite notable in the history of anime. It helped set the stage for the success of other slice of life comedy anime that would follow after such as The Meloncholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, K-On, and Lucky Star.

Origin

The opening animation goes to a song titled 空耳ケーキ(pronounced Soramimi Cake, lit. “Ear-playing-tricks Cake”) by the band Oranges & Lemons.^[3] It became relatively popular among anime fans for being extremely cute and quirky, which are key points that made the series popular.

Before video sharing sites like Nico Nico Douga (NND) became popular, one notable way of doing anime opening/ending parodies was via Flash videos. This particular variation was created in 2003 and features a parody of the opening with 2ch Shift_JIS characters. (also see: Giko) ^[4]

The oldest parody of the opening on NND is a spoof with characters from the Korean MMORPG Ragnarok Online which was posted on March 7th, 2007 by 海老腐霊夜 さん.^[2] It is notable that there are many parodies older than this, but several have been taken down by copyright infringement claims.

Notable Examples

There are many re-uploads of parodies from NND that can be found on YouTube. Here are a few of the more interesting ones-

Search Interest

External References

^[1] Wikipedia – Azumanga Daioh

^[2] Nico Nico Douga – MAD　らぐなろく大王

^[3] Wikipedia – Oranges & Lemons

^[4] http://irofla.com/ – 2ch Azumanga Daioh Parody