Rating: 
Summary: Uh - I like it. I think - though the DVD menu's real kludgy
Review: (Edited 9/26/02 by TL) Since I'm not a hardcore *otaku* yet (couldn't even spell it right the first time through!), a lot of the humor flies over my head, even with ADV's helpful "vidnotes" (pop-ups which explain a lot of specifically Japanese cultural humor). For instance, is there a comic point behind calling Menchi a "dog" when she really looks like a cat, or is just that to the Japanese cute dogs and cats look a lot alike? And while I'm sure there's a joke in the sexually desirable Hyatt (there's even a brief scene that hints that her female "senior" Excel is attracted to her!) being the unhealthiest heroine in all *anime* (perhaps a jape at how Japanese men desire submissive women?), I'm not entirely clear on it. Also, some of the humor - like Excel's and Hyatt's determination to eat Menchi, or the always-crying (and heavily-accented) Hispanic Pedro - make me a bit uncomfortable. Even so, there's a lot of very funny stuff in these episodes, even if you're only a casual fan. The humor about Menchi as Excel's and Hyatt's "secondary food source" actually grew on me as I watched the show, especially since Menchi (and all the other characters, come to think of it) has more lives than SOUTH PARK's Kenny. (There's one real funny scene where Excel asks The Great Will of the Macrocosm - a maternal-voiced oval starfield with a woman's hands - to put a dead Menchi though "the Reset Cycle", and both sides talk like she's a clothes dryer.) This show's own version of The Lone Gunmen - three average-Joe guys (including the overweight Daimaru, who seems the coolest of the lot) who take jobs in Japanese Civil Service, and end up discovering that requires wearing tight bodysuits and firing rayguns a lot while accompanied by the extremely-capable (and probably misandryst) feminist Misaki - provide a lot of humor, especially since Nokikuni and Turu are both nursing VERY unrequited crushes on Misaki and Hyatt. And you gotta love that the Ultimate Evil on this show are a horde of nauseatingly cute crosses between Ewoks and POKEMON's Pikachu called "Puchuu"! However, ADV overthought the plumbing on the menu system, especially on the second DVD - there are so many different menu options (including a bunch of Easter Eggs), it's almost impossible to navigate at times.
Rating: 
Summary: Insane Fun=Excel Saga (In Japanese)
Review: (Not literally, of course). This next installment of the crazy and utterly innane Excel Saga has arrived and I must admit...I nearly fell out of another chair when I saw these episodes of Excel Saga. Of course, as we would come to expect, Nabeshin makes an appearance in every episode, yet the jobless Ronins are fighting for screen time. This causes them to beat the snot out of an already dead Pedro...and still miss their few minutes of fame in the last episode. Not to metion, all of the crazy new parodies in these episodes. Sports and horror anime will no longer have the same look after this. All I have to say is that bowling never looked so fun...and incredibly ridiculous at the same time. Watch Excel Saga hardcore otaku, its a blast!
Rating: 
Summary: Don't waste your time...stick with volume one.
Review: As anyone who has seen the first volume can tell you, the first volume of Excel Saga contain some of the most insanely hilarious moments ever recorded on DVD. The inclusion of Pedro, Menchi, and puchuus all within the first two episodes gave me high hopes as to what was to come. Considering how the pacing of the first DVD was insanely fast (new comedic devices were constantly introduced throughout the first few episodes), I was somewhat expecting the rest of these episodes to carry on with the frenetic same pace. This, however, is not the case. There is more of what has already been seen - quite disappointing indeed. The Pedro and Menchi gimmick get kinda tiring by the time you see them again, and the puchuu concept is already getting old. New ideas are introduced, but none of them are nowhere near as noteworthy or deserving of attention (parodies of bowling, more puchuus in sewers, and a "girls only" episode. Woo hoo.). It seems that the writers of Excel Saga had a few good ideas, and loaded them all into two episodes. It's not all bad, but it's certainly not very good either. For this volume, I fell asleep during the bowling episode, and was very bored during other episodes. I watched the original volume at four in the morning and had energy to spare. You could spend your money on better anime than this.
Rating:
Summary: Insane and inane
Review: Excel Saga is for people who like comedy anime that is inane and insane: sometimes it tries to be absurd just to show how some things are so crazy. If you can't understand silly and satyr you'll never get it. It's a show to watch for pure fun when you are relaxed with nothing to do. Entertainment, not education. The overall theme of Across trying to dominate the world is just as senseless as all the other Evil Organizations trying to dominate the world. What would you do if you dominated the world when in the first volume your leader is so bored he spends his time shopping mail-order? Only a real bunch of loonies would want to dominate the world, ipso facto, that's why Across is trying to. Instead, as one of the top members of Across (and one of only three members - well, maybe four depending on how reserve food supply counts), Excel just has fun. A blithering, hyper-enegtic idiot, she gets a "vacation" and all the guys are excluded from the scenes; nothing but honeys in bikini's at a pool and a young girl who's an assassin. A tear jerker as such. Excel gets to pig-out. Mining for gold in the snow capped hills, she is sent out to secure food and shoots poor Menchi, but since Menchi is her reserve food supply asks Will of the Cosmos to put her through the spin cycle and bring her back. A hard jab at the mornonic obsession with hunger some anime has in it. The good guys get together in skin-tight suits (and one slavers over his dolly-girl infatuation), trying to infiltrate the Across Sewers. Excel and Hyat stab at them with traps and finally it all washes out. The Puchu aliens show more of their less than cutsey side. In search of a sport to gain control of the youth with, Excel setlles on bowling (never mind that the place is empty because it's boring). In comes a Terrorist Bowling League to bring bowling back to it's heyday as a prime sport and Excel does battle in the wild, crazy way heros do battle in anime. She even gets a sensai who coaches her in the girls bathroom for a whopping long time. If you want a deep, plot-heavy show, go elsewhere. If you want something light, comical and flittery, with a hard edge of being nothing but slapstick, Excel is for you. As the DVD cover says, "Their Motto is DO or DIE (Well, at least they have the dying part covered.)" You'll find yourself rooting for the loosers.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Hilarious
Review: Excel Saga is the funniest thing to ever come out of Japan. Period. I'm NOT an anime fan... but my friends are and they turned me to this. MAN IS IT FUNNY!!! There are spoofs of everything you could imagine, including Pokemon, with very funny creatures called Puchuus running all over the place. The 7th episode in particular is full of funny Puchuu jokes, and if you don't split a gut at this part, then you have one very dry sense of humor. In addition to these parts, Excel's hyperactive energy and psychotic ideas always end up turning into something bad, and it all ends up in disappointing Ilpalazzo, and she ends up getting dropped down "the pit" again and again. Everything about this anime is HILARIOUS!!! Get is now if you want to crack up!
