I follow this person on Twitter, and I’m sure she means this literally, and I’m OK with it.
if you look up the manga/DVD covers there’s definitely some sexualization going on. but I haven’t seen the show so idk if that extends too much to the actual content.
yeah, I mean its not like a moral condemnation exactly, just that as an adult I’m not interested in sexualized high schoolers and am uncomfortable with the extent to which they are used to market to adult men. The cover being a character in just a swimsuit or with her skirt blowing up is at least a bit questionable. Honestly devoid of context maybe I wouldn’t take as much issue, but I know how skeevy or worse outright pedophilic anime and manga sometimes are, so I have a hard time giving the benefit of the doubt when I see anything questionable. I definitely didn’t get the vibe that ““the animators don’t know how to [draw] a booby””
Really the only thing that I personally find offensive in Azumanga Daioh is this widely reviled recurring character called Mr. Kimura, who “became a teacher because he likes high school girls”. He appears in episodes 1, 4, 6, 7, 10-17, 20, 21, 23, and 26, I think in most of these episodes exactly once — but obviously with a character description like that, even a very brief appearance would leave a bad taste in my mouth. Kimura also briefly appears in the intro — the intro is incidentally also where that “skirt getting blown up” picture is from, that’s actually the character getting launched into the air and falling.
Nevertheless, Azumanga Daioh is rated G~PG in most jurisdictions around the world. I’ve watched the show cap-a-pie with my boomer mom, a bit with my brother, and my mom even wanted to show Azumanga Daioh to an even older relative of ours, too. So Azumanga Daioh is, like the planet Earth, mostly harmless. I have sometimes thought about torrenting Azumanga Daioh just to give Mr. Kimura the ol’ treatment, because without him, the worst the show gets is just a few eyeroll moments or maybe specific triggers for some people. You can check IMDb’s parents’ guide or DoesTheDogDie for more information.
By the way, the “manga cover” I think you’re referring to is actually the cover of Dengeki Daioh magazine’s August 2001 issue. Probably specifically the picture used at the top of the Wikipedia article for “Dengeki Daioh”. So while it is plenty gross that that is in fact official artwork, it is not actually one of the manga covers. Those covers look like so (from eBay):
Edit: removed a gif in case it’s an epilepsy trigger
