Underrated Manga: Excel Saga
Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2006 21:46 -0700
Any anime fan worth there salt is familiar with Excel Saga. It is one of the most bizarre, most insane, most utterly HILARIOUS anime to ever come across the Atlantic. Its nothing but one parody after another, and a zillion gags a minute are the norm.
However, alot of people overlook the fact that the entire anime was inspired by an actual manga. This is the subject of this post.
First, a little back story. Excel Saga is the brain child of Rikdo Koshi. Koshi had been involved in the dojinshi culture for several years, putting out various original and derivative works with his respective dojinshi circle.
One of the original doshinji he created was a work called Municipal Force Daitenzen. This was basically a parody of the popular sentai shows that was going on at the time (we know of sentai here as Power Rangers). The idea was to show how they would go about in normal life while also fighting crime at the same time. The only problem was that the heroes of the manga lived in the room next door to there adversaries in the same building. There enemies were the thouroughly disorganized (though well meaning) ACROSS. And the main member of the ACROSS organization, besidese its leader Lord Illpalazio, was a ditzy blonde named Excel Excel (not a typo). Koshi decided that he should flesh out the charcter of Excel, and decided to create a spinoff dojinshi called Excel Saga.
The rest, as they say, is history.
The story of the Excel Saga manga, unlike the Excel Saga anime, is a satire of contemporary Japanese life, using the whole sentai thing as sort of a humorous license. The characters, as said before, belong to the ACROSS organization, who is dedicated to taking over the world, one city at a time. They basically try to minimum wage there way to there goal, doing whatever there leader commands........of course, that pesky Municipal Force Daitenzen sometimes gets in the way.....
The art is fantastic, and the comedy is insanely funny. Rikdo Koshi manages to create so many random sight gags, and yet still manage to make everything still make sense.
The anime, on the other hand, has little to do with the manga. However, it is hilarious in its own right. Unlike the manga, the anime parodies every cinematic and anime convention on planet Earth........oh, and there's also that randomness thing.
The manga is published in English by Viz media. The anime is available from ADV films.
If you get a chance, please pick this one up. You won't be disappointed.
However, alot of people overlook the fact that the entire anime was inspired by an actual manga. This is the subject of this post.
First, a little back story. Excel Saga is the brain child of Rikdo Koshi. Koshi had been involved in the dojinshi culture for several years, putting out various original and derivative works with his respective dojinshi circle.
One of the original doshinji he created was a work called Municipal Force Daitenzen. This was basically a parody of the popular sentai shows that was going on at the time (we know of sentai here as Power Rangers). The idea was to show how they would go about in normal life while also fighting crime at the same time. The only problem was that the heroes of the manga lived in the room next door to there adversaries in the same building. There enemies were the thouroughly disorganized (though well meaning) ACROSS. And the main member of the ACROSS organization, besidese its leader Lord Illpalazio, was a ditzy blonde named Excel Excel (not a typo). Koshi decided that he should flesh out the charcter of Excel, and decided to create a spinoff dojinshi called Excel Saga.
The rest, as they say, is history.
The story of the Excel Saga manga, unlike the Excel Saga anime, is a satire of contemporary Japanese life, using the whole sentai thing as sort of a humorous license. The characters, as said before, belong to the ACROSS organization, who is dedicated to taking over the world, one city at a time. They basically try to minimum wage there way to there goal, doing whatever there leader commands........of course, that pesky Municipal Force Daitenzen sometimes gets in the way.....
The art is fantastic, and the comedy is insanely funny. Rikdo Koshi manages to create so many random sight gags, and yet still manage to make everything still make sense.
The anime, on the other hand, has little to do with the manga. However, it is hilarious in its own right. Unlike the manga, the anime parodies every cinematic and anime convention on planet Earth........oh, and there's also that randomness thing.
The manga is published in English by Viz media. The anime is available from ADV films.
If you get a chance, please pick this one up. You won't be disappointed.
The Manga is great although it is taking it sweet time to get published now that the Japanes series and the Viz Manga are caught up with each other, and we have to wait for the translation/publishing lag.