Excel Saga...

Sometime ago, I picked up Excel Saga...

What is Excel Saga? Sit back, pop open a cold one, and throw another dog on the grill 'cause Excel will drive your sanity up the wall, then back down the wall again. Then your sanity will run out the window and down the street to the grocery store, where it will get arrested for doing {CENSORED} in the corner. After a lengthy evaluation, your sanity will be carted off to the funny farm ...and then be released on good behavior ...and then sent back down the street and through your door ...only to repeat the cycle over and over again! Sound far-fetched? Just ask the test-audience who screened Excel Saga how crazy it is... Oh wait, you can't. They're still locked up in the rubber room. Oh well, you'll just have to take our word on that one.

Volume 1
The Weirdness Has Begun
No anime is safe from the barrage of parodies and "subtle" jokes contained in this episode series. Excel, a female agent for ACROSS (a secret organization whose total membership is 2), deals with all manners of the insane.

From Poke-demonic style aliens, superheroes sporting afros to one demented creator, Koshi Rikdo, tormenting the main character of his own anime. What's a girl to do but cause as much destruction and mayhem as possible? With a cast that should be institutionalized, and a heroine, who should have a straight jacket as her uniform, this show will make you laugh, make you cry, and definitely make you question your sanity.

Volume 2
Missions Improbable
When the plan to conquer the city isn't going well, Lord Ilpalazzo doesn't get mad, he just gets ACROSS...his crack team of Excel and Hyatt, that is. Of course, maybe this is one crack team of special agents that might be doing better if they weren't actually on crack. And now that there's a rival secret organization whose goal is to protect the city, things are going to be tougher than ever. Especially since their opponents may actually have a competent agent on their side! There's lots of totally pointless violence and senseless mayhem ahead as opposing forces collide in the second sense-numbing volume of Excel.

Volume 3
When Excels Strike (Out)
Excel, Excel, secret agent and agent of disaster, and her trustworthy (although decidedly unhealthy) fellow agent Hyatt are back, and once again they're out to conquer the City of F for the glory of the secret ideological agency of ACROSS!

Whether they're up against murderous monkeys; possessed detectives, or men with inflamed anuses, you can bet they'll give it their all or die trying. In fact, you can usually bet on the latter. The most deranged duo to ever dangle their derrieres in the naked face of death return in the almost all new (contains 10% recycled material)!

Volume 4
Doing Whatever It Takes!
Yes, the producers of the most demented anime ever created are getting desperate, so in order to keep up the ratings, Excel and Hyatt find themselves facing new, Highly Merchandisable Characters, gimmick episodes, and even Sexual Jeopardy!

It's all in the service of Ilpalazzo and ACROSS as our favorite set of social misfits once again plunged into the breach as the plot sickens... er, thickens!

Volume 5
Secrets and Lies
Just when you thought it couldn't get any stranger, Excel and her associates encounter the most horrifying of all plot devices... a sub-plot! You won't believe who's been plotting against whom as the writers double cross the author, the director takes a new direction, and the supporting cast comes back with a vengeance but absolutely no clue whatsoever!

Volume 6
Going Way Too Far
Just when you thought the plot would never thicken, the whole thing congeals and Excel finds herself in a fight for her life! With the Great Will held hostage, the city in ruins, the Puchuu running amok, and Pedro joining forces with Nabeshin to combat the nefarious That Man, the action is fast and hilarious as ACROSS finally makes its move in the final unbelievable volume of Excel Saga!

A message from AD Vision...

Dear Friends,

Yes, it is true that Jessica Calvello has decided not to finish recording the part of Excel in Excel Saga. This is not a situation that any of us here at ADV are happy with, myself least of all, and we went to great lengths to find some schedule adjustment that would allow her to complete the series. In the end, however, we had to accede to her wishes to proceed with recording the show without her. Although this may be hard for some fans to understand, the potential for stress or strain to one's vocal chords can weigh heavily on an actor or singer. No one knows Jessica and her voice better than Jessica. In the end it was Jessica's decision to make as to whether or not she wanted to continue, just as it has always been her decision. We respect that.

