Anime Retrospective: 1999’s Excel Saga Featured a Final Episode Too Extreme for TV
Image by Charlotte DavisExcel Saga turned a hopeless attempt at world domination into one of anime’s most outrageous comedies, combining relentless parody, bizarre characters, and a complete disregard for almost every convention of Japanese animation.
First broadcast in Japan in 1999, J.C.Staff’s 26-episode anime followed the disastrous adventures of an enthusiastic young woman working for a secret organization, with each episode finding increasingly ridiculous ways to mock everything from science fiction and romance to magical girls and giant robots.
Based on the manga created by Kōshi Rikudō and directed by Shinichi Watanabe, the series embraced its self-described status as an experimental anime, eventually pushing its humour so far that its final episode was deliberately made unsuitable for Japanese television.
At the centre of the story was Excel, an energetic and fanatically loyal member of ACROSS, a secret organization dedicated to conquering the world under the leadership of the mysterious and frequently unpredictable Il Palazzo.
However, its ambitions were considerably more modest than those of most fictional villains, with the organization deciding that taking control of a single Japanese city would be a sensible first step towards global domination.
Unfortunately for Il Palazzo, his most devoted subordinate was also spectacularly incompetent, with Excel’s enthusiasm and tendency to make disastrous decisions regularly turning even relatively simple assignments into complete chaos.
She was eventually joined by Hyatt, a quiet and sickly young woman whose habit of suddenly collapsing, vomiting blood, and apparently dying became one of the anime’s longest-running jokes.
The pair lived together in a rundown apartment, struggling to survive on part-time jobs while carrying out their master’s increasingly absurd orders, with their unusual household also including Menchi, a small dog Excel kept as a potential emergency food supply.
While the premise provided a loose framework for the story, Excel Saga’s greatest attraction was its willingness to abandon almost any sense of continuity in pursuit of another joke.
Individual episodes frequently adopted completely different genres, parodying everything from romantic dramas and survival adventures to post-apocalyptic action series, sports anime, and classic science-fiction productions.
The anime also regularly acknowledged its own existence as a television production, with manga creator Kōshi Rikudō appearing in animated form to authorize changes to the story and approve whatever genre the staff intended to tackle next.
Director Shinichi Watanabe even inserted a fictional version of himself into the proceedings as Nabeshin, a gun-toting character with an enormous afro whose increasingly ridiculous adventures frequently interrupted the main story.
Other recurring characters included Pedro, an unfortunate construction worker whose troubles continued long after his death, and the Great Will of the Macrocosm, a cosmic entity capable of reversing events and resurrecting characters whenever the plot demanded it.
This disregard for the usual rules of storytelling was matched by the performances of its voice actors, particularly Kotono Mitsuishi, who voiced Excel after previously portraying Usagi Tsukino in Sailor Moon and Misato Katsuragi in Neon Genesis Evangelion.
Mitsuishi’s extraordinarily rapid delivery helped define Excel’s personality, with the character frequently launching into lengthy, frantic monologues that left little room for anyone else to speak.
Even the anime’s opening and closing sequences joined in the absurdity, particularly its ending theme, which featured Menchi barking a melancholy song while a human interpreter translated the unfortunate dog’s supposed lyrics.
However, perhaps the greatest example of Excel Saga’s determination to push boundaries came with its infamous 26th episode, appropriately titled “Going Too Far”.
While the first 25 episodes aired on TV Tokyo between October 1999 and March 2000, the production team deliberately filled the final instalment with excessive violence, sexual content and other material considered unsuitable for Japanese television.
The episode was also made longer than the allotted broadcast time, ensuring that it could not be shown as part of the original television run, although it was subsequently made available through home video.
Excel Saga eventually reached American audiences through ADV Films, which began releasing the anime on DVD in 2002, complete with English dubbing and optional explanatory notes to help viewers understand some of its many Japanese cultural references and jokes.
The series’ approach to comedy also extended to its creator’s other productions, with Watanabe later directing the similarly outrageous two-episode anime Puni Puni Poemy, which featured his Nabeshin character alongside another cast of eccentric personalities.
Although many of Excel Saga’s references were rooted in the anime and popular culture of the late 1990s, its willingness to ridicule its own characters, creators, and production remained central to its appeal.
More than two decades after its original broadcast, Excel Saga stands as a reminder of an era when an anime could spend an entire episode mocking another genre, abandon its own storyline whenever it felt like it, and finish by creating an episode deliberately too outrageous to show on television.
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