bruen.roman - 2016-10-29 18:05:35

What do you get when a love sick woman, a puppy used as an emergency food source, and a woman who doesn't know how to stay alive? EXCEL FUCKING SAGA

reinger.deborah - 2015-04-08 17:56:11

For me, Excel Saga is the DEFINITION of over-the-top comedy anime.  It's the one that has made me laugh the most - I even found myself laughing at jokes that I didn't understand/didn't know what they were supposed to be poking fun at.  THAT'S how good of a show this is.

Excel Saga follows Excel, a member of an organization known as ACROSS, whose goal is world domination - but first, ACROSS is focused on conquering the city they are stationed in.  Excel serves Lord Il Palazzo, who is the head of ACROSS, who is dedicated to saving the population from corruption.  As each episode is episodic (for the most part), I'll give a basic summary of what happens in each episode: Il Pallazo gives Excel (and, once she joins ACROSS, Hyatt) an objective; Excel sets out to accomplish said objective (which can range from something simple, like delivering a package to a certain location, to an extremely unusual task, like killing the creator of Excel Saga - seriously, that's Excel's first assignment); however, extremely chaotic (and hilarious) hijinks ensue, and Excel fails (normally because of said hijinks, but her own actions also get a fair amount of the blame).  However, with the exception of the last episode (which was made so it wouldn't be aired on TV) each episode is unique because it's a parody of a different genre of anime (in fact, some of the later episodes are both a homage to and a parody of Fist of the North Star); basically, the more anime you've seen, the funnier you will find this; however, if you jump into this having seen very little anime, most of the humor will fly over your head; so I would not recommend this to new viewers of anime.

The animation is by JC Staff, a studio which I have a favorable opinion of, and quality wise, it seems just like what I would expect from them at the time this was made.  As for the music, it fits the whole "over the top" comedic vibe; my favorite piece was the opening, which basically gives you a small taste of what to come.

The characters of Excel Saga are the biggest strength - I like so many characters, that I'll just describe the ones that stick out to me.  My favorite character is obviously Excel; she is a ditz who seems fully aware of it (if I'm not mistaken, she admits she's a moron) - and that's the main reason I like her.  Il Palazzo is the character who I see the most of myself, mainly because I feel that if I was in his shoes, I would do a lot of the actions he does.  Hyatt is a character who routinely dies - but she comes back to life.  The show's director even makes a cameo as Nabeshin.  HOW IS THAT NOT AWESOME?

I enjoyed this, and I can't see a reason not to give it a 5 out of 5 stars.

FOR FANS OF/FURTHER RECOMMENDATIONS:
FLCL (equally as random)
Ultimate Teacher (one of the few anime that came close to making me laugh as much as I did when I watched Excel Saga)
Maritan Successor Nadesico (Another great parody anime)
Is this a Zombie? (Similar over the top humor)
Cromartie High School
Gintama (Has similar amounts of referential humor)

hill.raina - 2014-01-21 14:00:29

Excel Saga is one of the truest examples of "love it or hate" it anime, due in part to it's nonsensical humor, thin plot and extreme parody. I will try to examine the anime very fully so that you can get the best possible look at whether it anime is for you.

Story:

There are a couple of different plot lines in Excel Saga. All of them are either knife-edge thin or serve only to play into the hands of the different genre parodies every episode. They are:

• * The story of Excel, Hyatt and their leader Lord Ilpalazzo as they do missions to eventually take over the city.
  

• * The story of Pedro, an increasingly melodramatic tale of an immigrant worker who dies and comes back as a ghost now invisible to his "sexy wife" and son. He has to win them back...

• * The story of the Department of City Security, which consists of fake mustache wearing Kabapu (the "evil" leader); Toru, Norikuni and Daimaru - three average ronins who question the ridiculous training and military missions they are sent on and Misaki, the beautiful and intelligent woman who usually saves the mission. They are accompanied by Ropponmatsu 1 + 2, two androids, halfway through the series.

• * Nabeshin, literally the director of the anime who often comes in to save the day in the most Gung-ho way possible and to comment on the anime production. Nabeshin has appeared in numerous anime since.
  

• * Menchi the dog, the emergency food supply of Excel and Hyatt's household, who lives in constant fear and tries to escape at every opportunity.

The plot lines intersect constantly and rely on lame puns, running gags, nonsensical actions and quintessential weirdness to derive humor. Each episode sees them turning a single genre or topic into a parody (Which includes US Animation studios). The series also breaks the fourth wall often, referring to itself and it's own production. If you enjoy over the top, nonsensical humor then you will love it otherwise, run away now!

Animation:

Excel Saga's animation is above average, good at best. A lot of the humor comes from deforming the animation of a character into something ridiculous or having the production staff comment on the increase or decrease in quality of animation (and the general production) that week.

Sound:

Excel's Seiyuu in particular is brilliant, able to spout out dialogue at a rapid pace for very long periods. (Probably the best part of the anime for me, BTW, but often grating for some) The other seiyuus are all well capable as well. The OP is average, although it grows on you and the ED features Menchi, who sings (in dog) about his plight and is translated by a girl alongside. This joke gets old quickly, although there are jokes in the credits to look out for. The themes are stereotypical, which aids in the lame puns and parody of the genres each episode. There are also some great musical snippets, which I won't spoil.

Character:

Excel is undoubtedly the star of the show (as the name suggests) and she delivers. She is egocentric, arrogant and annoying - her rapid fire ramblings are the glue of the show. Nabeshin is a very cool OP character, which is made funny in that he is also the director of the anime. Hyatt compliments Excel's excessive energy well. Pedro's melodrama can be funny and un-funny at the same time, depending on the situation. Menchi is simply adorable and lovable at every turn. The Department of City Security's ensemble are the least interesting characters and are often bland.

