Excel Saga

-Details-
Genre: Comedy/Parody
Company: J.C. Staff
Format: 26 episodes
Dates: October 7, 1999 – March 30, 2000


-Visuals- 8.5/10
The visuals look dated, as if the show was drawn in the early 90's but the animation is still very smooth. The animation will change styles to fit whatever pun, joke, or reference the show is trying to get across. For example, when Excel travels to America, she uses fast paced cartoonish American animation to her favor to dodge bullets and defeat her enemies. The character designs are all ripped right out of the manga of the same name and does a good job of maintaining those designs without any serious drop in quality (unless its for a joke) through the course of the series. So while the visuals will never 'wow' you, they certainly get the job done of delivering jokes.





-Characters- 9/10
Oh boy. Where to begin? For starters, Excel Saga features a massive crew of characters. None of which are normal. Even the most normal of characters have some sort of weird quirk about them. Every character seems to break the fourth wall with ease as well. Sometimes you have an episode that continues a characters story for only 5 seconds in an episode, only to see that character in the next episode for 15 minutes. As for growth and development of these characters.... forget about it. They are simply tools for jokes and I am 110% okay with that. Each character is funny, outlandish, and offensive. Thats what makes Excel Saga so great. Whether it be Excel and Hyatt causing a zombie apocalypse inside a government office that they were infiltrating, or a scientist who always arrives exactly on time with his work, even though he has been at a park playground spying on children all day, or Nabashin, the director of the show who appears randomly to save the day, all of them have a purpose and fufill it perfectly. My one complaint is that there are so many hilarious characters, that we sometimes see some of them get overshadowed too easily.



-Story- 8/10
Excel has just graduated high school and is skipping out of school grounds chanting the word ACROSS over and over again when she is suddenly hit by a large truck while crossing the street. In the ambulance her life begins to flash before our eyes in the background (which according to the para-medic is a bad sign). She dies and while the paramedics are discussing where to dump the body (behind the grocery store maybe?) the Great Will of the Macrocosm informs Excel that she can't die in the first episode, so she resets the show and places Excel before Lord Illapalzzo, the leader of ACROSS, an organization who's purpose is to conquer the world, starting with a Japanese city. After two more resets (Excel is shot once with a pistol and then again with a rocket launcher for being too annoying) Excel is given her mission, to rid the world of manga artist scum. Her first target, none other than the creator of the Excel Saga manga, Rikdo Koshi. She sets off to complete her mission wielding a massive sword while walking down the street. Its simply insane what happens for the next 25 1/2 episodes. Special praise for the Pedro story arch which is twice as insane as the main story.

For the first half of the series, each episode has a theme, such as sports anime, animal anime, romantic anime, or action anime. The episode then tells of Excel and Hyatt doing whatever mission it is that their leader, Illapalzzo of their organization ACROSS, gives to them. Excel and Hyatt may have to infiltrate the city government buildings or take over the youth hotspots, which Illapalzzo believes, wrongly, is a bowling alley. The missions set up the jokes, and that works. But to rate the series for story, there really isn't much of one; yet what story is there works perfectly for the purpose of the show. Thus the high rating for a small story.

-Overall- 9/10
Insane, hilarious, offensive, wild, raunchy, and violent; Excel Saga embraces its outlandishness and asks itself, "Can we make this crazier?" Ten out of ten times, the answer is yes. The TV cut of the series is only 25 episodes. Episode 26 could not be shown on television because it broke every rule about television decency. When half the episode is centered around a love hotel, that is to be expected though. Watch this show if you want extremely fast paced humor and crazy, wacky fun. The humor can be dark, but it is still incredibly enjoyable.