Excel Saga

Believing the World to be corrupt, the secret organization Across plans to conquer the world. The first step in the plan for world domination is to begin by focusing on one city in order to minimize setbacks. Across consists of the leader of the organization, Il Palazzo, and his young adult officers: the enthusiastic and energetically devoted Excel and the soft-spoken Hyatt, who is prone to fainting and losing lots of blood at a time. Excel and Hyatt live in an apartment building in the city, along with their pet dog Menchi, who they have deemed their emergency food supply. Excel and Hyatt are later joined by a snobbish but equally clueless rival officer of Across named Elgala.

Living in the neighboring apartment are three guys: Iwata, Sumiyoshi and Watanabe, who along with apartment neighbor and co-worker Matsuya, work for the Department of City Security. The Department's leader, Dr. Kabapu, also has a grandiose plan on stopping Across; he has the City Security workers dress in Super Sentai-like uniforms and sends them on different missions. Supporting Kabapu is an inventor Gojo Shiouji who likes little girls, and his gynoid Ropponmatsu, who later is deployed as two models.

The series follows the daily interactions among the two groups. Il Palazzo would send the girls on their missions but the results are usually a failure with some explosive or catastrophic damage to the city. Kabapu would send the City Security workers on some equally ridiculous assignment which would also go wrong. Eventually Il Palazzo and Kabapu become aware of each other's manipulations and escalate their plans. Excel finds herself being replaced by an impersonator who heads the ILL Corporation. Massive amounts of money is spent on elections and politics. Eventually the members of Across begin making appeals directly to the City's citizens before Il Palazzo publicly declares the existence of Across and its intentions to the public. Hyatt is captured and Excel and Elgala are later held in an immigrant detention center before being rescued by Il Palazzo, who begins the new phase of his plans.

The anime adaptation introduces some original characters: immigrant worker turned wandering spirit Pedro; alien mascot-like creatures called Puchuu; and The Great Will of the Macrocosm, the last of whom occasionally resets the storyline. The anime director Shinichi Watanabe cameos as an afro-wearing guy named Nabeshin, and a caricature of the manga artist also makes appearances.

The series was created by Rikdo Koshi and based on a dojinshi he had previously created while in high school named Municipal Force Daitenzin (市立戦隊ダイテンジン, Shiritsu Sentai Daitenjin). Excel Saga was created as an evolution of Daitenzin in order to develop the character of Excel, as well as to laugh off the vision of a depressed and pessimistic view of the world.[4][5] Excel Saga is set in Fukuoka City and the names of characters and organisations are derived from local locations and buildings.[6]

Victor Entertainment contacted Shōnen Gahōsha about adapting Excel Saga into an anime, and the two companies approached Rikdo. Shinichi Watanabe was chosen as director. Watanabe added his own alter ego, Nabeshin, and expanded several elements. He says that the Great Will in the manga was "conveyed just as words", and he himself developed its appearance, eventually settling on the "swirling, talking cosmos". He also increased Pedro's role in the story from a single frame in the manga. Watanabe says he was pleased with that aspect of his work, noting that "Pedro's situation was considered unsuitable for broadcast in Japan".[7] The anime production staff was given the freedom to do anything they wanted as long as they kept the theme of the series intact, and Rikdo requested they created a separate timeline. Rikdo would later become influenced by the anime series due to its quick broadcast in comparison to the monthly schedule of the manga.[4] The anime makes frequent use of parody and in-jokes as comedic devices, with each episode having a genre-based theme. This extends to the animation, with several characters designed in the style of other works, such as those by Leiji Matsumoto.[8] Kotono Mitsuishi was chosen to play the role of Excel, and Watanabe was impressed with Mitsuishi's rapid delivery of her lines, saying that "she really pushed herself to the limit and beyond". He also says, "at times she was too fast, and there was plenty of time left to match the lip-synch". In such cases, either he would add new material or Mitsuishi would ad-lib.[7] At first Rikdo felt stunned and uncomfortable at hearing Excel speak, but he called the casting "amazing" and was pleased to hear his favourite voice actors read lines from his work.[4]

Since its August 2003 release in North America, the manga has been among the 50 top-selling graphic novels on three occasions.[36][37][38]

The English-language reviews of the Excel Saga anime were broadly positive and enthusiastic. Mike Crandol of Anime News Network puts it in the same class as Airplane!, National Lampoon, Tex Avery, and Monty Python, adding that the "combination of character-based humor, outrageous slapstick farce, and a plot that is engaging if only for how weird it is make for a thoroughly enjoyable comedic experience".[8] A contrary opinion is expressed by Joel Pearce from DVD Verdict, who says the series is "occasionally clever and funny," but that "much of it is gratingly obnoxious".[39] Many reviewers express displeasure with middle and later episodes, saying they were "more of the same," that they had stale humor, that they were tiresome, or even painfully unfunny.[39][40][41] Episodes fourteen through sixteen, starring the Ropponmatsus, bear the brunt of this criticism, but several reviewers consider episode seventeen, Animation USA, to be one of the best.[39][41][42][43]

Reviewers also agree that the series suffers from too much filler in its later episodes, with Crandol describing the show as spinning its wheels.[44] Yegulalp reserves his harshest words for the unaired Going Too Far, calling it "pure, idiotic, wretched excess." He goes on to say that the episode has "the feeling of trying to deliberately enrage the audience by resorting to the only tactics left: genuinely offensive subject matter." Joel Cunningham at Digitally Obsessed disagrees, saying that the episode succeeds just in time, "with one of the series' funnier sight gags".[45]

The series generally receives high marks for technical aspects. Cunningham feels the animation is flat-out gorgeous, but Crandol considers it merely above average. In the latter's opinion, its quality wanes as the series progresses and increasingly relies on super-deforming the characters for comedic effect.[41][46] ADV's release earned praise for the quality of the video transfer and the DVD extras (particularly the Vid-Notes).[8][45] Reviewers especially appreciated the English voice acting: Crandol calls it brilliant, and several note that Calvello and Wolcott were each able to capture Mitsuishi's Excel.[8][41][43] Pearce, in contrast, found the English cast to be pretty bad and its Excel to be "dental drill shrill".[39]

Akadot's reviewer of the manga writes that "some of the strange events go on a little too long and do not have the impact that they do animated," but that Rikdo's Excel Saga is "graced with fantastic visuals and a hilarious story," and that the English edition is "a masterpiece of the translator's skill."[47] Barb Lien-Cooper from Comic World News concurs that the manga cannot keep pace with the anime, but she finds Excel herself to be wittier in the manga and that the manga's plots make more sense than the anime's.[48] A reviewer of the French edition also praises Rikdo's work, noting that it is an "...easy read without problems of clarity".[49]

Wikiquote has quotations related to Excel Saga.

• Official manga website of Viz Media
• Official anime website of Madman Entertainment
• Excel Saga (manga) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia