Despite having a real name, Osaka is always referred to by the city she transferred from. To those from Tokyo, people from Osaka are considered to be "country" and that shows in Osaka the character. She's dim-witted, speaks with a light Osakan accent (a light Southern accent in the English dub), and is not good at anything she does. Despite her faults, she's happy, polite, and friendly. Her daydreams provide the show with its weirdest, most surreal moments.
Those five characters are the major ones in the show and they are joined later by Kagura, a dumb athlete who sees Sakaki as her rival. Another relatively minor character is Kaorin, a girl who has a serious woman-crush on Sakaki.
The girls' homeroom teacher is Miss Yukari, a woman who hilariously represents the worst qualities a teacher could ever have. She's self-centered, lazy, hotheaded, and somewhat mean. When her bike's chain breaks while on her way to school in the first episode, she actually steals the bike of the student who stopped to help her. Then there is Miss Minamo, the girls' P. E. teacher and swimming coach. She is well-loved by her students, a fact that is not lost on Miss Yukari who has been friends with Miss Minamo since they went to high school together. The girls' math teacher, Mr. Kimura, is also the only male character of any consequence in the entire series. He is, quite simply, a pervert who clearly likes high school girls. Depending on your sensitivity to his obsession with high school girls, his behavior throughout the series can be seen as funny or cringe-inducing.
One of interesting things about this show is the way it deftly handles things that are true to life as well as surreal fantasy. Yearly events actually take place every year within the show. There are three episodes that focus on the yearly Sports Festival, three episodes that deal with the yearly Culture Festival, and three episodes that deal with yearly exams. Then there are things in the show that are just plain strange. One of the strangest is an orange, catlike being that stands on two feet. He appears throughout the show and is often called Chiyo-chan's "father." Also, the show has a lot of references to Japanese culture and gags that require knowledge of the Japanese language in order to truly understand them. The translator's notes in the individual DVD volumes explain these references in detail and the dub changes some of them to make them palatable to an English-speaking audience.
Article comments
1 - Uchenna Kema
A nice summary of the series. Its honest practcal and it describes it well. Keep up the good work!