Common Name: Excel Saga
Alternative Names: Heppoko Jikken Animation Excel♥Saga
Score: 7/10, 4/5
Length: 26 Episodes
Genre: Comedy
Summary: First name: Excel. Last name: Excel. Occupation: Faithful Servant to The Great Il Palazzo and his organization bent on world domination, ACROSS. Hobbies: serving Il Palazzo, fangirling over Il Palazzo, desperately looking for food, making friends with people as weird as her, and being resurrected by God on a regular basis.
Review: Excel is weird. Growing up, it was the weirdest show I had ever seen. Since I was still new to the anime industry, as in I was still watching 4Kids and would secretly watch Toonami every now and then, I did not understand that this title was a work of parody. All I saw was a bunch of characters being absolute morons and making jokes to and about me, the audience. Even though I didn't get it, I still found myself enjoying the show's humor every now and then. So, imagine my surprise when I grow older, watch it again out of nostalgia, and completely understand what this show was trying to accomplish.
Excel Saga is a bizarre, off-the-walls insane story filled with criticism of the anime and manga industry and the tropes that were the standard at the time (uncharacteristic fan service, author inserts, aimless missions, and characters with enough energy to make a nuclear power plant look like a AA battery in comparison). More than that though this title quite frequently bashes its own author and the director, both of whom exist in the anime and occasionally argue about how awful this whole experience is. They bicker, brawl, and occasionally die for the sake of the show's bizarre brand of self-deprecating humor.
While this running gag continues to go on in the background, though, we're subjected to the absurd and utterly pointless life of Excel as she "fights for the glory of The Great Il Palazzo" which usually amounts to her looking for odd jobs, fighting off starvation, and then dying only to resurrected again because there can be no show without her. There are, of course, other characters aside from Excel, but they all exist for pretty much the exact same reason. They are, however, generally more competent at moving the show's "plot" forward than the bubbly Excel. As one would expect though, this plot doesn't really go anywhere. Other enigmatic organizations are made known but do about as much Il Palazzo does himself--absolutely nothing.
Who knows, though, maybe a few years down the line, I'll bring myself to watch this weird show again and have all the mysteries of The Great Will of the Macrocosm will be made known to me. I doubt doing so would do this show any favors though. Absurdist anime can only do so much with their material and eventually the show's gags, no matter how deep they really are, eventually grow dull and become a hindrance. At its best, I recall Excel Saga being so ridiculous that it was worthy of a few good laughs. At its worst, the humor felt contrived and took me out of the experience for several episodes at a time.