To be concise, Excel Saga is about the power of honest, true love. From a less fundamental level, Excel Saga is the story of Illpalazzo's attempt at taking over the world with the aid of Excel and Hayat, as well how evil is vanquished by a Hero of heart named Pedro. However, at first glance, neither of these definition will be really of any sort of working definition. Why? because Excel Saga is ZANY TO THE MAX!
Excel Saga takes place mainly in City F, of Province F of Japan. The setting shifts around sometimes depending on the episode, but that's how it is usually. It's not really that important anyway. Moving on, we have Akurosu, the secret, underground organization which tries to takes over the world and impose its ideals on it. The world is corrupt, at least to Illpalazzo. This is somewhat of the underlying reason why the plot moves forward, but it's also not really important. Excel and Hayat, our protagonists, are sent by Illpalazzo on various experiments to slowly adjust the world to Illpalazzo's ideals, and often the episodes revolve around that. Simotaneously, we also have a subplot that moves along, about Pedro, a Columbian laborer working in Japan to earn his family money back home. A chain of mistortunes happens to him, and it is now his dream and seemingly unreachable goal to reunite with his family. This story takes place somewhere around present time, but there is undeniably large amount of sci-fi elements which would indicate sometime in the near future. Don't let that get to you- it's really not important at all.
Well, you may ask, what's important about Excel Saga? Certainly it has a story that drives a hearty point home, but, as those of you who've seen it would know, Excel Saga is a work of parody. What does it make fun of? Just about everything. How? In both subtle and bluntly slapstick ways. Before I get myself into trouble tho, I should qualify a couple things. First, Excel Saga makes fun of things that are of common trivia to its target audience (eg. otakus that'll watch/tape a 1:45am show) and not just of anime, but pop Japanese culture in general. Second, it takes a real wide knowledgebase to understand all of them. Now lacking the fundamental tools to understand Excel Saga, we at momomo collective decided to just, well, piece together from what little bits we can pick up. You can find them throughout this webpage: the subjects of these parody falls into the "victim" section. The typical character stats are in the cast section. Lastly, everything else that doesn't fit goes in here or in the conclusion section. The overall intent of this document is to provide a rudamentary and basic level of understanding (or a beginning to understanding) of Excel Saga. For a more comprehensive factoid way of study, try the website Dynamite Love Weird Anime Excel Saga.
Production Staff
Excel Saga is created initially by Rikudo
Koshi, the manga artist who released it in a serial publication (Young
King Hours). The animation is produced by J.C. Staff.
Directed by Shinichi Watanabe. The opening theme song
is done by Kobayashi Yumiko and Takahashi
Mikako (they're the Excel Girls cosple--actual
Excel Saga characters). The TV series is released
on home video in Japan by Victor Entertainment. Music is written by Matsuda
Toshiro. We here at momomo would like to
think that Excel Saga was created for the fun of
it all. Shinichi Watanabe and the rest of the production
crew really just decided to go wild and make something completely bizarre. They
have a 1:45am slot anyway, and it's not even a national broadcast at first.
The lead voice actor, Excel's Kotono Mitsuishi
likes to play this sort of role herself, and she's a tried-and-true voice actress
who can go wild.
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