By Rikdo Koshi. Released in Japan by Shonen Gahosha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Young King OURS. Released in North America by Viz.

This is the final volume of what I like to call Part 3 of the Excel Saga manga, and ends with a major sea change for the entire series. It begins right where we left off, though, with Hyatt ‘captured’ by Kabapu’s people and posing as Watanabe’s wife, and Excel and Hyatt having been arrested by the JSDF as terrorists.

I’ve got to say I love Excel and Elgala’s double act. It works better than Excel and Hyatt, as Hyatt’s occasional tendency to get snarky to Excel in previous volumes seemed rather out of character for her. Elgala has no such issues, and the best part is that she and Excel can trade off boke and tsukkomi several times over a single conversation. Witness first Excel and then Elgala discussing how they ended up going to an all-female prison island on a rickety boat. By the way, Excel is COMPLETELY AWESOME right after this, where the warden threatens her with rape and she just goes berserk, screaming “Does no really mean no? YES!” and noting she’s saving her virginity for Lord Il Palazzo.

Meanwhile, Hyatt and Watanabe’s love-love marriage is still going on, but it can’t possibly last. Just as he’s about to finally go all the way with her (and she actually seems very willing in doing this), Il Palazzo (who had been absent for all of Volume 14) shows up and holds out his hand. And BOOM, Hyatt’s back to normal, working for ACROSS, and defending her Lord against the evil Watanabe who might try to harm him. This leads to two wonderful things: Il Palazzo and Hyatt’s stroll through Fukuoka at night, which is just a masterpiece of funny; and Watanabe’s complete nervous breakdown, which in this volume just seems to manifest itself in his playing H-games, but will get far, far worse.

Hyatt reminds Il Palazzo that he does have two other followers, something that he seems to have completely forgotten. Much is made of Il Palazzo’s on-again, off-again memory, and this volume seems to show it at its worst. Having been reminded, though, he quickly goes to rescue Excel and Elgala, who have found themselves at the mercy of an insane missionary priest, who as Carl Horn notes in the liner notes looks an awful lot like the insane priest from Berserk when he’s trying to kill both of them. Fear not, though, Il Palazzo is here to teleport them to safety!… OK, so he only teleports Elgala, leaving Excel behind. And seems to have forgotten she exists again. Such is life, however.

Excel, as we know, is not without her mad skillz, and quickly sets out to defeat the priest and run through the jungle to return to her beloved ACROSS. Meanwhile, Kabapu is starting to run into issues. It seems that a new electronics store has popped up, offering insanely high quality advanced gizmos at obscenely low prices. Called ILL, too. Gosh, who could be behind it? To make matters worse, Ropponmatsu I has been stolen by Il Palazzo. It’s heavily hinted that it’s Miwa who let this happen, so that she can advance her own hidden agenda. To make matters even WORSE, a lot of Kabapu’s political cronies are suddenly being arrested, and his stocks are starting to fall.

Meanwhile, excellent news on the ACROSS front. Excel has managed to extricate herself from the jungle, and is now ensconced in a high-rise as ILL’s president. Hyatt and Elgala, her underlings, are also living high on the hog, and everything’s coming up roses. We see how well things are going in a giant party thrown for ILL by city leaders, praising the company for its stimulus of economic growth. Kabapu is there as well, and has a complete and utter freakout when he sees Il Palazzo and confronts him about the missing Ropponmatsu. And finally, to round out the volume, Umi is running through the rain to get back to her beloved professor, and comes across a rather familiar-looking bedraggled body lying in the gutter.

Yes, that’s right. It’d be a spoiler if it was a surprise, but it’s not much of one. The real Excel is that body, and Il Palazzo has given Ropponmatsu an upgrade to create RopponExcel. Rikdo did try to fake out the reader for a chapter or so, showing RopponExcel yelling at Elgala and demanding to be called President, but there was never really any question – this Excel was simply far too cool and efficient to be our heroine.