Enjoyment

The series peaks at the beginning and end, particularly the end (which is the episode that earns the series a NC-17 rating and is DVD only) which goes up to 11 and delves into hentai, excessive gore and absolutely ridiculous weirdness - it is a natural conclusion. :) The middle individual episodes of the anime are fairly bland and often humorless plot wise. This is an anime that is enjoyed for its theme of weirdness and individual jokes rather than its arc. I love this series, so for me personally, it's a 7.

American release and Dub:

Excel is the character that broke the mighty Jessica Calvello's voice, however her and her replacement Larissa Wolcott do an excellent job of delivering Excel's rabid annoyances. The rest of the dub's cast is good not great and the best way to watch the anime is probably in Japanese with subs. The ADV release (which is now relicenced by Funimation) contains extensive notes about some of the more complex and weird Japanese puns in the series. The IMPerfect Collection (Excel saying "I'm Perfect"), if you can get a hold of one (it's now out of production), contains loads of extra gags and will offer many additional rewards after you watch the fansub.

Overall:

You might love the running gags, rapid fire annoyances, self referential nature and un-rivalled weirdness of Excel or you might be put off but the dry plot and misfires of a number of gags. By the end of one episode, you will know whether this is one of the worst or best anime you have ever seen so give it a try if this review intrigues you.

uhalvorson - 2013-05-22 09:19:55

Watch­ing Excel Saga promp­ted me to make a com­par­ison between it and Seto no Hanayome. They both rely on a mix­ture of absurdity, par­ody and tak­ing plot points to the non­sensical extreme to draw laughs from the audi­ence. The only real dif­fer­ence between the two is Seto no Hanayome spends it’s time going to com­plete extremes with tropes, such as the school­ground divi­sion, while Excel Saga spends more time rev­el­ing in its lack of a fourth wall. Actu­ally there’s an even big­ger dif­fer­ence between the two. Seto no Hanayome is funny. Excel Saga just isn’t. In fact, I’m at a bit of a loss to say quite why Seto is funny while Excel Saga isn’t. Yes, com­edy that often uses ran­dom­ness to draw laughs can vary hugely from per­son to per­son. But let’s leave Seto aside for now and focus on why Excel Saga isn’t funny. It’s hard to put my fin­ger on as to why put a large part comes down to the characters.Excel is meant to be the char­ac­ter from which most of the punch­lines come from. In that sense, a dubbed Excel would have worked bet­ter for comedic tim­ing pur­poses but that wasn’t an option. Excel might as well been speak­ing in Klin­gon for all I knew, such was her incom­pre­hens­ib­il­ity. Even if I under­stood Japan­ese I would have had to watch the thing subbed, and they were the most dif­fi­cult subs to keep up with this side of a Shaft anime. There was also a lack of facial expres­sions. It’s not like they lacked the anim­a­tion qual­ity to do that. In fact, the art­work and anim­a­tion in this series were of a very high stand­ard (espe­cially when you com­pare this series to GTO, which came out in the same year. God did GTO ever look awful). It’s just Excel rarely went bey­ond shouty loud face. Bloody Men­chi had more vari­ety of facial expres­sions than she did.The rest of the char­ac­ters were pretty much a one-trait bunch, which in itself isn’t a bad thing. But those one-traits weren’t funny. Hyatt’s con­stant deaths were only funny in the last epis­ode where they took it to the non­sensical and hugely bloody extremes. Ill­palazzo didn’t do much bey­ond have theme music and a piece of rope. None of the office staff were remotely funny (what the hell was with the guy who only spoke with writ­ing?) and the mus­tache Mr.Kabapu was done bet­ter by FLCL. Pedro’s story was all a bit of a anom­aly in the series that sat there and took up time from the main story, kinda like Chib­italia except nowhere near as bad (for one, the non-chibitalia sec­tions are actu­ally funny). Oddly enough, the star of the show was Nabeshin, the dir­ector turned anime char­ac­ter. It’s as if he saw that there was a total lack of other funny char­ac­ters in the show so he decided to stick him­self in to liven things up a bit. His pulling of machine-guns out of his ‘fro was one of the few high­lights from the first half of the series.One thing Excel Saga did have in it’s favour was that the girls were hot. I found myself wish­ing that they would have more fanser­vice ori­ent­ated com­edy. This feel­ing, I have noted before, is usu­ally a sign that the show is fail­ing in other areas when I’m look­ing towards sex appeal for enter­tain­ment (unless you hap­pen to be a cer­tain spin off from Full Metal Panic). Yeah, my mind kept wan­der­ing in Excel Saga as I looked for other things in the show to keep me enter­tained. I was so starved for com­edy in what should have been a comedic series that I star­ted find­ing laughs from parts that weren’t really meant to be for humour. I dis­tinctly remem­ber an epis­ode where a few char­ac­ters repeated the name ‘Mr.Kabapu’ a few times, some­thing I inex­plic­ably found to be the fun­ni­est thing of the series thus far and from then out found myself laugh­ing when­ver someone said his name. One thing that helped me con­tinue was spa­cing the epis­odes with the occa­sional Gintama jaunt, which put Excel Saga to shame in every way bar hav­ing hot women (sorry Kagura but you stand no chance against Hyatt and Excel).Because I was des­per­ately look­ing for some­thing dif­fer­ent in Excel Saga, I really enjoyed the last few epis­odes and the total change in tone. Then there was the last epis­ode which, after 25 pre­vi­ous epis­odes of rel­at­ively unfunny epis­odes bar­ring the occa­sional men­tion­ing of Mr.Kabapu, was a joy to behold. Asides from deliv­er­ing the fanser­vice I’d been secretly hop­ing for the entire show, it finally took the show to the non­sensical extremes that it had yet to do.