Yukari

Yukari Tanizaki (Japanese: 谷崎 ゆかり Tanizaki Yukari), also known as "Miss Yukari" (ゆかり先生 Yukari-sensei)by her students, is a character from Azumanga Daioh. She is the homeroom teacher of Koyomi, Tomo, Chiyo, Sakaki, Ayumu, and Kagura, the six main protagonists of the anime.

Biography
She is not only the girls' English and homeroom teacher (class 3), but a teacher with very unconventional methods and a rather close relationship with the class. Her students are casual enough to call her by her given name (Yukari-sensei in lieu of Tanizaki-sensei, with a few, mostly Tomo, addressing her as the extremely informal Yukari-chan (Japanese); just Yukari in English). Depending on the day, time, and her mood, she can be either a horrible tyrant or one of the sweetest, most touching teachers ever. Her behavior ranges from mercilessly teasing Chiyo and hitting students with blunt objects to kind and gentle words and simple, encouraging notes on tests telling students she believes in them. She is often selfish, irresponsible, miserly, generally dysfunctional, and also easily angered, and shamelessly expects her friend and fellow teacher, Minamo Kurosawa ("Nyamo"), to not only tolerate all of this, but to enable it. She becomes jealous when Nyamo receives nicer birthday presents from her students, and will even give her students study hall so that she can ditch them and go swimming at the school pool. In one episode, when Yukari is in a terrible mood about the lack of birthday presents, Tomo complains it's simply because Yukari's birthday is during Summer Break.

Off the job, she frequently drags Nyamo out on expensive drinking parties, which Nyamo usually has to pay for. Yukari is very fond of Korean barbecue, which becomes the object of many of her extravagant wagers involving the class. She even becomes incredibly jealous whenever anyone has eaten expensive food, such as snow crab or Matsusaka beef.

She is also a huge fan of video games, and becomes angry when the store runs out of the newest game.

Yukari's driving skills are infamous, showing no concern for the rules of the road, people, other cars, signs, or the speed limit, and the many dents on her parents' car (dubbed the "Yukarimobile" by Yomi and the others) is evidence to that.

Her insane driving has impacted Chiyo and Kaorin's psyches rather profoundly (causing severe mental scarring to Chiyo in the process), and has even caused Sakaki and Osaka to briefly lose their composures. In spite of this, or perhaps because of it, Yukari loves to drive. The only one who can tolerate Yukari's driving is Tomo, who shares Yukari's love of destruction and mayhem.

Yukari and Nyamo are alumnae of the school the girls attend, and she even appeared at a Sports Festival in her old uniform (which led to a prostitution joke from Tomo Takino in the manga).

Yukari and Tomo have similar obnoxious personalities: they are both boastful, jealous, delusional, lazy, and selfish. Rather than being hateful, though, they are amusing and likeable – one can see why their friends like them, even as they are annoyed by them. The balance between the dual natures of Yukari and Tomo's characters is a unique achievement of the author, and one of the peculiar charms of Azumanga Daioh.

Yukari can speak English fluently, and uses this ability to claim intellectual superiority over Nyamo. (Though the anime treats her speech as fluent, she has a very strong accent.) At one point in the manga, however, she tells her class that the only true purpose for studying English is to pass tests but gets angry when Tomo uses this statement against her.