Review: EXCEL SAGA

Older comedy manga don't always age well, but here's a rare example of one that has. 

EXCEL SAGA (Ekuseru Saga), by Rikdo Koshi.  First published in 1996 and first published in North America in 2003.

PLOT:

Deep under the streets lies the headquarters of ACROSS.  It is a secret organization with only one goal: total world domination.  To bring this about, ACROSS's leader Il Palazzo sends forth his two henchwomen Excel and Hyatt to complete his top-secret missions.  Fortunately for the world, Excel is an idiot who is prone to talking too much and Hyatt is prone to dying a lot.  There's also the matter of interfering neighbors, Excel's pet dog/emergency food ration Mince, the many part-time jobs Excel has to take to pay the bills, and the fact that Il Palazzo's plans are never terribly well-defined.

STORY:

I wasn't entirely sure what to expect from Excel Saga.  It's not that I wasn't already familiar with it.  Indeed, it was one of the first shows I watched when I first got into anime.  What I wasn't sure about was what the tone of the manga would be.  The Excel Saga anime has long been notorious for being random and shrill (not helped by ADV's dub), and I was curious to learn how much that could be attributed to the director and how much of that came from the source material.  Now I can say that while some of that randomness was there from the start, it's a lot more self-contained and focused in manga form.

The structure of each chapter follows a fairly set formula.  Il Palazzo comes up with his latest grandiose,rambling plan for world conquest, which always involves co-opting some part of everyday life: Christmas, trash day, buying cold medication, and so on.  Regardless, Excel and Hyatt are sent off to make some money, buy an old TV, or some other mundane thing.  The plan inevitably goes awry, usually because Excel forgets what the original plan was or because Hyatt died again.  It all ends in confusion and destruction, only to start again next chapter.

This formula results in a manga that doesn't so much have a plot as it does a framework for Koshi to satirize or deconstruct some inconsequential part of Japanese life.  It's not as pointed as something like Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei, mostly because Koshi tends to get so caught up in comical tangents and pushing the occasional boundary that it all becomes a farce.  Not all of the comedy works, though.  Most it has to do with Excel's next-door neighbor Watanabe and his two friends.  They're basically a three-person manzai group with Watanabe serving as the straightman and somehow they manage to be more annoying than Excel.  The translation also makes an odd choice with Sumiyosi, who frequently comments but never actually speaks.  I suspect he had some sort of rural Japanese accent because in this version he's given more of a northern English accent, which makes some of his comments hard to parse.

Thankfully, the core group of ACROSS works much better as a group and as characters in their own right.  The interplay between Il Palazzo, Excel, and Hyatt is genuinely funny.  Il Palazzo believes himself to be grand and intelligent, but in many ways he's just as awkward and dumb as his henchwomen.  He just so happens to have the advantage of a supervillain lair and a trap door at the ready to stop Excel's tangents.  Excel adores Il Palazzo and is always eager to implement his will, but she's easily distracted and never really understands her actions.  Hyatt serves as a calm and (relatively) competent counterpart to them both, someone who is never phased by all the times she dies or starts coughing up blood.  She's simply so pleased to be working with such nice people.  Together they (and Excel Saga as a whole) manages to thread that careful line between clever and stupid.

ART:

Koshi's art is surprisingly strong for a genre that doesn't normally demand it.  The characters are attractive and distinct, the backgrounds are nicely drawn, and there's some decent attention to detail in everything from Il Palazzo's giant curtain-like cape or Mince's expressive little face.  He uses lighting and dramatic panel composition to play up the drama of Il Palazzo's schemes, making the puncturing of that mood with a joke a panel or two later all the more effective.  

RATING:

Excel Saga is just as funny on the page as it was on the screen, and in manga form it benefits from a little more focus, commentary, and character.

This series was published by Viz.  This series is complete in Japan with 27 volumes available.  All 27 volumes were published and are currently out of print.