Not to be confused with Azumanga Daioh, Azumanga Recycle is an anthology collection of Kiyohiko Azuma's earlier work. Before his current popularity, Kiyohiko Azuma was a prolific gag manga artist, and both officially and unofficially created gag manga for a variety of franchises. Eventually he was hired by Pioneer LDC to create gag manga for some of their anime series; his manga would be printed in series' merchandise. (CD booklets, Laserdisc sleeves, game manuals, etc.). Eventually Pioneer collected the various gag manga and illustrations drawn by Azuma for their series into a combination artbook & manga anthology simply titled "Azumanga", published in 1998. After the overnight success of Azumanga Daioh, there were discussions between Pioneer and MediaWorks to produce a budget version of this manga anthology for fans of Azumanga Daioh that wanted to read his earlier work. The original Azumanga was a large, Laserdisc-sized artbook and had a variety of comics adapted from anime and illustrations with little context, which made it difficult to understand for many of the new fans. (It also included a mini CD-ROM!) With a desire to make it easier for these new fans to read Azuma's earlier work, Azumanga Recycle was born. Published by Dengenki Comics in 2001, its size and design matches it very closely to how they published individual volumes of Azumanga Daioh. Azumanga Recycle features surreal, comedic gag manga parodied from the following anime series: Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki (OVA) Tenchi Universe (TV) Tenchi in Tokyo! (TV) Tenchi the Movie: Tenchi Muyo in Love (Movie) Tenchi the Movie 2: The Daughter of Darkness (Movie) Battle Athletes (OVA) Battle Athletes Victory (TV) Magical Girl Pretty Sammy (OVA) Magical Project S (TV) ...all of which was originally printed in Laserdisc & VHS releases, drama CDs, PlayStation & Sega Saturn games, the magazine Anime V, and movie theater pamphlets, just to name a few. Each manga in Azumanga Recycle has a couple of bullet points explaining a bit of context behind the comic. Despite Tenchi Muyo and Kiyohiko Azuma's popularity overseas, this book has never been officially licensed or translated into English. While this is unconfirmed speculation, this might be due to licensing issues - Viz Media has the North American license for the Tenchi Muyo! manga series, while ADV Manga/Yen Press have the license to Azumanga Daioh & Yotsuba&!. However, given this book's status as a budget reprint meant to appeal to fans of Azuma through his newer work, this book presents a great opportunity for English-speaking fans to experience the otherwise vast, disconnected bulk of Kiyohiko Azuma's early manga. All 157 pages have been scanned and meticulously translated into English using Photoshop. This process has taken me a year and two months, from scanning to its final release.  See you next time! manga.mrmanager.org