Excel Saga Volume 1

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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.

The works of Mitsuru Adachi

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Nine, Touch, Rough, Niji Iro Tōgarashi, H2, Itsumo Misora, Katsu!, and Cross Game serialized by Shogakukan in Shonen Sunday. Hiatari Ryōkō! serialized in Shoujo Comic. Miyuki serialized in Shonen Big Comic. Slow Step serialized in Ciao. Jinbē serialized in Big Comic Original.

I’ve been interested in this manga author ever since reading the one small bit of his works that came out in North America, Short Program. Short Program is a collection of short stories that the author produced over the years. There are 3 volumes, but unfortunately they sold poorly over here, so Viz is unlikely to release the third. The stories run the gamut from comedy to drama, and most of them share Adachi’s sense of subtlety.

But short stories is not what makes him the biggest Shonen Sunday author to never get a hit over here. He writes sports mangas. And in general, baseball mangas are his specialty. The most recent of these, Cross Game, just finished in Japan this week after 170 chapters. He’s had several TV animes (including Cross Game, which is still running as an anime), some live-action adaptations, and for the most part has been running continuously in Shogakukan titles since about 1978. He mostly writes for Shonen Sunday, but also for the seinen Big Comic line, and has had 2 series in Shojo Comic and Ciao. What with some short stories running in the josei Petit Comic, he is the rare mangaka to have a 4-genre home run.

The reasons he’s never made it big over here are unknown, but I can guess. First of all, he does sports manga. Sports manga, and especially baseball manga, has a tendency to be viewed as ‘low-selling kiss of death’ over here for some reason. (OK, perhaps the reason being that when Viz has tried sports manga, it *has* sold poorly.) Secondly, his best, most popular titles are long-runners. Touch is 26 volumes, H2 is 34, and Cross Game will be 17. In a poor economy, that can be a dangerous investment. Third, while he can draw some lovely art, he’s not usually known for his artistic abilities, and has been accused often of having his various heroes and heroines look exactly the same with only minor hair variants. It’s also possible, after Short Program didn’t really do well (and had art flipped) that the artist may simply not want to be licensed over here.

And lastly, there’s his character’s emotions. Or rather, their placidness. I don’t mean that during the course of his various series, characters don’t get angry, or cry, or cheer, etc. They do. But overall, he’s almost the anti-Rumiko Takahashi (a good friend of his, who has described him as her greatest rival) in that you don’t find a lot of crazy over the top madness in his series. Cross Game, the most recent, has a tsundere-type in the lead heroine of Aoba Tsukishima, but even her ‘what a jerk! I hate him!’ is pretty mild.

Likewise, there is a romantic aspect to almost all his series, with crushes, rivalries, and the like. But for Western audiences, the lack of ‘payoff’ might be frustrating. Many of his series end with the two leads still not explicitly stating their feelings, choosing to hold hands, or having a kiss silhouetted. It’s meant to be a peaceful ending showing that life goes on, and certainly the romantic entanglements always seem to be resolved by the end (as opposed to, say, Takahashi’s UY or Ranma), but many fans tend to be dissatisfied at the lack of a final explicit resolution. Not all of his series are like this; Rough, about 2 swimmers who fall in love, is far more explicit about its love, mostly as the plot involves a Romeo and Juliet-style rivalry between their two families. But for the most part, if you’re reading Adachi for romantic payoffs, you’re reading the wrong author.

That said, there’s lots to love about Adachi’s works. His guys tend to be genuinely likeable, his girls cute and independent. He has several themes besides sports that run through his works; death hovers over several of his series, with the death of a major character being the focal point on which two of his series turn. It’s not used in a horrific or dramatic way; usually the focus tends to be on those left behind, and their inability to move past the incident. Likewise, there’s a strong family element in his stories, with fathers, mothers and siblings playing important roles. As with many shonen series, there’s a lot of attention devoted to improving oneself; many of his heroes start off as lazy or unmotivated, and end up discovering their passion through the sport of that particular manga.

Where would I start if I were Viz and didn’t care about things selling? Actually, probably with his most recent work, Cross Game. At 17 volumes, it’s long but not too long. It would be a good feeler to see if baseball manga can work out over here. It’s well-written, with several surprises. And it handles most of the themes I’d mentioned above with the ease and grace of a veteran in the manga industry. Rough, which I’d mentioned earlier, is a great manga with a more explicit romance than usual and some great swimming and diving scenes. And Slow Step could, even with its old-school 80s art, slide seamlessly into Shojo Beat; it deals with softball and romantic entanglements from a female lead’s perspective, and ran in their Ciao magazine for 7 volumes.

Crown Of Love Volume 1

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By Yun Kouga. Released in Japan as “Renai Crown” by Sobisha, serialized in the magazine Comic Crimson. Released in North America by Viz.

It’s interesting to read a manga that features three protagonists who I dislike, yet still manages to hold my attention and makes me want to read more. Crown of Love is such a manga.

Its publisher, Sobisha, seems to be a Shueisha subsidiary. This manga ran in the late-90s in Comic Crimson, which was then sort of what Cookie is now – a magazine that straddles the line between shoujo and josei. The old manga Planet Ladder (put out by Tokyopop back in the day) also ran here. The magazine folded in 2003, and I wonder if the original art wasn’t saved very well. The art in this volume is good, but gives that feeling of ‘second to third generation copy’ to me. Of course, that might also be the style, which is pretty old fashioned.

It’s also apparently a retelling of a story from the late 80s, Ren-Ai, which ran in Akita Shoten’s Princess magazine. It was cut off at 3 volumes, and the artist wanted to retell it and give the characters more depth. Of course, this manga is only 4 volumes (did it end with Comic Crimson folding?), so I’m not sure how successful she was.

The basic premise of Crown of Love is that Hisayoshi, a musical prodigy and son of a famous classical orchestra player, meets an idol singer, Rima, on a train and falls instantly in love with her. This bothers him, and he seems to be well aware what this makes him look like to her, but he continues to try to get close to her, ripping apart his rather cloistered life in order to do so.

You could argue, looking at Hisayoshi, that he needed this sort of kick in the pants. Certainly his father’s violence towards him makes you realize that moving out is a good thing. Unfortunately, he’s pretty much an emotional zero. He has lots of inner monologue musing on his feelings, but that only amplifies the fact that he’s very closed off.

As for his crush, she’s also dealing with unresolved love feelings, and like Hisayoshi, she is fully aware that they’re not the healthiest thing. Her crush is on the man who ‘discovered’ her. Sadly, he seems to be married. Or gay. Or, this being Yun Kouga, probably both. She also has parent issues, namely a mother that wants nothing more than to sponge off her newfound idol fame. The combined pressure of this plus her career is making her a bit twitchy.

As for Ikeshiba, the manager, until we get a better backstory he’s the biggest cipher of all. (His sarcastic, cynical daughter was probably my favorite character). Clearly he has a mysterious past going on, and his ambiguous gayness is pretty hot, I suppose, if you’re into ambiguous gays. He comes across as a manipulator, though. I’m hoping the two leads tell him to get bent at some point.

Despite my criticisms, the impressive thing about this manga is that I really want to see what happens next. The leads aren’t likeable, but they are human, and I want to see them overcome their problems and find love. I also like the message this manga seems to be giving, which is that you can have as much common sense and intellect as you want, but love will come along and stomp on that and there’s little you can do but try to hold on tight.