When Excel Saga was released directly to home video in 199X (because no
self-respecting station would broadcast such stupid Japanese cartoons,
not even in Japan), it was a sign of the fact that the Japanese cartoon
industry is going to hell in a handbasket. This series, rife with
cliches, borrowed dialog,idiotic visual humor and stupid Japanese puns,
was based on a comic book by a man named Koshi Rikdo, a complete hack.
The director, another inept hack, was Shinichi Watanabe. Both of these
idiots put themselves in the "plot" because they didn't have enough
imagination for real characters. The show is a comedy, like a lot of
bad Japanese cartoons. Or at least, it was intended as a comedy,
because it's really an antidote for laughing gas more than anything.
The characters include:
Koshi Rikdo, the man responsible for this whole mess. At least we can
know who to blame.
Nabeshin, a stunt double for the director, who was too chicken to fly a
Mitsubishi himself.
That Man, a guy who was supposed to appear once, but kept coming back.
What bad planning.
Il Palazzo, a wuss who sits on his chair all day playing games. Doesn't
know how to pick up chicks, even if they throw themselves at him.
Excel Excel, a self-proclaimed idiot. She dies many times throughout
the show, but comes back through deus ex machina every time.
Hyatt - an alien princess who tends to steal Excel's complete lack of
thunder. Dies even more than Excel, and always comes back for no reason
at all - not even deus ex machina.
Will of the macrocosm - the deus in the machina. Enslaved by a mere
human. Pathetic.
Pedro - a Hispanic immigrant worker (from Pogota) who mixes Japanese
with Engrish (not Spanish). His wife cheated on him because he didn't
do much to stay in contact with her.
Sandora - Pedro's son, who thinks an *American* can draw *Japanese*
cartoons with outdated technology.
There are some other characters, but they don't merit mention, because
they're outright detestable. Plus I'm tired. Excel Saga doesn't really
have a lot of characters, maybe enough for a claymation short, but
describing them is such torture that even this few is too many.
Those who bought the series on video believe that there were 25
episodes. That is incorrect. There is also a 26th episode, which was
too horrid for video. It was distributed for free exclusively over
Bittorent, but few people could download it because nobody wanted to
seed it. Even the studio, JC Staff, stopped seeding it after a few
weeks when they realized that it's just humiliating. I managed to
download it over a few months (god know why, I don't) and saw that,
having exhausted their miscreantivity on humor without any sign of
success, Rikdo and Watanabe tried to appeal to various perverts
(including pedophiles and fans of beastiality), and managed to fail once
again - this time completely, because the target audience turned out to
be smaller than they estimated based on their own recent purchases.
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