One of the great frustrations of my silly little meaningless life of working retail and buying too many action figures is that I don’t set aside quite enough time to read all the manga I want to be reading. There are, at this moment, eighteen unread volumes of Ai Yazawa’s NANA sitting in a pile in my bedroom. And five (soon to be ten) volumes of Eichiro Oda’s utterly brilliant shonen action-adventure manga ONE PIECE. And I never did get around to reading those VIZBIG editions of Nobuhiro Watsuki’s RUROUNI KENSHIN, or all those random first volumes of things I bought cheap when the bookstore at the mall was going belly-up, or all those volumes of Kentaro Miura’s fantastic dark fantasy manga BERSERK I’ve been buying for years and years — and the list goes on! And on! AND ON AND ON!
By and large, the manga I mentioned above is stuff I’ve not even started reading, or have barely begun. The past couple of years, though, I’ve neglected one of my favorites. I haven’t even been buying new volumes as they’ve been released. It saddens me, really it does. So a few weeks ago I put my foot down, whipped out my credit card, and decided enough was enough. It was time to get caught up on EXCEL SAGA.
Still ongoing after thirteen years and twenty-three volumes, Rikdo Koshi’s EXCEL SAGA is the story of an obsessive, manic, and dedicated young woman named Excel who works as an operative for an organization called ACROSS. Led by the charismatic and shoulder pad-bedecked Il Palazzo, ACROSS is dedicated to the conquest of our corrupt world, starting right in their own backyard of Fukuoka. Excel is assisted by the sickly-to-the-point-of-coughing-up-blood Hyatt, a demure young woman with a bad habit of dying at the least opportune moments, and the ringlet-haired Elgala, whose inability to adjust to her new lifestyle of poverty and hard work causes endless frustrations for Excel. Our heroines also keep a sad-eyed fluffy white dog named Mince as an emergency food supply.
EXCEL SAGA was first brought to my attention via the twenty-six episode anime adaptation, a brightly colored manic work heavy on gags, pop culture references, and bizarre non sequiturs. There is an over-arcing plot mostly based on the manga, at least at the outset, but it exists primarily for the show to hang gags on. Each episode is set up as a parody of something-or-the-other — magical girl anime, sci-fi action movies, superhero comics, spy thrillers, post-apocalyptic epics (primarily FIST OF THE NORTH STAR), and so on. And I must admit, some of the appeal to me at the time was that some of these gags were obscure to the point that it felt like the show and I had some sort of private joke together. It’s a rare day that I get to jump up out of my seat and go, “HEY, THAT’S AN ARMORED TROOPER VOTOMS REFERENCE!” The EXCEL SAGA anime gave me a moment or two specifically like that. At the end of the day, though, the EXCEL SAGA anime is about three things: parodying everything, being silly, and being excessive. The final episode could not be aired on television, deliberately, because it was too lewd, vulgar, and violent. It’s one of those things that, after you see it, cannot be unseen.
Like TRIGUN, BERSERK, and other popular anime of the late 90′s and early 2000′s, the anime ended after twenty-some episodes and eventually the manga, still ongoing and eschewing its animation counterpart’s too-soon completion, found its way to the West. And to my eyes, it was a revelation. It was a lot more clever with the words than its animated counterpart, and a lot more cutting with the satire. Sure, there were still pop culture references, but they seemed less the point and more window dressing for Koshi’s commentary on politics, bureaucracy, consumerism, fandom, fanaticism, and yes, religion. Of course, I sometimes have to wonder if Koshi’s the clever one or if the wittier gags are entirely the product of Carl Gustav Horn’s English adaptation, but it doesn’t actually matter; the end result is a book that has me grinning evilly pretty much from cover to cover. It got even better with the addition of Elgala to the mix of characters; Excel dragging slightly dim and anemic Hyatt about by the nose was fun, but having her play off the haughty, former pampered princess has been comedy gold.
It’s been interesting watching the status quo shake-up every few volumes, seeing how our cast of misfits reacts and adapts to the new scenarios. There was a stretch where Il Palazzo went missing, leaving Excel to continue to plot the conquest of the city in his name. When he suddenly returned, ACROSS was transformed into a mega-successful legitimate business, ILL, peddling consumer electronics. The fortunes of his nemesis, City Environmental Security Director Dr. Kabapu, crumbled, and Excel suddenly became super-competent and super-strong. And only Elgala realized something was seriously amiss. The last three volumes, 18, 19, and 20 (Dec. ’08, June ’09, Dec. ’09) saw Elgala out searching for the REAL Excel, which is more than fine by me. EXCEL SAGA hasn’t been bad while she’s been gone, but a lot of the comedic slack has had to be picked up by Kabapu’s staff and Elgala. Without Excel around tearing about like a force of nature getting on her high horse and spouting astute observations about human nature while seeking to exploit it, the series has felt more like a darkly comic twist on X-MEN, with bizarre nesting subplots concerning supporting characters, one of whom has died and come back as a cyborg, mysterious doors and the items hidden behind them being passed back and forth, and hints raised volumes back that still haven’t been paid off years later. (The mystery of pedophile robotics engineer Dr. Shioji’s dad’s disappearance and identity has been going on for a few years now, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to pay off any time in the next, I don’t know, five years?) Certainly it’s a bit like that when Excel is around as well, but in her absence it tends to swing farther that way, disappearing into its own densely-plotted soap operatic navel.
Even when it is getting a little too obscure, though, it’s almost always a pretty series; Koshi’s big-eyed, ridiculous-breasted girls are easy on the eyes, his repertoire of comedically exaggerated expressions is vast, and his sense of comedic and dramatic pacing is first rate. In the three books I just finished there were two brilliantly-timed two-page spreads; the first, in volume 19, I stared at for a good minute before turning the page. My only complaint about the art, in fact, would be that every once in a while Koshi overdoes the Photoshop effects, resulting in slightly cluttered and hazy pages and panels. Also, seriously, dude, the girls’ breasts are getting a little oversized and weird. It’s been getting worse since somewhere around the early teens, if I remember right.
Also, I wouldn’t recommend going out in public with volume 18. Seriously, that cover. Yikes.
You know what the worst thing is about reading these three volumes of EXCEL SAGA for the purpose of writing this review is? Now I’ve got to wait ’til April to read the next one. I don’t understand why more people don’t read this series. It’s got action, cute girls, bizarre and witty comedy, and a brilliantly manic, greedy, devoted and ruthless main character so bold and unstoppable that you can’t help but love her. April cannot come soon enough; I can’t wait to see what she’s got up her sleeve next.
Jonathan L. Switzer has a clear and vivid memory of sitting in his dad’s lap and reading the third issue of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns at the tender age of five. That early experience, along with a couple of die-cast Shogun Warriors toys and the local library’s copy of Frederik Schodt’s Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics, seemed to set his fate in stone. For three years, he worked at a Southeast Kansas Japanese animation specialty store, immersed in anime & manga to the point that it started to give him a nasty rash. He was a contributing writer on The Art of Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles, had an article on the Robotech franchise published in Protoculture Addicts magazine (issue #94, Nov-Dec. 2007), is a founding member of Ally Comix, and — when he finds the time — writes & draws the ongoing comic series Scwonkey Dog. Oh, and he writes a manga review every month for this very website. 
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