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

Volume 2 of Excel Saga starts to spin a bit more of its actual plot, though things are still in the beginning stages. (By the way, Viz and Rikdo Koshi have done original cover art for the first 4 volumes of the manga, ostensibly to help them sell. When presumably they didn’t sell, Viz reverted to simply using the original Japanese covers, starting with Volume 5.)

The good news is we meet two more of our main cast in this volume. Dr. Kabapu makes an immediate impression. He looks odd, and he is odd. But he’s also immediately shown to be morally bankrupt, and willing to be an utter jerk for his own ends. If you ask me, he’s more of a villain throughout the series than Il Palazzo is, even though he is ostensibly ‘protecting the city’. (Of course, once Miwa Rengaya shows up, you get the feeling she’ll soon overtake both of them).

And then there’s Misaki Matsuya, who plays the resident ‘sensible’ woman throughout the manga. Rikdo Koshi is not generally above letting anyone, at any time, play the boke or tsukkomi as events warrant, and indeed the liner notes for Volume 2 note that Excel and Hyatt alternate boke and tsukkomi depending on the situation. Likewise, while Watanabe (at first) and Sumiyoshi CAN be sensible and level-headed, it’s Misaki who carries the brunt of whacking idiots and pointing out stupid things. In a manga with as many weirdos and idiots as this one, it’s welcome.

A couple of other things to note about her introduction: we see her briefly with a cute keychain plushie. Misaki’s addiction to cute plushies, besides being a nice break in her otherwise ‘perfect independent and strong woman’ persona, will continue in future volumes. It’s generally a way for Rikdo to make references to other series that are running alongside Excel Saga in Young King OURS. The other thing is that it’s revealed that she and Iwata were classmates in college. He’s far too informal with her, and she beats him constantly for calling her Misaki, with no honorific. Stay tuned for a lot more on these two…

Meanwhile, our heroines are doing what they do best. Working odd jobs, hailing Il Palazzo, making pathetic attempts to take over the city for the glory of ACROSS, and occasionally sniping at each other. That last is somewhat of a surprise, and won’t last; in a volume or two, Hyatt and Excel will have warmed up to each other, and Hyatt will end up being utterly deferential. (Excel’s true sniping partner will arrive in Volume 8.) Amusing gags here include Hyatt’s inability to not steal medicine, couples with Excel’s inability to resist the word ‘conquer’; yet another insane appearance by the Black Jack-esque doctor and his nurse; and Hyatt’s mysterious ability to avoid setting off any mines while walking through a minefield.

This leads us to the two major plot points that will become important over the whole series. The first is Excel’s superhuman endurance and abilities. At first, you think that it might be merely manga exaggeration – this is a comedy, after all. But gradually, as Excel gets blown into the air by mines, drowned in the middle of oceans, and forced to lift unconscious robots, that she’s simply more than a mere insane human.

The other thing that is introduced here is Il Palazzo suffering from what appears to be multiple personalities. There’s voices talking to him in his head yelling at him about enemies, and he sends Excel and Hyatt on missions and then seems to be completely ignorant of what he’s done. This too will be important later on, and was in fact also used in the anime version (though it was taken in a different direction). This is probably a good thing, as Il Palazzo on his own tends to be fairly drab, spouting rhetoric and pulling ropes on trapdoors. An air of mystery adds to his character.

And of course there are endnotes by Carl Horn. I know fans who buy manga sight unseen just for Carl’s notes.

This is a fun, funny manga, with weird wacky situations, and you get the sense that a big confrontation is set up. To be continued!

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

One of my all-time favorite manga series, I want to review this from the start, mostly because the general reaction I get when I mention it is “Wait, that’s still running?” Or even worse, “Wait, that was a manga?”. A classic case of Adaptation Displacement, the anime that was released over here in 2002 was wildly popular, and the manga, coming out about a year and a half later, ended up disappointing fans who wanted more over the top lunacy.

But back to the beginning. First there was Rikdo Koshi the doujinshi artist, who did fan parody comics for various series running in the 1990s, including Card Captor Sakura. He also had an original hentai doujinshi that was collected into a volume called Municipal Force Daitenzin, a sentai parody about a group of idiotic people in powered suits trying to save the day. Two minor characters in that doujinshi series were the villain of the piece and his hyperactive, incompetent assistant. When Shonen Gahosha gave Rikdo the opportunity to create his own manga, he cut out the pornographic bits and made Excel and Il Palazzo the focus.

And so we have Volume 1, which seems very odd to read coming at it about 15 years later, with Volume 23 just having been released in Japan. We are introduced to our main cast working for the secret organization ACROSS: Excel, the still hyperactive and incompetent minion; Il Palazzo, her cold yet bishonen superior with a fondness for dropping her into a pit of water at the slightest provocation; Hyatt, a fellow minion at ACROSS with a nasty tendency to cough up blood and drop over dead; and Mince, a put upon puppy who gets deemed ’emergency food’ by Excel.

We also meet three of her neighbors, Iwata, Watanabe, and Sumiyoshi, but as yet they are not part of the main plot and almost seem to be off in their own separate manga. Notable is Watanabe’s first meeting with Hyatt, beginning his obsessive crush with her, and also Sumiyoshi’s tendency to communicate only in captions behind his head. (He also “speaks” in the manga in a heavy Geordie accent, Carl Horn’s attempt to show his Okayama accent while getting out of the Brooklyn/Southern trap most Viz or ADV manga fell into. Strangely, it works, though the phonetic absolutism of the accent can make him hard to interpret.)

At this point, the manga is still finding its feet, and there’s not much of the overreaching plot we’ll get in future volumes. There’s also not much here the anime watcher will recognize. The manga was only up to Volume 4 when it was licensed for anime, and the publisher requested that the anime not actually use the manga’s plotline (hence the “I agree to let Excel Saga be turned into a ______ anime” shtick). So the characters and basic plot (ACROSS tries to take over the world and fails) are the same, but the details are altered.

The humor is also a bit different. There is still some slapstick violence, and Excel shows her remarkable endurance even in the first chapter, but the comedy here stems from wordplay and ridiculous situations. Excel’s part-time jobs come before her minioning, as a girl has to eat, and we can also see from some of her complex rambling speeches (going off about the phylum and order of cave crickets, for example) that she’s quite intelligent. Excel isn’t stupid, just crazy, impetuous and a bit broken. Notably, when joined by Hyatt she starts to comment wryly on her health state, and shows signs of becoming a deadpan snarker. She’ll develop this far more once Elgala shows up in Volume 8.

There are occasional references to the anime in this translation, which is adapted and edited by Carl Horn and Dan Kanemitsu. Several jokes are Westernized, but notably the endnotes also note the original Japanese joke as well, which works out fine. Amusing bits include noting that Rikdo asked the anime version of Excel Saga not to have any panty shots (especially amusing if you know how fanservicey Excel Saga gets in later volumes), as well as Il Palazzo calling Jesus Christ a criminal of the State worse than Hitler and Aum Shinrikyo, much to Excel’s horror. (In case anyone is wondering, this is the scene they didn’t dare put in the anime, as the back cover notes.)

Excel Saga Volume 1 is just plain fun. It doesn’t have the healthy backstory we’ll get in future volumes, but you don’t need that right away. Instead, you just have fun watching Excel and Hyatt fail desperately for the glory of Il Palazzo, and her next-door neighbors assaulting each other for random slights. It’s a fun, funny manga.