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Hilarious
Review: Excel Saga is the funniest thing to ever come out of Japan. Period. I'm NOT an anime fan... but my friends are and they turned me to this. MAN IS IT FUNNY!!! There are spoofs of everything you could imagine, including Pokemon, with very funny creatures called Puchuus running all over the place. The 7th episode in particular is full of funny Puchuu jokes, and if you don't split a gut at this part, then you have one very dry sense of humor. In addition to these parts, Excel's hyperactive energy and psychotic ideas always end up turning into something bad, and it all ends up in disappointing Ilpalazzo, and she ends up getting dropped down "the pit" again and again. Everything about this anime is HILARIOUS!!! Get is now if you want to crack up!
Rating:
Summary: Another great volume
Review: Excel Saga Volume 2 continues where Volume 1 left off...absolutely no where. It develops the civil service storyline with Watanabe and the gang, as well as adding to poor Pedro who longs for his "sexy wife and son," but otherwise it continues its routine and hilarious humor and flat-out strange plotlines. The classic episode for me, and the best reason I could find to keep going on with the series, was the third episode on this DVD involving bowling. Ilpallazo sends Excel and Hyatt to work at a bowling alley to see why the "ignorant masses" are so fond of sports. While a low budget bowling show is showcasting two pop idols (who, in the original Japanese, are played by the singers who do the opening theme) an ideological organization of bowling fanatics comes in and takes over. Basically, imagine Al Qaeda, except with a fetish for bowling. What follows in the English dub is a series of "ball" and "stick" or otherwise just bowling oriented gags and jokes. Please, don't think I'm immature, but I can't help but smile when the leader of "Stick and Balls" turns to Excel and Hyatt and declares: "Hey! You main characters come over here and grab my balls!" All right, I digressed there, but just letting y'all know why I liked this volume and why I went on to buy Volume 3. Hell...I just love this series.
Rating:
Summary: What is this, some sort of plot?!?
Review: From out of the random madness of the 1st installment of Excel Saga comes....a semblance of a plot?!?
In the 2nd DVD of this off the wall comedy, a 2nd group of characters comes out of the woodwork. Consisting of the 3 guys who live nextdoor to Excel and a new female character in a "tight totally revealing uniform," this group of government employees sets out to apose ACROSS. But do they know what they are getting into?
Of course, all of the zaniness and cuteness of the 1st DVD is back for more. Hyatt, who for some reason I don't understand is called Hatchan by Excel, still dies, or nearly dies almost constantly. The Puchuus return to overwhelm us with their cuteness, and still speak with the same creepy voices when they aren't saying "puchuu." Pedro is still in sorrow over losing his sexy wife, and Excel can't complete a mission to save her life. Or to win the adoration of Illpalazzo.
While I agree with an earlier reveiwer that the 1st DVD was much faster paced, I actually liked the 2nd one better. The 1st DVD almost gave me a headache it moved so fast. And all the jokes were piled on top of each other...you really weren't given an opportunity to appreciate them. That's not to say that this DVD moves at a slow pace, or is lacking in the joke department. While there aren't quite as many roll on the floor moments of hilarity, Excel Saga still delivers a strong punch in the gut humor at times, and a more subtle mocking of many things (including itself!) during others!
My main complaints lie with Excel. Whether watching the dub or the sub version, I often find it hard to keep up with her; the subtitled frequently fly across the screen too quickly to read, and the dub often becomes to shrill and rapid to understand. Other than that...the extras are pretty cool. I always find it interesting to see how this stuff was packaged and promoted in Japan.
In conclusion....this may not be for everyone. (especially anyone who is allergic to Yeti hair, Puchuus or humor) But if you give it a chance, I think you will find that this is probably more hilarious than it should be allowed to be!
Rating:
Summary: Excel Saga, full of Hyatt goodness
Review: I have become very fond of Hyatt after watching the second and third DVD in a row earlier today, but I digress. The Excel Saga gets even more bizarre in this second DVD. There is lots of unnecessary death (mostly Hyatt, who picks some wierd ways to die, like freezing in ice standing up) but it's even funnier than before. I said it before and I'll say it again: Hyatt has one of the best English voices I've ever heard in an anime series EVER. Her voice matches her character perfectly. Anyway, the parodies get more frequent, and some of them are easily recognizable to Americans like me (such as the Puchuu Queen, which looks like the alien from the Alien movies) and others are fairly obscure. If you liked the first volume of the series, you'll love volume two!
Rating:
Summary: funny
Review: If you don't like this anime, then there's something wrong with your sense of humor. This is the second collection of the funniest Anime I have ever seen before. It's incredibly wacky and over the top. Some might say it crosses the line but I don't think it's that bad. Keep an open mind and you will laugh your head off watching this one.
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