So what now? Will we have Excel doing battle against her robot double? Will Hyatt and Elgala realize that their Senior is a fake? Will Watanabe get over the loss of Hyatt and find himself a nice sweet girl? And what of Kabapu, who by the end of this volume was starting to actually look his age, with his hands starting to tremble as he gestured? Find out in Volume 16, start of the ‘Teriha’ arc!

By Rikdo Koshi. Released in Japan by Shonen Gahosha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Young King OURS. Released in North America by Viz.

Excel Saga has had increasing fanservice for a while now, but 14 is really where Rikdo goes whole hog and reminds you of his hentai roots. Between Excel and Elgala wrestling in a sewer drain to get a 100 yen coin, to the public baths scene, to their frantic escape and Elgala exposing herself to most of the neighborhood, this volume comes very close to smashing its T rating throughout. (My favorite exchange from this, as Excel puts band-aids across Elgala’s (hidden from us) nipples and crotch: “Learn to be frugal, El. As long as those three points are covered, what more do you need?” “CONSIDERABLY MORE!”)

In fact, Excel’s frugality is really hammered home here, as she chooses to wash up at one point in a public fountain. This causes Elgala to break down into a sobbing heap, crying out, “In the name of humanity!” Excel, seeing neighborhood children pointing at the wet crazy lady, decides for once to go wild and spend money for… a public bath! And more fanservice, of course.

And that’s not getting into the gore, which is almost standard now. After all, this is a manga with Hyatt in it. Their stove explodes, and the hideous blood-soaked walls and floor would make for grim viewing if we didn’t know Hyatt would turn up fine later on. (This is lampshaded later on, where Excel and Elgala wonder what’s happened to the missing Hyatt. El wonders if she’s dead, to which Excel responds, “How can she be killed?”)

Il Palazzo is entirely absent from this volume, but we do get one major plot point, as when the girls are separated at the public baths after being attacked/interrogated by Kabapu’s team (Misaki is trying to get serious answers out of them, rather than arrest them; Iwata just wants naked girls), somehow they end up with Hyatt captured by the other side. This is especially amusing as she’s now living at Watanabe’s apartment, posing as his wife. Naturally, Watanabe is torn between pure joy and horrific angst that he is thinking perverse thoughts about his beloved (Sumiyoshi and Misaki both note he should grow up).

This does, however, lead to the most intriguing part of the entire volume, with Kabapu and Momochi discussing their captured prisoner. They note that she has memory blocks that have made it impossible to get any information from her head, which is interesting. Far more interesting is Momochi noting that “except for the memory loss, she appears to be a completely healthy woman.” Wait, WHAT? This is HYATT they’re talking about. She was just bleeding out heavily 50 pages ago! Something highly intriguing is going on here, although don’t expect answers soon – Rikdo likes to throw these at us, then move on. Puzzle pieces that don’t fit anywhere else.

In the meantime, Kabapu goes to a hot spring and gets caught up in a murder mystery. This is easily the weakest part of the book, serving only to show that he still has lots of influence over the city (and law enforcement in particular), and that he’s also brusque, uncaring, and a bit crazy. The chapter seems to be parodying several types of detective series, but I didn’t recognize anything but Columbo (and even that may have been adapted to Western by Carl Horn). I do note the ‘treasure hunter’ pictured reminded me a bit of Geobreeders.

Finally, we have Excel and Elgala on board the battleship. Yes, it’s the return of Mr. Owner and Ms. Manager, everyone’s favorite Matsumoto parodies, who are determined to turn this enormous instrument of death into a classy 5-star hotel. This is easily the funniest part of the entire volume, with Excel in particular boggling at Mr. Owner’s hideously flawed logic. (For once, Elgala gets to play the snarky commentator, and notes how amusing it is to see Excel freaking out and trying to make people see reason.) Naturally, the boat ends up sinking, and Excel and Elgala are (again) captured by the JSDF.

