From: tnaran@gmail.com   
      
   "A poor-man's poor-man's Azumanga Daioh, but some people might like it   
   more than AD."   
      
   Billed as a new Azumanga Daioh, I had to give this a try.  I got volume   
   one last week and finished reading it in a day.  It's a slim volume and   
   very well put-together.  It includes color plates at the front,   
   translation notes at the back.  Not bad.   
      
   The premise is pretty simple: two new homeroom teachers have started at   
   Asahio Shogo High School in Tokyo, from which they graduated.  Maki   
   Izumu is the new P.E. teacher, and Nagumo Yuko is the Japanese language   
   teacher.  They quickly make friends with Arai Setsuna, the school nurse,   
   and Kaname Karasuma, the foreign language teacher.   
      
   The stories are mostly set in the teachers' room, and are basically just   
   gags involving those four teachers.  The manga is done as a 4-panel   
   manga, but with some continuity between the strips.  The gags are pretty   
   minor with a lot of the jokes about Karasuma being all yuri for Maki,   
   and Yuko being a closet Yaoi-fan.  The students don't seem to play a   
   significant part in the story, and the male teachers are present but   
   background (with the exception of Maki's brother who used to date the   
   nurse, Arai).   
      
   I found the gags to be pretty minor and only laughed out loud once for   
   the entire thing.  I can't say I disliked it, but I don't think there's   
   much to like.  I was expecting more laughs or at least chuckles, but it   
   mostly left me cold.   
      
   But I can see this being popular with some fans, so I think it's   
   something you'll have to try for yourselves to find out if it's your cup   
   of tea.   
      
   --   
   -----   
   Travers Naran, tnaran at google's mail.com   
   "Welcome to RAAM. Hope you can take a beating..." -- E.L.L.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)