Excel Saga

Excel Saga (エクセル・サーガ, Ekuseru Sāga^?) is a manga series written and illustrated by Koshi Rikudo. The manga focuses on the lives of the main characters in a satire of Japanese life and culture: Rikudo based Excel Saga on one of his early dōjinshi stories, Municipal Force Daitenzin as a way of & #34;let off steam" faced with financial problems at the same time that he was creating the character of Excel. The anime, on the other hand, uses more satire, and gags based on self-references (animated representations of Rikudou, Watanabe and other members of the production team), and other famous series in Japan, such as Super Sentai, Space Battleship Yamato, and Fist of the North Star.

Critical acceptance of Excel Saga was mostly positive, however, several publishers were dissatisfied with the episodes near the end of the series, and some censored the series for its constant references to dark aspects of Japanese culture. Animax broadcast the anime in Latin America without censorship from June 2007 until 2009.

Plot

Both the manga and anime are silly comedies depicting the "ideological secret organization" ACROSS to conquer the city of Fukuoka (in the anime it is called just F city) as the first step towards world domination and rid it of corruption. Excel is apparently the only important member within the ACROSS organization and whose rank is only surpassed by the enigmatic leader Il Palazzo (and in some scenes by inanimate objects); however, Excel has the support of her officer, Hyatt, being her companion on many occasions. In both stories, the city is defended by a covert government agency led by Dr. Kabapu, who must stop the ACROSS threat.

Characters

CROSS

The Organization for the Promotion of [Supreme and Ideological] Ideals [on Earth], in the anime and manga, ACROSS's attempts to conquer the world are shown, as a &# 34;secretly ideological organization". Their leader, Lord Il Palazzo, plans to start with a city, Fukuoka (Fukuoka), being called that way in the manga, and as "the city F, of the prefecture F" in the anime. He justifies his strategy in that conquering a city will allow him to demonstrate his power, and show the world that they are not ready for immediate unification.

• Excel is the hyperactive protagonist of the series, who always performs his works with more heart than head. His mission is to promote the conquest of the city by ACROSS, but his personal desire is to win the affection and confidence of Ilpalazzo. Despite being the oldest civil servant, she is often out of context. In the sleeve, little by little it moves away from this personality, changing from being enthusiastic, fantasizing and energetic to being petty, ironic, determined and hard. In the sleeve it is replaced by Ropponmatsu I for a while without your companions learning about the change.

• Il Palazzo: In contrast to Excel, it is cold, reserved and calculating, but clearly has mental problems: it often suffers memory loss, hears voices, and sometimes suffers from personality disorders. He shows very little patience with Excel, often risking his personal safety. According to Professor Kabapu he is responsible for the disappearance of the old city of solria. He almost never leaves ACROSS headquarters, except on the occasions when I use Solaria's technology to teleport and save Excel, Hyatt or Elgala.

• Hyatt: Female hired as second agent by Il Palazzo. Very prudent and fragile, it has the habit of both dying and reviving in a fast and impossible way. Despite this limitation, she becomes the favorite agent of Ilpalazzo, but Hyatt is unconscious of her condition, does not give much help to Excel for her illness and maintains a relationship between boss and hench. In the anime she arrives on the ground in a spacecraft, but on the sleeve she joins ACROSS in responding to a job announcement in the newspaper. As we move forward in the history of the sleeve, it is actually an elite sniper.

• Menchi: Pet of the agents and a "food in emergency cases". Although Excel and Hyatt sometimes declare "a state of emergency" and have Menchi as meat, they never eat it. Menchi means chopped meat.

• Elgala: Third agent with which Excel has constant disputes due to his careless and "irrespectful" character (according to the way of thinking of Excel), for his excessive expenses and for his particular "mania" to comment his thoughts out loud (appears only on the sleeve). She is an expert in sword fighting, although she has never had the opportunity to prove it.

Citizen Security Department

In parallel to ACROSS, there is the Department of Citizen Security in charge of Kabapu. Kabapu occupies a position of considerable power within the social organization in the city, he has several ways to impose his policies according to his wishes. Despite his power, he is the object of several ridicules among his subordinates for his appearance, his gestures and for his lack of consistency between his life and the laws he dictates. This is why he informs six members of his department that they will assume the role of Daitenzin , a sentai type masked police force. Members of the citizen security department joined this by taking an exam to access public office.

Toru Watanabe: A tall, dark-haired man in his early twenties, a neighbor of Excel and Hyatt, and close to Norikuni Iwata and Daimaru Sumiyoshi, whose company he detests at first. She is in love with Hyatt, although he knows her as Miss Ayasugi. For a while he lived with Hyatt in the same apartment until she was rescued by Ilpalazzo, from that moment he goes through a crisis that considerably alters his personality.

