is a Japanese
comedyComedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...
mangaManga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...
by
Kiyohiko Azumais a Japanese manga author and artist. In his manga he writes under the hiragana form of his name, which has led some non-Japanese-speakers to confuse him for a woman . He used to use the pen name ' in his H manga...
. It was serialized by
MediaWorkswas a Japanese publishing company in the Kadokawa Group known for their brand magazines and book labels. These included such well-known magazines as Dengeki Daioh, and Dengeki G's Magazine, along with MediaWorks' main light novel publishing imprint Dengeki Bunko. The company was merged with ASCII...
in the shōnen manga magazine
Dengeki Daiohis a Japanese shōnen manga magazine published by ASCII Media Works under the Dengeki brand. Many manga serialized in Dengeki Daioh were later published in tankōbon volumes under ASCII Media Works' Dengeki Comics imprint. The magazine is sold every month on the 27th...
from 1999 to 2002 and collected in four
bound volumes, with a literal meaning close to "independently appearing book", is the Japanese term for a book that is complete in itself and is not part of a series , though the manga industry uses it for volumes which may be in a series...
. In May 2009, in conjunction with the 10th anniversary of the manga, three additional chapters began serialization in
Shogakukanis a Japanese publisher of dictionaries, literature, manga, non-fiction, DVDs, and other media in Japan.Shogakukan founded Shueisha which founded Hakusensha. These are three separate companies, but are together called the Hitotsubashi Group, one of the largest publishing groups in Japan...
's
Monthly Shōnen Sunday, alternately known as , is a monthly shōnen manga magazine published in Japan by Shogakukan since 12 May 2009 . The magazine was announced in February 2009...
under the title
Azumanga Daioh: Supplementary Lessons.
The manga is drawn in a series of vertical four-panel
comic stripA comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
s called
yonkomathumb|right|150px|Traditional Yonkoma layout, a comic-strip format, generally consists of gag comic strips within four panels of equal size ordered from top to bottom...
and depicts the lives of a group of girls during their three years as high-school classmates.
