Why was Excel Saga Never More Popular

[Mullon]

Something I never quite understood was why Excel Saga was never talked about as much as other anime or manga. Admittedly my knowledge of the anime/manga community is limited, but it seems like every other manga always had tons of fanart, scanlations, etc, and I never got why Excel Saga got the same treatment.

[Micki!]

Good questions, I'll try to give you my personal thoughts about this, if that means anything 

The Anime was pretty well received when it came out, it was basically "the" slapstick comedy around, and "the" parody anime of the year, as far as the western world was concerned anyway, honestly, I never did follow how well it did in Japan...
It's still brought up when the topic about parodies and "really weird animes" come up, but it's really never getting any further than that, and I guess it's because of what it represented at the time... Because at the time it was made, the parodies it made were mostly relevant, spoof of other animes, or entire genres...

But once that's done it's kind of run its game and never really seems worth looking up again other than being mentioned in discussions every now and then... But rewatching it after so many years suddenly becomes pretty unappealing... At least to me... When it was out, It was all fun, fresh and despite the extremely low budget and degrading animation quality as the series went on, it could be enjoyed at least, because it was still its own thing... But after that's done, you kind of would rather move on to any next/newer series that does the same thing, better or worse... There's little to get back to in the anime of Excel Saga... That also brings down the manga unfortunately... Once people got past that point, and found out there was a manga released, a couple of things would likely happen to people; they'll check it out, expecting the anime in still images, just to get that little fix back, only to get a series that was superior and people end up liking it better than the anime (that's me, whuah), plus it's ongoing, always nice to have something to look forward to..! Other people, will get disappointed, and get turned off by the massive amounts of dialogue and less whacky nature of the manga, and more realistic take on physics (yeah Excel is a mortal being now who can't just hyper up and run at the speed of sonic the hedgehog because the director decided she could), some people wanted just more of the same that they got introduced to, and even thought it may grow on them, first impressions can kill many things on the spot...

Then there's the long, long, long, long long LONG LONG time between each volume... Volume 1-6 I believe were out when the anime was released, it was basically just based on a few comics with the potential to spawn a silly series to appeal the ignorant masses who buy an anime series for the sake of a good laugh (hey, that's ok, I guess, many series have this happening to them)... Once you have to wait literally a year or a half for the next volume to come out, it can be easily forgotten that you even care about it, especially if you weren't some avid fan in the first place or simply don't care in completing a comic collection...

Then there's the newcomers, people who came in late knowing about the series, maybe heard about the manga first, or the anime, whatever, they're late but they're fans... and then get killed off by the lack of re-printed copies of the manga, namely volume 7 and 8, two also very vital books in the series... Now that's a turn off, to me anyway, I'd have to like a series ALOT to bother buying an incomplete collection of it, especially if some very important chapters were not to be found anylonger, and the lack of scanlations is a real mystery in that regard... Could have given the series the advertisement it needed, maybe... Well it may backfire and simply have people read it online too, but there's next to no scanlations out there, and it's a mystery to me why that is so...

Well, VIZ Media is being cool now (uncool to Europeans though, I'm sad) as they now sell the entire series on their website as digital copies, instead of letting it rot completely, and despite the painfully long period between volumes, they're actually going through with completing the series to the very last (and upcoming) book of the series, kudos to them..!

As for fanart, the series has its fair share of fanart around the web, I like to occasionally google that stuff myself just to see if anything new actually does turn up every now and then, but since the series is so irrelevant these days, and just forgotten or overlooked by people, they'll obviously not come across the idea of making fanart every day, if there are no places or people to show it to who can relate... Except for those few who care enough to simply share the love for the sake of it and not because a community wants to see it or because the artists wants to get a nod from other fans...

I think if the series got rebooted, as in made into an anime based on the manga, like, a proper adaption with the likeable and fleshed out characters of the manga, we'd probably finally spawn one of those modern communities around the world/web that live on to the end of dawn that we always wanted... But since the original anime was imo, just a fad, relying on cultural gags and at the time being fresh and silly, it eventually just blew over and got replaced by the next thing doing the same job, taking the old fans with it in the process..! Nothing people really seem to want to hang around with for a longer period of time, evidently...

Anyway, nice to see lifesigns and honest curiosity about these matters from someone I don't recall having seen before (weren't you on the old forum..? The name somehow rings a bell...)

[Foggle]

Great post, Micki!

I wrote about this in detail on our blog a while back. I think it's mostly because the manga is so different from the anime, and because Rikdo's writing style is a bit higher level than that of most manga. So people who were looking for the anime in print were disappointed, people who didn't like the anime never gave it a chance, and people who would rather try manga (via scanlations) before buying weren't able to get a good impression.

[Mullon]

But why weren't there scanlations? Because that seems to be how a lot of people first learn about a manga.

[Foggle]

But why weren't there scanlations? Because that seems to be how a lot of people first learn about a manga.

There are for the earliest volumes, but they're really bad and not funny. It's hard to translate because of the way Rikdo writes, from what I hear.

[Mullon]

I wonder what it is about his writing that's so difficult. I've never heard of something like that putting off scanlators before.

[Micki!]