Daimaru Sumiyoshi: Sumiyoshi is the voice of reason and understanding in the Department, though he is generally the butt of office jokes. The most notable aspect of him is that he can communicate by text while floating in the air, which is opposite to the text balloons of the rest of the characters in the manga, and the common dialogue in the anime. He communicates with an Okayama accent in the manga and with a Kansai dialect in the anime. The manga depicts Sumiyoshi's most characteristic hobby: documenting all the dating games on his complex computer system. She has a younger sister named Kanal who bears no physical resemblance to hers although she speaks in the same way as Sumiyoshi.

Misaki Matsuya: An attractive and intelligent recruit, Matsuya is pragmatic and independent. She is a great wrestler, it is mentioned that she holds the regional record for swimming in butterfly. Although she constantly rejects Iwata deep down she cares for him. She is one of the few characters whose age is mentioned in the manga, she is 22 years old.

Norikuni Iwata Brash, self-centered, and openly in love with Matsuya and Ropponmatsu I, Iwata is hated and tolerated by his neighbors and coworkers. He possesses a tendency to make inappropriate statements to women, and his rivalry with Ropponmatsu Unit II often leads to him being physically harassed. In volume eight of the manga, Iwata suddenly dies of colon cancer but is resurrected through his brain, with an android body created by Dr. Shioji. Because his body, like Ropponmatsu I and II, are products of Solarian technology, he was able to transport his consciousness into the bodies of Ropponmatsu I and II.

Professor Kabapu A tall man with a very strange hairstyle and a giant mustache. Kabapu, along with Ilpalazzo, is the last survivor of the Solarian civilization, having been kept in a state of suspended animation for most of the time until the time when he begins to build his 'empire'. to control the city of Fukuoka.

Ropponmatsu I (Ichishki): It is a robot created by Dr. Shioji's father, and perfected by himself. He has a cold personality due to lacking specialized devices for social interaction and having an enormous body weight. Her body is very resistant, and she is the best adapted for combat among the two Ropponmatsu models. Her power source is the Core or 'heart'. that she must share with the second model of Ropponmatsu. In the manga she is kidnapped and modified by Ilpalazzo so she takes the appearance of Excel and replaces her in the ACROSS organization, Elgala and Hyatt refer to her as President Excel.

Ropponmatsu II (Nishiki): She is the second model of Ropponmatsu created by Doctor Shioji, she has the appearance of a girl with sensors on her head that look like two cat ears. By not containing as many devices as the first model of her, her body is much lighter, although she has a cable on the back of her head that is used to connect to electronic devices and thus acquire new abilities. Her personality is childish and she is in constant dispute with Iwata.

Other characters

Gojo Shiōji: He is a scientist with great knowledge in various branches of scientific research, he is the creator of the second model of Ropponmatsu, Iwata's robotic body and the suits used by members of the citizen security department. He is quite self-centered and refers to himself as a genius, though he has no problem admitting that he is intellectually outmatched by his father.

Miwa Shiōji: She is the mother of Gojo Shiouji, she is a scientist and her main field of study is genetic bioengineering. In the past she was a kind and nice person, but due to the disappearance of her husband, Tenmangu Shiouji, she suffered a severe depression that altered her personality and turned her hair gray, after recovering she became a very extravagant and extroverted woman.

Umi Rengaya: She is the cousin of Dr. Gojo Shiouji, with whom she is secretly in love. She works as an assistant to Dr Shiouji. She is an inordinately clumsy person, since she does not go a single day without breaking plates or cups, she also usually wears provocative clothes and cosplays that she buys from the internet with the intention of pleasing Dr. Shiouji.

Apart from the characters already mentioned, and that appear in the original story of the manga, another story is added in the anime, where Nabeshin and the Great Will of the Macrocosm appear; they both have the power to alter the history of time and come to develop their own parallel stories within the series.

Other additional characters in the series are Señor Pedro, a Latino immigrant who died after a fire in a building under construction; the "Puchūs", a race of aliens who also seek the conquest of Earth; Gómez, rival in work and in the love of Mr. Pedro; and Koshi Rikudo, who appears in the first episode, and in the others' introductions. The family of Mr. Pedro also appears, who star in a parallel story to ACROSS and City F along with Mr. Pedro, the Great Will of the Macrocosm, Nabeshin and Gómez (who actually turns out to be That Man) throughout the vast majority of episodes.

Accommodations

Manga

The manga began to be published in Japan in the mid-1990s in the Shōnen Gahōsha company's Young King OURs magazine, and as of July 2007 it already had 17 published volumes.

