I am a big fan of two of Azuma Kiyohiko’s latest works, Azumanga Daioh and Yotsuba&! Both of are Seinen Slice-of-Life manga, which are his speciality. In fact, I own all of his manga published in English:
It was arguably his genius 4Koma manga Azumanga Daioh that made him famous. The anime adaption of the manga only helped blow up his popularity world wide ten-fold.
You can sample some of his strips from Azumanga Daioh here.
Yotsuba&! is his next manga after Azumanga Daioh finished serialisation in the Seinen manga magazine Degenki Daioh. Both are serialised in the same magazine and carry roughly the same type of humour, although Azumanga Daioh arguably had much more mayhem compared to Yotsuba&!, which concentrates much more heavily on the slice-of-life aspect.
Above: Chiyo-chan.
Below: Yotsuba& uprooted sunflowers (WTF?)
If you have read the strips I have provided, you will notice that Yotsuba bears very close resemblance to Chiyo-chan from Azumanga Daioh. However, Yotsuba is the polar opposite of Chiyo-chan personality wise. Firstly, Chiyo-chan is from a rich family while Yotsuba is an orphan. Chiyo-chan is very smart while Yotsuba is… very dumb. Chiyo-chan often gets bullied while nobody dares to touch Yotsuba because she is an orphan.
The biggest difference between Yotsuba&! and Azumanga Daioh is that Yotsuba&! is not primarily a 4Koma manga. The larger panels allow Azuma Kiyohiko a much greater stylistic and artistic expression, but arguably at the cost of the tight yet incredibly funny claustrophobic humour packed into the 4-paneled goodness of Azumanga Daioh.
However, today I broke open my 4th volume of Yotsuba&! to have a look and I got a pleasant surprise.
Usually, I read about 5 or 6 series of manga and light novels simultaneously. I keep them all in this handy military khaki bag to bring around camp easily. Whenever I get bored of one manga or light novel I will switch to another quickly. I currently have Shinigami no Ballad, Yotsuba&!, Nodame Cantabile and Genshiken manga in my bag flanked by 2 light novels which are Boogiepop and Shakugan no Shana.
Anyway, about 2/3 through the manga, I found 4Komas in it! Yotsuba&! 4Komas!!!
I was pleasantly surprised. I have to comment that even if Azuma Kiyohiko kept Yotsuba&! as a 4Koma, it would sell equally well. Although it lacked the amount of mayhem that Azumanga Daioh had, they were still drawn well and are very enjoyable.
I’ll just scan one as a preview, but I would prefer if everyone would just go out and support the king of Seinen Slice-of-life, Azuma Kiyohiko, and get his books.
i prefer Yotsuba to Azumanga Daioh really. yotsuba& emphasizes more on Yotsuba growing up and learning the ways of life in a humorous tone. just watching her do such innocent mistakes not only gives the reader a dose of humour but also a sense of warmth that i feel, can only be given by Yotsuba.
Yotsuba&! definitely feels more spaced out and warm compared to Azumanga Daioh, which is rather tight and fast paced. The pace is broken up by really lame humour (cue Osaka) and non-4Koma portions.
Reading Azumanga is very similar to watching REC or Suzumiya Haruhi. It is really good, but the pleasure ends far too quickly.
Due to the EXTREME pleasure derived from Osaka’s randomly lame behavior, and my tendency towards sadistic humour that is found from bullying Chiyo-chan (Yukari + Tomo + Chiyo-chan = sadistic humour that those too young will find unacceptable), I prefer Azumanga Daioh to Yotsuba&!
Well, Yotsuba&! has a long way to go and hasn’t stopped at the 6 volume so there are plenty of panels to convince me.
Either way, I hope it gets animated soon, by J.C. Staff again. J.C. Staff did Azumanga Daioh perfectly. 26 episodes of slice-of-life goodness. Kudos to them