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Anime's answer to [[Mind Screw|surrealism and Dada art]].
Having nothing to do with Microsoft Excel<ref>although the software makes a brief appearance in episode 5</ref>, ''Quack Experimental Anime Excel Saga'' tells the story of recent high school graduate Excel Excel. She's a [[The Ditz|small-brained]] but highly energetic [[Genki Girl]] who finds her ideal job serving as a minion to the mysterious Lord Il Palazzo, leader of the subversive yet ineffective fascist organization ACROSS.
As she undertakes missions intended to unravel the fabric of Japanese society so that ACROSS can step in and take over, Excel pines for her impressively [[Bishonen]], and impressively eccentric, boss Il Palazzo, who spends most of his time when his minions are out on missions [[Orcus on His Throne|sitting around his headquarters]] [[Villains Out Shopping|playing dating sims or practicing on his guitar]]. Il Palazzo, on the other hand, views Excel as a necessary annoyance who is to be killed as required, or at least dropped through a [[Trap Door]] into an oubliette, when she gets out of hand. If it weren't for the frequent interventions of the [[Deus Ex Machina|Great Will of the Macrocosm]], Il Palazzo would be going through minions like Kleenex.
Excel's partner is Hyatt, a frail, beautiful alien girl given to bouts of coughing up horribly poisonous blood and frequent, brief attacks of death. Together with their dog/backup meal source Menchi, Excel blasts her way though a series of adventures with gleeful incompetence and a hysterically rapidfire stream of dialogue that makes, at best, only minimal sense.
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* [[Eat the Dog]]: The trope is named for Excel's thought process right after she first found Menchi in ''[[Excel Saga (manga)|Excel Saga]]'' (the manga even goes so far as to literally translate her name as "Mince"), where Excel boiled down Menchi's existence to the simple equation of "[[Rebus Bubble|Dog = Creature = FOOD]]". The anime's [[Ending Theme]] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=md3tuMKkrLE is sung by Menchi], and bemoans the poor creature's fate while a hand - presumably Excel's - periodically enters with a salt shaker to make sure she's properly seasoned.
** Except in the extremely bizarre final episode, in which the ending theme is sung by the translator, and a paw can be seen periodically entering with the salt shaker.
* [[Efficient Displacement]]: Excel and Pedro in the first episode.
{{quote|''WEAR A HELMET AND YOU'LL ALWAYS BE SAFE!''}}
* [[Electric Torture]]/[[Harmless Electrocution]]: Happens to Excel in the 3rd episode. [[Too Kinky to Torture|She comments on how nice it feels and asks the torturer to turn it up higher.]] The torturer immediately uses it on another prisoner just to see if it's working, and the prisoner is immediately incinerated.
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** This quote:
{{quote|'''Hyatt:''' Fire a thick, hot one from the back, please!}}
** In episode 18, Excel reaches into a vending machine's coin return to get some change.
{{quote|'''Hyatt:''' Surely, this is the result of your nightly finger training.
'''Excel:''' Oh, please, Ha-chan, it's embarrassing! That wasn't training! }}
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* [[Romantic Two-Girl Friendship]]: Played for laughs in episode 16: "Take Back Love!", in that the characters in question are also [[Robot Girl|Robot Girls]], and showed no such emotions in previous (or future) episodes.
* [[Rule of Cool]]: Ruthlessly and relentlessly deconstructed. Every little, mundane thing can be made awesome (and so very impractical)!
* [[Running Gag]]: Every episode begins with a disclaimer from Koshi Rikdo, absolving himself of responsibility for any genre or content. In the first show he explicitly left all responsibility with his staff, which may be why they chose Excel's first mission to be an assassination of a manga/animation artist named Koshi Rikdo.
** Excel dropped through a trapdoor by Il Palazzo pulling a rope. Lampshaded by Excel every time he pulls a rope that ''doesn't'' open a trapdoor under her, and by a sign on one rope marked 'Obligatory'.
* [[Samus Is a Girl]]: {{spoiler|Tetsuko, the iron-masked prisoner}} in episode 3. Parodied because she has plenty of lines before the reveal, which she speaks with a baritone voice.
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* [[Too Hot for TV]]: Episode 26, by design.
* [[Too Soon]]: The Japanese television networks refused to air episode 26 -- as per the director's intention -- and one of the ''many'' reasons for this was that one of the first gags in it is a joke about the Sarin nerve gas attacks in the Tokyo subways just a year or two before. Firmly steeped into [[Canon Discontinuity]], as the anime ended definitively at 25.
* [[Training
* [[Trouser Space]]: Excel does it in episode 22. She shoves her hand right down her crotch and pulls out a manga.
* [[Twinkle in The Sky]]: Iwata lampshades this when he's the one who gets launched.
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* [[Widget Series]]: Note how many times on this very own wiki that ''[[Excel Saga (anime)|Excel Saga]]'' is used as the benchmark for how weird an [[Anime]] is.
* [[Writers Suck]]: The writers are often shown to be lazy or out of ideas for episodes.
* [[You Are Already Dead]]: Parodied by Excel in one of the later episodes, only it turns the victims into plushies.
* [[You Have Outlived Your Usefulness]]: In episode 24, {{spoiler|Il Palazzo acknowledges that Excel has never been useful and shoots her}}.
* [[Yuri Genre]]: Parodies just about everything about the trope, complete with [[Heroic Sacrifice|Heroic Sacrifices]] and [[Black Comedy Rape|Ropponmatsu raping Excel]].
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[[Category:Anime of the 1990s]]
[[Category:Anime]]
[[Category:Excel Saga (anime)]]▼
[[Category:FUNimation]]
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