You might recall how I babbled on about Azumanga Daioh a few months ago. It’s one of my favorite series ever. I particularly love the manga, but the anime is superb as well. I had watched around… 2006, I guess? And I remembered it fondly. Creator Kiyohiko Azuma has been very influential to me, his other best known work being about a guy who somehow ends up with a little weird daughter.

Anyways, it recently occured to me to watch it again, just for kicks, and I got a couple of shocking surprises within the first 30 seconds or so. Didn’t make it past the opening titles, actually.

Consider this video, starting at 0:24 (sorry, for some reason deep-linking won’t work with this video):

Looks familiar? Here, I’ll help you.

And, possibly even worse, check the same video from the 0:38 mark. Compare with this.

All I can say is that I genuinely didn’t remember this when I drew those strips (if I did, I wouldn’t have drawn them, or I would have mentioned it). And since I had seen Azumanga before, I can’t very well claim that it was a coincidence.

Ah well, consider this my apology to Mr Azuma and to you, dear readers, for serving you less-than-original content.