A friend who is a fan turned me on to it (as well as Yotsubato!)

College anime club screening.

AMV Hell 3.

6 years ago I hardly watched anime at all because I was busy with college and work, so when I finally had a break a friend of mine gave me a bunch of DVDs with anime series. I knew of Azumanga because a lot of people on the internet talked about it (mostly about Osaka), but I really had no time to find out what was it about until that break.
At the end I still didn't have time to watch much anime during my break, but I gave every series a chance. I watched one or two episodes of each, but Azumanga was different: I watched it all in one sitting.
I found it so fresh, so random, so funny, so cute, so well made! And the most important thing to me, it was simple and had no malice at all, and it revived my love for anime (that love was kinda drying out back then).
I guess I'm loyal to the series because it made me remember the reason why I liked anime so much. If not for Azumanga, I probably wouldn't be watching anime at all.

TL; DR: A friend recommended it.

It was this image that drove me to watching it.

My roommate at the time had gotten copies and insisted I watch. I wasn't that interested from the initial description, and the opening theme initially sounded musically all over the place to me. It didn't take much watching of the episodes to get me hooked, though.

I remember waaaaaayyy back I used to download any fansub that was released even if I knew nothing about it. I checked baka-updates/some other site I don't remember for releases and downloaded them with IRC/usenet.

A show about an 11 year old in highschool? How will they make this work? What is this madness that was the OP and ED?

Gave it a chance and I was hooked after watching the 1st episode.

tl;dr Downloaded the fansubs in 2002.

2002, a friend was downloading everything that people said was good. We'd get together every weekend or so and pretty much just watch anime for ten or fifteen hour stretches. One of those shows was the first couple of episodes of Azumanga! I wasn't too versed in anime, so I was afraid it was going to devolve into lovey-dovey-triangly horseshit, but... It didn't! Then I got a 60 gig hard drive for Christmas that year, which was fucking ridiculously huge, and I downloaded all of Azumanga. And suddenly it was my favourite thing in the world. And then a few months later I read the old Momotato translation of Yotsuba&! and it was my favourite-er thing in the world.

Seven or eight years ago, I first saw screenshots from the fansubbed version on a random website I was visiting.

At first, I think seeing the characters saying things like this (out of context, obviously) made me think that the series was putting on certain forms of Western humor, a notion I found amusing in itself.

Since I was only catching on to BitTorrent at the time, I forgot about it until 2004 when I first discovered 4chan, where it was being discussed frequently, and even then, I didn't actually take the time to watch it until about two years later.

vc:quaid

Trying to remember... I know it was right after watching Cowboy Bebop on Cartoon Network, then grabbed the first volume released by ADV (that came with a cute Neko pin!). Wow, what a different world back then.
Oh, I used to go to a Cowboy Bebop forum and some kid named Last Raven talked about it. I also noticed that some guy had a Osaka avatar of her with a blank stare.
Tuned in on a whim, basically. I remember at the time I was looking for a Seinfeld-esque anime, anyway. I didn't know there was an entire genre was molding out of that at the time.

>A show about an 11 year old in highschool? How will they make this work?

Thanks to about a dozen shows since, now we know!

>>208509
The first screenshot I saw was the one with the culture fest when Osaka tells Nyamo "It's so cute it'll make you go 'What the hell'".
People wouldn't bat an eye at that today, but at the time it was fucking hilarious.

In college, kept seeing it mentioned in forums and downloaded on a whim. I was missing my high school friends something fierce, dug the OP/ED, and had never seen an anime with similar character-based/surreal humor; Osaka and Kaorin were also new archetypes for me. I still haven't seen the last episode; now it's because the episodes are on my old desktop, but back then, it was because I didn't want to see it end.

Back in 2003 I was browsing the manga section, and came across volume one of Azumanga Daioh, when ADV put it out. I was intrigued by the design of the book - it was taller and skinnier than other manga - and it being a four panel strip was something new to me. I liked the clean artwork, so I bought it.

I loved the jokes and the timing, and bought each new volume that came out. Really, a lot of the strips seemed like "anti-jokes", and I thought that was just really cool.

I was disappointed with the anime when I first saw it in 2004. I read the manga like it was one of those American screwball comedies of the 1930s, with rapid-fire dialouge and and on-the-spot timing. The anime meandered too much for my liking, and sometimes it was repetitive, but it grew on me over the years.

Still prefer the manga, though.

Via porn.

