Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #33527 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-07-02
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Original language: Japanese
• Number of discs: 6
• Running time: 650 minutes

Synopsis
Billed as ‘the ultimate parody of anime’, EXCEL SAGA certainly goes out of its way to parody every convention of the genre it can. From the cloying J-pop opening, it's clear that this series' sole aim is to be a good-natured farce, one that revolves around a main character who, on the surface is not much different from any other anime heroine. However, the key difference between Excel and all those who preceded her is that Excel is completely and utterly insane and considers it her goal to conquer the city of F. These episodes find Excel and Hyatt once again trying to take over the city of F in a rather foolish manner as they invoke the secret ideological agency of ACROSS. The series is collected here in its entirety.

Customer Reviews

Great anime for any collection
Excel Saga is one of those shows that only comes along every so often; something that just wants to have a bit of fun and not take itself too seriously, but ends up becoming very special indeed.
For those unfamiliar with the now-infamous Excel Saga absurdity, it follows the adventures of Excel and Hyatt as they work towards world domination for their idealogical organisation ACROSS, which is lead by the mysterious Ilpalazzo. Well, world domination is the eventual goal, but for now they just need to conquer this one city...
I probably ought to introduce some other characters at this point. As well as ACROSS, there is the Department of City Security who of course try to defend the city, sometimes crossing paths with ACROSS (although most of their plots are foiled by their own ineptitude). From the City Security we see the leader Kabapu and his hilarious team of workers, which at the start contains two hopeless losers, a very down-to-earth individual who speaks in subtitles and a sexy young woman- who all just happen to live next door to Excel and Hyatt. There is also the mysterious Puchuus, a race of cute aliens vying for world domination, Pedro, the dead construction worker who is trying to get his wife back from his rival Gomez, the Great Will of the Macrocosm (who resets the story when it goes wrong), and Nabeshin, a man of great power with a mysterious past, who also happens to be the show's director.
As you can expect, the plot is very silly and a lot of fun. Despite the huge range of characters you get to know them fairly quickly, and each episode is always great to watch. I found myself laughing out loud at most episodes. Probably one of the highlights is how every episode starts with the show's producers trying to persuade Rikdo, the manga artist, to let them make his manga into an anime. These situations are always funny and give a taster of what is to come, as each episode parodies a different anime genre- and does it very well. The plot may seem to swing about too much and never really develop, but later episodes somehow manage to bring all the insanity together with a great twist and a flawless ending.
Speaking of endings, the last episode, Going Too Far, does just what it says on the tin. Infamous for being too extreme for Japanese TV, it doesn't just flaunt the excessive violence and nudity but revels in them, using them as a great way to make the jokes even better, whilst never feeling as if the violence is just for the sake of it. If the whole series was like this it would grate a little, but having such an extreme last episode is a fitting way to end the series.
The art in this series is a little basic (although it is a fairly old series now), but everything is fantastically realised, especially the characters. When you consider the amount of action going on, it is impressive how much detail is fitted in at some points. The opening credits are a good example of this; try pausing the DVD at some points in it and you can see the amount of detail that passes in a blur.
The music is great as well, with a fun, catchy opening theme and a hilarious ending one. The music within the show is good, with certain situations (for example, Watanabe's meetings with Hyatt) having the same tune each time, and all of these work well with the tone of the scene. The voice acting is also great, and the actors seem to have had a fun time doing it!
As for the extras, there is a great selection here. Apart from the obligatory trailers and interviews, you also get some more fun things (Find The Mint game, and some recipes), and some fantastic notes that explain some of the stuff going on- well worth putting on when you watch the series again and are trying to understand it this time.
Overall there is little to dislike about Excel Saga. OK, so if you're looking for a deep, meaningful plot you should look elsewhere (although the plot does get interesting towards the end), and if you're looking for a slew of violence and nudity, well, it's done here in parody. But all in all, this is a landmark title that everyone ought to watch. Highly recommended.

Truly unique you'll either love it or hate it
Magnust Does a far more detailed synopsis of the series which I recommend you check out too, but I felt I should point out things he missed. Without even getting into the plot Excel Saga pokes fun at a lot generic things about anime and media culture as a whole, actually scratch that it parodys them in fact, with references to Dragonball Z, Cowboy Bebop, Fist of the North Star, Alien the Power Rangers and even differences between Western and Eastern animation to name but a few. However these pop culture jokes are not always obvious and new anime fans who won't get the references or even people just not into that kinda sillyness will be left scratching their heads in confusion.

It's a must see for anyone into anime, but whether or not you'll last until the end will depend on your sense of humour, but I do know for sure it's certainly not for anime rookies! It also loses 1 point out of the 5 from me because in all truth most of the episodes don't really lead anywhere in terms of plot development (it is a very random unserious for laughs anime after all) as well as some other episode content which bothered me personally and may do to others too. One example of this is the cyborg specialist scientist character (forgot name) who appears on about 6 episodes and is almost constantly hinting through his actions he has a little girl fetish. He's so OTT it's obviously supposed to be a satire about japans sometimes openly perverted ways, but it's still hard to not be freaked out by his actions at times.