This was a fun, action-packed volume of Excel Saga, but did not really do much to advance the main plot beyond Hyatt’s capture. Presumably we’ll see her rescue in Volume 15… and perhaps some other major changes as well.

By Rikdo Koshi. Released in Japan by Shonen Gahosha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Young King OURS. Released in North America by Viz.

And at last, we have the final piece of the Excel Saga puzzle, as our last major character is introduced. We’ve had hints as to her identity for some time now, but we finally get to meet Shiouji’s mother, Miwa, in the flesh. And there’s certainly a lot of flesh to meet. Rikdo is having to pay for gradually introducing more and more busty women, as he needs Miwa to be bigger than all of them. Her proportions verge on the unrealistic at times, even for manga. But her personality stands out just as much as her bosom.

Miwa is an unrelenting force on this manga. She’s cleverer than her son, she knows a lot of answers but refuses to give them away… and she also used to be a shy and meek woman, and ‘changed’ after her husband disappeared 20 years earlier. There are many amusing fan theories about this. She makes everyone uncomfortable – her son, Dr. Kabapu, Umi. Heck, she even grabs Misaki and crushes her face to her chest. Misaki! Certainly she makes a more convincing evil mastermind than Kabapu or Il Palazzo, even without actually doing anything evil other than suggest she has secret knowledge.

Of course, Il Palazzo is stepping up his game as well. As we saw in the last volume, he seems to be letting the ‘evil’ personality (as opposed to his default ‘deadpan’ personality) take over, and now starts to actually do things himself, utilizing the awesome secret technology at his disposal. Appearing as a giant hologram over the entire city is a way to make them sit up and take notice, even if they think it’s just a movie.

And speaking of secret technology, Kabapu finally decides the time is right to tell his team the big picture. That’s right, we finally get backstory at last! … Can we take this backstory seriously, though? Certainly Misaki and company seem to regard it as ludicrous (you know your secret origin is silly when even Iwata stares at you blankly). That said, certain flashbacks we’ve been privilege to thanks to seeing Excel and Il Palazzo’s memories imply that the kingdom of Solaria might not be ENTIRELY in Kabapu’s head. (Though it’s certainly enough to try to get Misaki to flee the country, and realize that she can’t.)

The most important scene in the entire book is Misaki’s meeting with Shiouji in the park. First off, aside from a few token mentions, Shiouji’s pedophilia is quietly dropped about now. Secondly, the two of them form an alliance of sanity that not only helps when one needs a break from the zany antics of the other, but also let Rikdo do giant infodumps with relative ease. His description of how Ropponmatsu’s stunningly advanced abilities are not so much due to a superior robot brain as a superior POWER SUPPLY are fantastic. And help to tell us that there is still a lot we don’t know about Solaria/Kabapu/Il Palazzo. Kabapu notes that Ropponmatsu’s core is, in fact, the RULER of Solaria… something that will become far more important in a volume or two. (You must be bored with me saying that.)

The volume isn’t *just* an infodump, mind you. Although there’s not as much action as usual, we have our usual dose of hysterical Excel Saga humor. All of Excel and Elgala’s attempts to capture Ropponmatsu. (“It’s a miracle! She must have remembered to bend her knees!” “Yeah, a lot of people would forget that after the first twenty stories…”) The director of the idol show that Excel and company end up working for (who is clearly a parody of someone). Everyone’s reaction to Kabapu revealing he’s thousands of years old and part of an ancient civilization. Umi’s reaction to Misaki arriving at Shiouji’s lab (and her outfit). The only letdown, humor-wise, is the side story AU at the very end, a parody of hospital drama and Resident Evil that allows him to draw Dr. Iwata being appalling, but isn’t as much fun as previous side-stories. It does have an “Acchon-burike!” for Black Jack fans, though.

An essential volume for information, and I’m sure that next volume will get us back on track regarding breakneck action. There may also be some gratuitous nudity.