If you read the comparison of the official translation by Carl Horn and his little team, and read the fan-translation out there, you'd see a dramatic difference in the way it's written...

Basically, the way Rikudou writes contains alot of long winded sentences and words, which if translated directly can end up like a blob of uninteresting jibber-jabber, which it is, IF not worded correctly... The magic that happens in the official translation (and not to glorify it, although it deserves that, honestly  ) is that they went ahead to captured the characters personalities through the way they speak in written words, something that the early translations severely fail to do, and no doubt appear off-putting since if the writing is uninteresting and dull all that's left is the action, and the manga focuses a ton more on written gags and great interaction between characters, than physical stuff that goes on per page, and hilarious expressions and such would otherwise fall flat if the writing along with it just doesn't emphasize it...

You should try and compare it with some chapters, Foggle and I once looked up several fan-scanlations together for fun, and we were dying of laughter when we saw how dramatically different they are, and how the original translation just is more fun to read, which is what that translation does a good job with, it makes the comic funny to read and not to pace through for the funny moments, just like it was meant to in the original Japanese version..! Although, many of the funny bits in the Japanese version are so obscurely Japanese'ified that the translators had to think of alternative things to replace these things with, mostly the creative wordings in sentences used for certain expressions or to capture a slang or personality trait..!

Basically, you can tell what character is talking even when they're offscreen just by the way they speak, which means it's a good translation job... Something that which in the fan-translation didn't happen, there it was literally just directly translated and getting a meaning across (or sometimes completely missing it)

It's honestly easier to simply show you examples than it is to explain this, but basically, the scanlations were badly translated... They were correctly translated though, for sure, Foggle and I did some research on that, but they didn't manage to get personalities and meanings across very well at all... Sometimes even relying on overuse of japanese honorifics and titles where they weren't needed, and successfully help confusing the reader...

"moshi-moshi", remember Foggle..?

"I am, Kabapu Hakase"... *rips out hair*

... So much for translating... I can take Japanese names, when they're not needed to be explained to the reader, but here they just feel forced in to keep the Japanese culture intact...

I hope this all makes sense, but Rikudou really is more of a writer than an artist compared to most other typical manga artists... Not that his plot-lines or stories are fantastic or anything, but the way they're put down are pretty complex and evidently not the kind of material that people with minimal effort can manage to directly translate without having to really read into them to capture characters and such correctly... It's basically equivalent to the difference between speaking in dull monotone and speaking through acting to make out a scene... That, and carefully choosing words that simply make better sense in an English sentence, even if that means having to replace certain words, as long as the same meaning comes across and sounds like what that particular character would speak like, if it was translated to a different language than Japanese..!

I'm really sorry that I can't seem to make any less than walls of text here...

[Foggle]

"moshi-moshi", remember Foggle..?

"I am, Kabapu Hakase"... *rips out hair*

Don't forget when they translated ACROSS as ACCESS!

[Micki!]

Yes..! And Kabapu is a cow
And Sumiyoshi sounds exactly like everybody else -Well about this one, I'm really grateful that Sumiyoshi received a dialect that kept his outlandish way of speaking working in the english version of the manga..!

[Mullon]

So, because Rikdo's style is hard to translate, it never got proper scanlations, and it never caught on?

[Micki!]

well because of that there were never any "good" scanalations, if that's the reason they stopped making anymore I wouldn't know, but to me personally, having read the scanlations and the VIZ version of the books, the differences is pretty huge, and definitely a total waste and turn-off to read the scanlation in comparison...

But I guess it's not really a solid reason for people to stop trying to translate the thing, maybe they simply got bored of trying to do it, and nobody else caught on because it didn't become popular enough in later years for anybody to either notice it existed or if it was relevant enough to bother scanning he entire thing of since people probably thought nobody would care anyway... Or maybe it was the long release gap in japan between each volume as well, which I think was also around half a year between volumes... Some people have the patience to make such a project of scanning the entire thing over a period of several years, but I guess others don't..!

I'm personally guessing it might be the latter, the long release gap between volumes... I'm sure there are some mangas out there that did get a full treatment while they also had long between each volumes to be released... But that stuff just happens, some fans are more dedicated than others, and sometimes there's just one out of ten (well hypothetically) that simply didn't get along like the rest, Excel Saga may very well had been in that boat  as well...

Can't really tell for sure, but It's a good guess anyway..! Well, I think it's a good guess, it's my guess afterall 

[Mullon]

I'm just still a little upset that it's over and the internet isn't abuzz with discussions and debates and general exclamations.

[Foggle]

I'm just still a little upset that it's over and the internet isn't abuzz with discussions and debates and general exclamations.

Yeah, me too. Excel Saga manga never got the respect it deserved from the public at large.

[Markness]

Some of the posts here already explained some things but I would still like to throw my two cents in.

When it comes to manga, American fans tend to not bother with a series unless it has Goku, Naruto, Ichigo or Erin Jaeger in it. They just want more of the series they already like and couldn't care less about anything else. It's the same deal with anime. I remember trying to watch the Ah! My Goddess! film with someone I used to hang out with and he said, "This isn't like Dragon Ball Z!" He was one of those who still thinks anime is a genre when it's actually a medium.