I was in the process of collecting Sailor Moon doujins by Black Dog. The one he did of Sakaki was accidentally mixed in. Later, when I saw Sakaki on the cover of the first manga volume in Barnes & Noble, I picked it up and tried it. I liked the series so much that I bought all the volumes and a bootleg dub of the anime years before ADV did the English dub.

So you see, porn does make positive contributions to your life.

>>208517
i think ralen can relate

>>208502
was the sub in chilenese? i know the feeling. since i first saw azu i saw shows that might try to recapture what it had but it's a force to be reckoned with. it really set the standard, i think.

After seeing images from and discussions of it on 4chan, I caught a few episodes that someone was streaming sometime in the fall of 2006. Shortly thereafter I downloaded and watched the whole thing.

I saw an Osaka rolling her head on desk YTMND.

Friend told me her name was Osaka so I wiki'd Osaka and came across Azumanga Daioh. I looked it up and heard many positive things so then I bought the manga, then the anime, then the manga again (omnibus).

My discovery of Azumanga coincided with my revived interest in anime. When I was younger I used to watch Scifi anime movies with my older sister and after a 4 or 5 year lull when I realize there wasn't anything good on TV I decide to get back into anime.

>>208500
Seconded.

I was told that there was an anime/manga about schoolgirls out there where the schoolgirls didn't get raped by tentacles, beaten up regularly, or caught in ridiculous romance plots.

I was skeptical, but was GREATLY SURPRISED AND OVERJOYED to find that Azumanga Daioh more than delivered on this promise. Bought it all and never looked back.

>>208532

If that's what you want out of Anime, you ought to watch ToHeart (the first one).

>>208533
I'm not that familiar with ToHeart, but isn't it heavy on the romance?

>>208520
?

>>208534
you find /azu/ looking for porn remember

>>208536
Oh yeah, that's true. I had forgotten about that.

Well, in my case I've been an Ah My Goddess fan for years and was hanging out in /amg/ upstairs a lot. One day I decided to check out the neighbors, and as soon as I saw that this was where Osaka came from I was hooked. I went back through my backup discs and found that I had always had some Azumanga Daioh in my collection (like the Tomo grabbing Kagura from behind pic, with the Pocari Sweat can), but since then I've filled three backup DVDs, not counting fansubs :). From here I've since found Hidamari Sketch, which is what I am currently reading/watching.

Yotsuba&! --> 4chan.biz never updated
Came here, found more yotsuba&!
Saw AD threads, torrented after a fashion

I love you guys

On YouTube, just before Christmas in 2008. best gift ever.

>>208517

>So you see, porn does make positive contributions to your life.

Has anyone ever opposed that idea?

>>208520
English subs.
And I agree, Azumanga did set the standard.
And that is demonstrated by this: Remember those "what I watched/expected/got" posts? whenever a Slice of Life series was on the "what I watched" panel, Azumanga was on the "what I expected" panel. That says a lot.
If I could find a huge-ass collection of those I'd count them and then count the number that include Azumanga on the "what I expected" panel, and then I'd have a percentage to show.

Wow, some of you really got into this early.

In the summer of 2006. I was looking for Rammstein videos on Youtube, when I came across that famous Evangelion AMV set to 'Engel'. I didn't know the first thing about EVA and Anime in general, but intrigued by this video, I decided to lurk around Amv.org for a few evenings to see if that community had anything else to recommend. The name Azumanga Daioh appeared several times in their Comedy/Feelgood categories, so I checked a few of those amv's out, and to my own surprise I found those really catchy, especially this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMike7BjQ48
My curiosity grew even more after reading the detailed descriptions of every character on Wikipedia, I decided to watch a single episode on Youtube (Ep.4, the Swimming pool one), and ended up watching the whole season on Youtube in a week or so. I felt strangely gutted after the last episode had finished, so I watched the whole series again on YT, then downloaded the fansubs, only to watch the whole thing one more time and never looked back since.
So yeah, Azumanga was my gateway drug to anime and manga in general. I still don't understand why I became so infatuated by AD, let alone me being able to explain it to others (then again I don't have any relatives irl who are aware that other anime exists besides Pokemon).

>>208534

While it is true that ToHeart was based on a "dating game", the Anime is quite subtle. There's no high drama. It's very much "slice of life". The art is wonderful. Little humor though, so keep that in mind if you're big on laughs.

>>208497

My HS library had established a Manga/Graphic Novel section in my Junior year.

Azumanga Daioh! was one of its initial titles on its section of shelf.

My first exerience with Azumanga?

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/301773

Keep the volume low for this movie, it has some screamers in it.