Origins and sources

Rikudou agreed that Excel Saga, the manga, comes from the dōjinshi Daitenjin Municipal Forces, which he had started when he was a student. One motivation for switching to Excel Saga was a desire to further develop Excel's story and characters, which he was unable to do due to the Daitenjin theme. Another motivation was the state of the world economy at the time, which he described as "depressed, with a pessimistic outlook on life." He wrote Excel Saga as a way of "laughing at that vision..". The manga was drawn to present the most common aspects of life in Japan from far-reaching issues such as the labor market, the state of public health, political corruption, and gender equality; to more mundane topics such as office relations, the Japanese hanami (cherry blossom viewing) spectacle, and citizen garbage collection.

Rikudou also makes several references to his hometown of Fukuoka based on a local saying "here and there," and several of his characters are named after places or areas in the city. The names of the Daitenjin group members are taken from various stores located in the suburbs of Fukuoka, and the surnames come from the city's neighborhoods.

Elgala's character is named after Fukuoka's Elgala Hall, and ACROSS comes from the ACROS building in the city. In contrast, Kabapu is not the name of a place, but was the mascot of the Asia-Pacific Expo in 1989, with the city of Fukuoka being the center of the centenary celebrations of the city's Meiji era.

Anime

According to Rikudou, Victor Entertainment requested Shonen Gahosha to adapt Excel Saga into an anime, and both companies approached him. It was made by J.C.Staff, being produced by Victor Entertainment. TV Tokyo hosted the series, beginning on October 7, 1999, on Thursdays at 1:45 (UTC+9:00).

In Latin America, it was released on July 6, 2007 by the Animax television network with Venezuelan dubbing. In Spain it was broadcast on some networks and distributed on DVD by Selecta Visión in 2002.

Episodes

Episode 26

Although the series has 26 episodes, the last episode never aired in Japan due to the huge number of risqué scenes. The episode itself contains scenes of violence, blood, suffering, nudism, lesbianism, apparent pedophilia (Coset turns out to have highly developed genitalia), soapland, child assault, and lolicon (Coset naked).

The "Opening" of the episode was totally different from the others, the scene where Hyatt and Excel sing in a bathroom and on the street, they were naked and another scene where Hyatt's face is admired 3 times in a row, each one has a different level of blood on the face.

The Ending of the episode completely changes to the original where this time it is Menchi who translates what the girl says into "dog language". The girl who translates to Menchi appears in 4, with a dog collar and sings in her place, it is even seen that at the end they capture her to cook her.

Music

• Opening:

Title: "Love" (▪, Ai (Chūseishin)^?)

Interpreted by: Excel Girls

Letra: Shinichi Watanabe

• Ending:

Title: "Bolero de dolor de Menchi" (简体字 繁體字 繁體字 Français Español Русский, Menchi no Aishū no Borero^?)

Interpreted by: Excel Girls

Letra: Shinichi Watanabe

• Original Sonora Band:

Title: Excel Saga Original Soundtrack

Composed of Toshio Masuda

The closing song shows Menchi alone on a stage, singing (with barks) a melancholic song about her future in the pot while a translator recites the verses translated into Japanese. At the end of the video, Menchi is supposedly captured to be cooked.

Curiosities

• Excel Saga has been presented as the second anime series that has presented its own sleeve and creator within the series. The first is Love Hina, in the Christmas special where the creator appears and helps Mitsune and Shinobu collect money while selling their own sleeves.

• Many have characterized Excel Saga as a unique series where even the most impossible is achieved, apparently characterized as a series of type: No sense events. And for many, Excel Saga only has this category.

• In the anime many allusions are made to Colombia, this being the birthplace of Lord Peter as seen in the episode "Turning the world in 80 hours"In addition, the final battle between That Man (or That Subject) and Mr.Peter takes place in the ruins of the city of Bogota (Capital of Colombia) as they explain before beginning the battle. It is speculated that in episode number 3, the guerrillas who kidnap Excel are actually the Colombian guerrillas, since there are several allusions that place it in the North part of South America and the Colombian capital is named, but they never give an exact location; in addition, at the end of the episode it is clear that Excel was, illogically, in the middle of a gigantic jungle in the center of City F.

Differences

Aside from the presence or absence of certain characters, the circumstances of many others differ markedly between the anime and the manga. For example, in the second episode of the anime, Hyatt is presented as a princess from Mars and related to the Puchuus and Nabeshin, making her arrival at ACROSS almost an accident; volume one of the manga, however, shows that she was hired after submitting a resume and being interviewed by Ilpalazzo. Both publications also have differences in the organization of ACROSS and the Ropponmatsus. Ilpalazzo and his followers are all there is in ACROSS (that is known to date), but in the anime they are only a part of the organization: below them are the Headquarters, including That Man and the members of ACROSS Six. Finally the Ropponmatsus are represented in the anime as distinct entities that work together, but in the manga they are indicated as one that activates at any time and sharing a single core called the "Ropponmatsu Core".