Manga Review: Excel Saga 02 by Rikdo Koshi
The secret organization ACROSS must take over the world. For its own good, of course. But at the moment, they’re a bit short-staffed. Their leader, Il Palazzo, has only two active agents, the hyperactive but not very bright Excel, and Hyatt, whose constitution is either extremely poor or inhumanly good, as she has survived multiple instances of dropping dead. So the first step is to just conquer the city of Fukuoka.
In this volume, their task gets just that little bit harder when four of their neighbors in the cheap apartment building where Excel and Hyatt live are recruited by Doctor Kabapu to join the secret city defense force known as the Environmental Security Administration. Watanabe, Iwata and Sumiyoshi are joined by Misaki Matsuya, a no-nonsense but also unemployed woman. They’re all pretty sure their new boss is insane, but at least it’s a steady government paycheck.
Since ACROSS doesn’t actually pay its agents, much of Excel and Hyatt’s time not on actual missions (the instructions for which are often frustratingly vague) is spent trying not to starve. They’re often perilously close to that condition, much to the consternation of their dog/last-resort food ration, Mince (“Menchi” in the Japanese.)
This absurdist comedy manga was a spinoff of a hentai (porn) manga, minus the sex, and with Excel made the main character. Part of the theme was how tough life was for young people trying to get into the job market during Japan’s long recession in the late 1990s. It’s got a lot of referential humor that doesn’t quite translate, so each volume comes with a lengthy footnotes section.
While the manga didn’t sell well in the US, the loosely-adapted anime which was even more bonkers was popular with American fans in the early 21st Century.
Even if you’re missing most of the references (ACROSS names its agents after hotels), this is still a funny manga with some nifty gimmicks (like the fellow who “talks” only in heavily accented subtitles.)
Content note: Hyatt’s constant near-death experiences can get a little unsettling for the squeamist. More pressingly, while he isn’t in this volume, there is a character in both anime and manga who has a creepy interest in much younger women. (The anime and manga give different explanations.)
Because of the heavy footnoting, I’d recommend this to college-age readers who’ve had some introduction to Japanese culture beyond anime and manga, and enjoy absurdist comedy.
And now, the opening of the anime!
