Excel Saga
| Excel Saga | |
|---|---|
 Excel, Sara, and Hyatt | |
| Original Manga | Koushi Rikudou |
| Director/Artist | Shinichi Watanabe |
| Format | Anime (TV) |
| Made By | J.C. Staff |
| Episode Length | 22 minutes |
| # of Eps/Volumes | 26 episodes |
Contents
Genre
Sum It Up In A Sentence
Among a string of parodies, teenage school girl Excel must help the Secret Ideological Organization ACROSS conquer F city, F prefecture, on their way to world domination.
Main Description
ACROSS will conquer the world! Eventually. For now, they are focusing their efforts on one city. Excel and Hyatt are the two poor but devoted members in charge of carrying out ACROSS's plans. They share an apartment together with their dog/emergency food ration.
Although Excel and Hyatt are the main characters, there are several others who get a lot of camera time including Nabeshin, Pedro and the Great Will of the Universe.
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Personal Opinions
Falls Down Stairs
I found this show rather hit or miss. The first 6-7 episodes are all pretty consistently funny, then for a while it has lots of mediocre and bad episodes mixed in with some pretty hilarious episodes. Give it a try, and if an episode isn't making you laugh don't be afraid to skip it (there's not really any plot to care about, except maybe a bit near the end).
TannhauserGate
Imagine if a bunch of anime nerds got together and decided to create a show about what it's like for anime nerds to try and create an anime show, but they all failed miserably, and now they're back- only they found that the key to getting episodes finished is to trip out on 'shrooms and snort speed. This will still leave you underprepared for Excel Saga. Episodes go from depressingly dark and slow, to hyper-cute and fanservice, and everything in-between and often several times per episode. You might be watching a dark tale about the plight of the modern worker, and suddenly the image goes out because the animator is bored and wants to do something else, so the show follows the animator arguing with the characters about how he didn't really like the first half of the show, everyone dies a horrible bloody death including the animator, and the producer has to animate the rest of the show. Got it? Me neither. If you try this one, go all-in and just finish it no matter how crappy and confusing it gets at times. The good parts of the show are too widely spaced to possibly recommend a specific portion to watch.
Robert Denby
The first few episodes are like a dream come true; there's constant, hilarious parody and slapstick comedy, and you have to have your pause button at hand to catch everything. The middle section of this show is extremely hit-and-miss (truth be told, some of it sucks) and I can't shake the feeling that this was a stellar 13-episode show that got expanded to 26 episodes early in it's run. The episodes often run out of steam and there's a lot of blatant padding; recap segments galore, music videos, very overlong gags, sideplots that go nowhere, etc. The show does bounce back for the last couple of episodes, including the notorious finale, which was tailor made to break every broadcast rule in Japan.
Although I'm not as enthused with it as most people are, I think parts of it are good enough to warrant a recommendation, and I'll still go through the first few episodes every once in a while.
