Excel Saga

[Foggle]

It's over in Japan. Final chapter came out two days ago. Final volume comes out in October, and then it's a five year wait for Viz to finish localizing the rest of the series...

[Angus]

Doh I wish my local library would keep up with this. They are still stuck back in Volume 17/18.

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Mine stopped stocking them when the series' rating jumped from T to T+. Excel Saga is in the children's section alongside stuff like Harold & The Purple Crayon and Captain Underpants, for reference. I don't really think a five-year-old would enjoy or understand ES, but whatever.

Also, Negima is right next to Monsters, Inc. on the kids' DVD shelf, if that tells you anything.

[Foggle]

Here's the Japanese cover for volume 1:


And here's the final volume's cover:

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Heh, nice homage to the original cover. Also, based on the art between both versions, it looks like the mangaka's art-style evolved over time, which happens with pretty much all long-running manga series.

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Picked this up back in November... not sure why I didn't post about it 'til now. Some pretty cool stuff, IMO. Forgive the shitty quality of the pictures; my phone camera is horrid and I have no scanner.

Young King OURs September 2011 issue AKA the end of Excel Saga! According to some English text printed on the spine, it's the most eccentric manga magazine!


This motherfucker is fat! There are no page numbers anywhere, but I'd assume it's at least 600 pages long. Not bad for the equivalent of $7 US!


Delicious color Excel pages. Advertisement on the right.


War... war never changes.


Sprite Spiegel! What the hell?


The manliest manga ever! Does anyone know what this is? Because it looks fucking awesome.


Hellsing? Nah.


There was also an interesting Japanese ad for Transformers: Dark of the Moon, but the photo came out way too blurry. Might take some more pictures for you guys later, if you want.

[Foggle]

So the new volume was pretty fucking hilarious and featured an awesome car chase with a robot-powered rickshaw as well as the trademark subtle wit and bloody slapstick. Character interactions were great, as usual... but I found the plot to be basically incomprehensible; which is odd because that's a criticism often leveled at this series that I've never agreed with. I guess it's becoming too strange even for me!

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Wait, I thought Excel Saga already ended? Maybe I'm thinking of a different series.

Also, is the manga still be translated by Viz media or have they dropped it completely?

[Foggle]

Wait, I thought Excel Saga already ended? Maybe I'm thinking of a different series.

Also, is the manga still be translated by Viz media or have they dropped it completely?

I mean the newest English release. Volume 23, by Viz. I can't read Japanese very well and there are no scanlations after volume 4.

And now I must wait another 365 days for #24. 363 now... not that I'm counting...

[Foggle]

Apparently Rikudou's new manga, Echo/Zeon, was cancelled by Young Ace for seemingly no reason and without warning. Since I'm pretty sure that it was supposed to be the replacement for Excel Saga (i.e. a long-running, non-pornographic comedy), I have to wonder what's going to become of his "mainstream" career in the coming months. It's a damn shame that his work seems to go so unappreciated...

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Apparently there are a lot of mangaka who try unique stuff and actually make really good material by deviating from the tired old formulas of whatever genre they pursue, but that also comes at the cost of having their work fading into obscurity since most "mainstream" readers are picky and don't really support fresh stuff like that. Or, at least, that's what I learned from reading Bakuman....which incidentally IS a mainstream manga about the art and business of making manga.

Well, anyways, if Excel Saga was more readily available you know I'd support it. Its just way too hard for me to find all of the volumes for, and I don't like the idea of having to skip entire volumes if I can't get some of them, especially since you said that some of the ones that are hardest to find are also among the most important (story-wise) ones in the entire series.

[Foggle]

Apparently there are a lot of mangaka who try unique stuff and actually make really good material by deviating from the tired old formulas of whatever genre they pursue, but that also comes at the cost of having their work fading into obscurity since most "mainstream" readers are picky and don't really support fresh stuff like that. Or, at least, that's what I learned from reading Bakuman....which incidentally IS a mainstream manga about the art and business of making manga.

I think I'm going to start reading that series soon, since you and Spark are always saying good things about it. Seems like a very interesting read.

Well, anyways, if Excel Saga was more readily available you know I'd support it. Its just way too hard for me to find all of the volumes for, and I don't like the idea of having to skip entire volumes if I can't get some of them, especially since you said that some of the ones that are hardest to find are also among the most important (story-wise) ones in the entire series.

Oh, hell yeah, I know you would. Apparently Viz did a small, stealthy reprint of volume 5 and those others that I said were going out of print earlier, so the only two you'd be missing are 7 & 8. 7 is funny but basically inconsequential and I have a scanned copy of the Viz volume 8 on my hard drive, so if you ever get to the point where you can start buying the books, you should be fine. If you want, I can help you find copies of certain volumes in the future.

