Excel Saga

Publisher
ADV
Director
Shinichi Watanabe
Production
J.C.Staff, TV Tokyo, Victor Entertainment
Country of origin
Japan
Format
Series
Running time
26 episodes
Year
2000

Excel Saga Volume 2: Missions Improbable

By John Huxley
28th Apr 04

Episode Summary

Episode 6: Cold is Winter: a Disaster Story

Brrr! Cold! A take on disaster movies. Excel and Hyatt are ordered to climb a local mountain to...whatever. They end up shooting Menchi, lodging with a suspiciously buff man, hunting for food and finding temporary employment as part-time maids. All in the day's work for Across! This is also the first episode we Misaki Matsuya, a no-nonsense member of the newly formed Safety Assurance Agency.

Episode 7: Underground Melody

Excel does horror movies. The SAA attempt to infiltrate the Across secret headquarters, only to meet with Excel and Hyatt's deadly traps. The Puchuu also turn up for some fun, along with a sinister leader Puchuu who looks eerily familiar...

Episode 8: Viewer Rating Escalation Week

The swimsuit episode! In an effort to gain more ratings this is a girl-only episode, including a suspicious young girl who gives Excel and Hyatt some food. Now why would she want to do a thing like that? Still, that doesn't stop Excel from eating everything in sight.

Episode 9: Bowling Musume

Researching sport, the brave members of Across take up jobs in a bowling alley, handing out shoes. Bad luck for them that a group of bowling radicals decided to hi-jack the local late-night bowling television program for their own nefarious bowling needs. This episode also features the Excel girls (no, not the main characters but the real-life people who sang the theme tune) in a major role.

Volume Review

The second DVD of Excel Saga brings four new, mostly unrelated episodes. I must say that I actually liked these episodes better than the first five. That may be because they're actually better, but it's more likely that I'm getting used to the characters and the situations they find themselves in. By now most of the characters have had a chance to settle so they essentially become part of the background. Remember when you first heard marge's voice in The Simpsons? Didn't it sound strange to you? Now I bet you don't even think twice about it. The same thing is happening with Excel Saga; characters that once seemed strange and unusual are becoming commonplace.

That considered, it's a good thing that each episode brings in more and more freaky characters to keep things fresh and funny. Take the Excel Girls, for instance, the two real-life people who sing the show's theme tune are represented in the anime by two publicity seeking singers who look remarkably like Excel and Hyatt. It's probably to their discredit that they're appearing on a late-night bowling show with almost no viewers, but it isn't so unusual for Excel Saga to take a dig at itself on top of everything else.

The bowling episode is great, but my personal favourite so far must be Viewer Rating Escalation Week. Here, the director, in a desperate (and shameless) bid to raise viewer ratings creates a girl-only episode with plenty of swimsuits and skimpy costumes. The men do appear, but they are always off-camera (much to their annoyance).

The first episode on this DVD introduces us to the Safety Assurance Agency, a kind of anti-Across. Remember Excel's neighbour who fell in love with Hyatt and in a bid to impress her got himself a job as a civil servant? Well, he joined the SAA along with his two flatmates (who were just being nosey, it would seem)! They are joined by the sexy (but don't tell her I said that - I like my face the way it is) Misaki Matsuya, probably the only person in either agency who actually knows what they are doing.

Adding new characters can only be a good thing for Excel Saga. Now the focus is shared between the two sets of characters it gives even more scope for some great comedy. And also a plot of sorts, if you can believe it. By now you've probably made your mind up about Excel Saga. You'll know if you love, hate or just couldn't care less about. Me, I love it.

R2 DVD Notes

Features: English subtitles, English and Japanese audio, AD-Vid notes, Japanese TV spots, Japanese CD single spots, Japanese CD soundtrack spots, Production sketches, Original Menchi advertisements, ADV previews.

Notes: Wow! I thought it couldn't get any better than the first DVD. Not only does the best feature from the last DVD return (the essential AD-Vidnotes), we get plenty of new stuff to boot. We have Japanese TV spots, CD single and soundtrack spots and a whole host of hidden little buttons in the menu. Speaking of which, they've re-designed the menu for this DVD, giving us the fake operating system seen in episode seven. I've got to hand it to ADV, they really did a good job with this.

-- John Huxley 28th Apr 04

Excel Saga Images