After watching all 3 of these wacky movies, I just had to look into the anime. The characters seemed likable and interesting. I'm glad I did, as Azu, to this day, is my all-time favorite anime.

My friend showed me the DVD that had Sakaki on the cover. I thought she looked kind of scary so I didn't want to watch it. Later, I found out she's a nice person who loves cute things, just like me.

I found a parody manga of Azumanga & Fist of the North Star sometime in early 2006. It was my fist exposure to Azumanga Daioh, so I hit up the series wiki page before reading it, so that I'd have a better grip on things. As it turned out this was unnecessary, as the parody just had Fist of the North Star characters dressed up as Azumanga ones(Chiyo's Dad and Mr. Tadakichi respectively).
However, I what I read about Azumanga on wikipedia interested me, so I went out and picked up the second volume of the manga shortly afterwards, and enjoyed it.

Was reading Wikipedia, started on Weather Office and somehow it ended up on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azu. Some quick googeling got me here.

The rest is history.

I think it was back in 200...4 maybe? Can't quite remember the date, but I was at my local mall and saw one of those spinning book rack things with odd-looking cartoons on them at Suncoast. One had a bunch of girls in swimsuits and the other had a hot girl with long black hair. Thus it came to pass that I bought the first volume of Love Hina and the third volume of good old Azumanga Daioh. In the immortal words of thankfully mortal Dr. Phil, it was a changing day in my life and I haven't looked back once.

Around 2005, also via porn--futanari Yomi art. But then I discovered she was only one character in a wonderful series, and today Azumanga Daioh and I have a stable, committed relationship only occasionally marred by thoughts, acts, and guilty regrets of fapping.

This isn't how I got into Azumanga, but an interesting story related to it.

Shortly after I had seen the anime, I started buying the ADV versions a book at a time. When I was buying the 2nd or 3rd volume, I had just picked it up off the shelf at the book store and was flipping through it, and this 12-13 year old girl who was also browsing the manga section looked at me and said "You should get that. It's good." and then walked off.

>>209483
More details are needed. Details of an erotic nature.
Make them up if necessary.

I wish it wasn't this way I got into Azu, but anyway:

A long, long, time ago (2-3 years) I saw the article on "404 Girl" on ED, then I was like "Hmm, interesting. Maybe I should read it", never having seen any anime or read any manga before, this was my gateway onto anime.
Then I started reading it from Chapter 1 at the (then updated) koiwai.biz webpage. It was better than I expected.
It was amazing. I was kind of depressed at that time, and this changed everything. All of a sudden, I felt happy. The characters, the setting, the story, it was all wonderful and cute. Since then, I have followed the manga, which I believe is one of the best ever made. One day I heard on 4chan's /a/ about a board called /azu/, and after some googling I arrived here. Time later, I watched Azumanga Daioh, then read the manga. Same as Yotsuba&!, there is just something that makes it wonderful to read and watch. You can not simply rule 34 it. You might take any other random anime and make porn of it, but not Azumanga. There is something that makes it incorruptible. So that's why I love Azuma's work, and how I got in here.

>>209485

>You might take any other random anime and make porn of it, but not Azumanga.

You better not look in my /azu/ folder then...

>>209483
You walked with the girl, after making whoopie in the restroom - what? I know there's a scene missing. Details!

>>209531
naaah, he clearly wasn't interested cuz she was too old. If she was 8 or 7 on the other hand...

>>209531
Ralen fan fiction?

believe it or not, /b/

>>209583
I habeeb it. /b/ use to sticky Azumanga posts for some reason...

I first heard of it back in grade 11, c.5 years ago. My buddy who didn't like anime told me about an anime series he saw the first episode of, and loved. What he described it as, a bunch of girls going to school, and one is really smart or something, didn't convince me. Another buddy of mine had the whole series on disc and we got together for a viewing. Before that we'd been watching Evangelion. I wasn't terribly impressed, though intrigued.

Hooked up a laptop to the TV and began a marathon session that had me watching until the next morning. I loved it - the characters, the art direction, the way the story was written about regular life. Made a kind of connection with me, since I was around the same age as the cast.

I stayed mindful of it for some time after; Downloaded the soundtrack, did an internet art crawl (back when I used to visit YTMND) and even worked some of Azuma's faces and other stylings into my own artwork (though they don't show up so often anymore). Back in 2008 bought the Omnibus collection of the manga, just before I heard of the new work Azuma was doing with it. Anyways, this was the cartoon that led to me watching other Japanese series, and accepting anime as an art form.

TL;DR: the Anime that got me into Anime.