As most of you also know, Jessica was my personal choice for the role of Excel, and I have been dead set on having her from the beginning, even though we all knew it would mean flying her from New York to Houston twice per volume in order to make her participation even possible. Losing her now, after we had achieved such great work on the first three volumes of Excel Saga, is therefore particularly bitter, but Excel Saga is far more than the story of one character, and the rest of the cast will remain unchanged. From all of the reviews I have read, and all of the comments that have been forwarded to me personally, I think it is fair to say that the general consensus has been that EVERYONE in the cast has done a fantastic job; and while all of us will miss Jessica greatly, it makes far more sense to continue with a new Excel rather than stop the whole project once Jessica informed us that she would rather not continue. To do otherwise would be to deprive everyone of the work of a great many other extremely talented actors who have performed miracles in making the English version of Excel Saga, once known as "the show that could not be dubbed," into the amazing success it has been. And, indeed, Jessica has given them her blessing to continue. With that in mind, we are now in the final stages of re-casting and I believe we have found someone who will be able to step into the admittedly big shoes filled first by Kotono Mitsuishi and then by Jessica. Will her performance be the same as Jessica's? No, of course not... for the same reason that Jessica's performance was different from Kotono's even though she (Jessica) insisted on trying to re-create Kotono's performance exactly, down to the sound of each individual nonsense sound. Every actor is different and even though they may be reading the same lines, they are re-filtered through that actor's own personal tastes and experiences. Just as Jessica brought a more hyper sense of franticness to Excel, the new Excel will doubtless bring her own flavor to the role, and as a director I refuse to try and make her performance an exact slavish copy of Jessica's, just as I allowed Jessica to follow her own path to finding the inner Excel. All I ask is for you, as fans, to give the new Excel a fair listen before deciding whether she is "better" or "worse" than Ms. Calvello. And I do acknowledge, that as a fan, this kind of objectivity is hard to achieve. When the Japanese voice of Lupin was recast a number of years ago, I found it hard at first to adjust to the change, and who among us hasn't gotten involved in that ancient argument as to who was the "better" James Bond... Connery, Moore, Dalton, Brosnan, Lazenby...? In the end, such arguments are often pointless, since without that succession of actors there would have been no further Bond films for the world to enjoy once Connery retired, no further Tarzans after Elmo Lincoln, no new Sherlock Holmes and so on. Such is the case now. Ms. Calvello has decided not to continue with ES, so it is up to the rest of us to accept her decision and continue onwards. Life has given us a lemon, but I think we still have the ingredients for some really great lemonade.
Determinedly,
Matt Greenfield,
ADR Director - Excel Saga

According to Wikipedia:

Victor Entertainment contacted Shōnen Gahosha about adapting Excel Saga into an anime, and the two companies approached Rikdo. Shinichi Watanabe was chosen as director. Watanabe added his own alter ego, Nabeshin, and expanded several elements. He says that the Great Will in the manga was "conveyed just as words," and he himself developed its appearance, eventually settling on the "swirling, talking cosmos." He also increased Pedro's role in the story from a single frame in the manga. Watanabe says he was pleased with that aspect of his work, noting that "Pedro's situation was considered unsuitable for broadcast in Japan". The anime production staff was given the freedom to do anything they wanted as long as they kept the theme of the series intact, and Rikdo requested they created a separate timeline. The anime makes frequent use of parody and in-jokes as comedic devices, with each episode having a genre-based theme. This extends to the animation, with several characters designed in the style of other works, such as those by Leiji Matsumoto. Kotono Mitsuishi was chosen to play the role of Excel, and Watanabe was impressed with Mitsuishi's rapid delivery of her lines, saying that "she really pushed herself to the limit and beyond." He also says, "at times she was too fast, and there was plenty of time left to match the lip-sync". In such cases, either he would add new material or Mitsuishi would ad-lib. At first Rikdo felt stunned and uncomfortable at hearing Excel speak, but he called the casting "amazing" and was pleased to hear his favorite voice actors read lines from his work.

The twenty-sixth episode, "Going Too Far", never aired in Excel Saga's original run on TV Tokyo because it was purposefully too violent and obscene for broadcast in Japan. The opening sequence is altered to contain pixelated nudity and more blood, and the closing presents the translator on all fours, wearing a collar, and singing the "Bolero", as Menchi translates into her own language. The episode itself, in addition to much more violence, blood, and gore, includes situations containing nudity, lesbianism, apparent pedophilia, soaplands, and a love hotel—in several instances involving minors. The episode obliquely refers to the 1995 sarin gas attack on a Tokyo subway by including sarin attacks as a method of exterminating enemies. The director himself remarked that it "felt good to go past the limits of a TV series", although he thinks it "is not something that you should do too often".

The series generally receives high marks for technical aspects. Cunningham feels the animation is flat-out gorgeous, but Crandol considers it merely above average. In the latter's opinion, its quality wanes as the series progresses and increasingly relies on super-deforming the characters for comedic effect. ADV's release earned praise for the quality of the video transfer and the DVD extras (particularly the Vid-Notes). Reviewers especially appreciated the English voice acting: Crandol calls it brilliant, and several note that Calvello and Wolcott were each able to capture Mitsuishi's Excel. Pearce, in contrast, found the English cast to be pretty bad and its Excel to be dental drill shrill.

How many series offer the opportunity to see the main character get killed several times in the first episode. There is action, comedy and violence of all sorts, bunches of nutty characters and the pace is unbelievably fast. Also, each episode in the series has a different theme. By the way, for fans of the pit, Excel doesn't fall in until episode 5. I have all six DVD volumes. The controversy surrounding the English language cast change didn't really affect me, as I usually read my anime. I gave Excel Saga a 5 out of 5.