Anyway, it's likely that the manga never sold too well outside of Japan because people expected it to be a crazy parody like the anime and ended up being confused by the first two volumes' poorly drawn sociopolitical satire that was likely too subtle for the majority of the fanbase. I'm not even trying to be insulting, either... anyone who's ever seen the anime will almost definitely be shocked by the kind of humor present in the earlier books. They're all very funny, but it doesn't really hit its stride until later on, and even then, it's completely different from Nabeshin's version.

Speaking of the anime, while I do find it kind of hard to watch these days, I must say that the final 6 episodes hold up extremely well. The anime-only story arc is shockingly well done and even mirrors the later volumes of the manga somewhat, while the episode with Key and Going Too Far are still totally hilarious.

To be honest, you could probably just watch some of the anime episodes that actually adapt the manga and then start reading with the scanned volume 8, if you want. You'll miss some truly great moments from the earlier books, and #s 9, 12, and 13 are extremely uneven for first impressions (though all three have some hilarious chapters), but it'll save you a lot of time and money as long as you remember that the characters act completely differently in the original work.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I kind of have a rule of reading the original work the way it was intended, and in the order it was intended to be read it. I'm not sure why, but its a big deal for me to have to skip a volume or even a single chapter, even if its mostly inconsequential to the main story-line. Perhaps if I actually start making money this summer, I'll at least order the first few volumes online and hopefully see if I can find volumes 7 and 8 somewhere for a reasonable price.

Oh, and as for Bakuman just keep in mind that the first few chapters of it might not be that much to your liking. The manga is itself a shonen series and inherently adopts quite a few shonen themes and tropes (its self-aware of this though, of course). The manga really gets interesting when Takagi and Mashiro team up and actually starting creating manga. You get to learn the whole general structure of making and publishing mainstream manga (in this case its for Shonen Jump, though, but apparently a lot of what applies there applies to most other manga editorials, even for Seinen magazines), and how competitive it is since the editorial department will drop their least popular mangaka without any hesitation. Manga itself is treated very much like a business in Bakuman in terms of authors giving into what the readers want and what their editors tell them to do in order to make a more popular series, even if it isn't what they would want to do artistically to make the best possible series. To me that's the main element of interest in the manga, though it does have good characters and interesting dilemmas to go along with all of that, of course.

[Foggle]

I kind of have a rule of reading the original work the way it was intended, and in the order it was intended to be read it. I'm not sure why, but its a big deal for me to have to skip a volume or even a single chapter, even if its mostly inconsequential to the main story-line. Perhaps if I actually start making money this summer, I'll at least order the first few volumes online and hopefully see if I can find volumes 7 and 8 somewhere for a reasonable price.

Well, 5 and 7 are pretty readily available from Amazon.com, though 7 is about twice the cover price (which is a lot better than, say, last year, when it was $40). 8 is still pretty expensive, so unless you really love the series like I do and want to own every book, the scan should hopefully be good enough. Anyway, I totally understand about not wanting to skip chapters or books in a series, even if they're inconsequential. I'm the exact same way.

Oh, and as for Bakuman just keep in mind that the first few chapters of it might not be that much to your liking. The manga is itself a shonen series and inherently adopts quite a few shonen themes and tropes (its self-aware of this though, of course).

I feel like most manga end up being this way. The first bits of Excel Saga might turn you off, as well. Anyway, shounen tropes don't really bother me unless they're related to harems or involve that "power of friendship" crap (both of which are present in seinen, as well). I doubt either of those can be found in Bakuman, so I'm sure I'll still like it.

The manga really gets interesting when Takagi and Mashiro team up and actually starting creating manga. You get to learn the whole general structure of making and publishing mainstream manga (in this case its for Shonen Jump, though, but apparently a lot of what applies there applies to most other manga editorials, even for Seinen magazines), and how competitive it is since the editorial department will drop their least popular mangaka without any hesitation. Manga itself is treated very much like a business in Bakuman in terms of authors giving into what the readers want and what their editors tell them to do in order to make a more popular series, even if it isn't what they would want to do artistically to make the best possible series. To me that's the main element of interest in the manga, though it does have good characters and interesting dilemmas to go along with all of that, of course.

Yeah, that storyline is what convinced me to read this series in the first place. It sounds very interesting to me.

Just to clarify, the anime isn't very good, right? I wasn't ever planning on watching it (I'm starting to prefer manga in general), but I'm still curious.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Yeah, I'll definitely be looking into what I can find of the manga sometime this summer.

As for Bakuman, the anime is pretty "meh" for the most part. Its not really entirely its fault, as Bakuman to me is the kind of series that is flat-out meant to be a manga, and doesn't translate too well into animated form. Don't get me wrong, the anime has some occasional treats of its own, such as having actual opening theme songs and animation for some of the fictional anime that exist in the world of Bakuman, but overall its just a copy and paste version of the manga except at a much slower pace. The first season felt kind of dull, whereas the 2nd season was a noticeable improvement but still just felt kind of pointless as an adaptation. So, yeah, the manga would be the best way to go about experiencing the series.