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{{work|wppage=Excel Saga}}
[[File:Excel_Saga_DVD_Cover_Art_1872.jpg|frame]]
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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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'''This page is for tropes that apply to the anime only.''' For the original manga, check [[Excel Saga (manga)|here]].
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{{tropenamer}}
* [[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.
{{tropelist}}
* [[Absurdly Spacious Sewer]]: [[Lampshade Hanging|"Wow, I never knew sewer tunnels were so wide and spacious."]]
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** Except for the very first sequence—where Il Palazzo's third option is to kill Excel (he does and gets a [[Bad End]])—Option #3 is always "Put it in." Later decision trees were even ''less'' subtle.
{{quote|-''Have sex''
-''Have sex''
-''Put it in''}}
* [[The Danza]]: The anime stars two Excel and Hyatt lookalikes named Kobayashi and Mikako, who are played by Yumiko ''Kobayashi'' and ''Mikako'' Takahashi. Also, [[Shinichi Watanabe|Nabeshin]].
* [[Death Is Cheap]]: Excel, thanks to the Great Will of the Macrocosm, survives getting killed several times in the first episode. Hyatt just does because of [[Rule of Funny]].
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'''Excel:''' (dismayed) Don't say that, because when '''you''' say it it's not funny! }}
* [[Eagle Land]]: Played for laughs in one episode that takes place in an obviously exaggerated version of America.
* [[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.
* [[Engaging Conversation]]: Iwata's immediate reaction when he realizes the detective in episode 12 is, in fact, a woman. Also his reaction when meeting Ropponmatsu. Iwata is very quick on the marriage proposals in general.
* [[Erotic Eating]]: Hyatt has a habit of fellating just about any food (or object, such as a microphone) that is anything close to cylindrical in shape, starting right in the opening credits (a shot of which is in fact the page image for this trope).
* [[Eyecatch]]: The "Excel Saga" logo on a hardwood background while a brief snippet of "Ai (Chuuseishin)" plays. Characters frequently run in front of the eyecatch as well.
* [[Fan Service]]: Episode 8: "Increase Ratings Week", also several sequences in episode 26, "Going Too Far", which quickly cross into [[Fan Disservice]].
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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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* [[Giving Someone the Pointer Finger]]: Excel does this quite a few times, and always has the stylistic fingerprint swirl.
* [[Good Angel, Bad Angel]]: In the first episode, Excel's good angel shoots the bad one in cold blood ("The bullet of justice caps evil's ass!") and later in the episode she's arrested for the murder of the bad angel.
* [[Gratuitous English]]:
** In a scene at the end of episode 3, Excel is captured and interrogated by a group of soldiers who are apparently American. One asks Excel her purpose in being in their camp, except his English is so heavily accented that it comes out sounding like "What is a porpoise?" In the [[ADV Films|ADV]] dub, the soldier's question is in perfect English -- "What is your purpose?" -- but they slyly acknowledged the original performer's lousy English by changing Excel's answer from "I don't know" to "A really big fish?".
** Later on in the series, the first [[Recap Episode]] featured one of the "Beauty Theater" segments from episode 8 re-dubbed in nonsensical broken English ("You give... chewing gum?"); the ADV dub didn't even bother redubbing it, instead crediting the original voice actors (though they apparently couldn't find the names).
** In episode 17, Excel tries to communicate with some American thugs in broken English: [http://youtube.com/watch?v=7x39Jp-z61M "Hello, Merry Christmas! I'm Excel. You are dog!"] Replaced in the ADV dub by a mish-mash of ghetto slang and Gratuitous Spanish.
{{quote|'''Excel''': "Yo yo homies! Feliz Navidad. Me llamo Excel. You're my bitches!" And later "YO MAMA ES UN PIG."}}
*** The Mexican dub renders Excel's Engrish as normal English spoken with a heavy Hispanic accent.
** Even Excel's '''very name''' is [[Gratuitous English]], as she pronounces it as "Exceru" sometimes.
*** All of ACROSS' members names are Gratuitous ''something'', since they're all named after hotels.
** Episode 17 has another example; at the beginning, Il Palazzo scatters [[Gratuitous English]] into his briefing, to add a little verisimilitude to the announcement that the girls are being sent off on a mission to America. In the dub, to preserve the "you are being sent someplace foreign" theme from the original, Il Palazzo spits out some Gratuitous Italian.
** Ladies and genlemen <s> Za Butifuru Seatta</s> The Beautiful Theater, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q58TnyL_IfU the Engrish Version.]
* [[Happy Ending]]: Not counting Episode 26, which is non-canon (its entire existence is a huge joke as to how far the production team could go, hence its title "Going Too Far".)
* [[Hey, It's That Voice!]]: Also somewhat an [[Actor Allusion]]: in the Italian dub, Nabeshin's voice is by Roberto Del Giudice, better known as the one and only voice of [[Lupin III]].
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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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{{reflist}}
[[Category:
[[Category:Anime]]
[[Category:
[[Category:
[[Category:Manga]]
[[Category:Manga of the 1990s]]
[[Category:Madman Entertainment]]
[[Category:Anime Network]]
[[Category:Science Fiction Anime and Manga]]
[[Category:Viz Media]]
[[Category:Parody]]
[[Category:Comedy]]
[[Category:Funimation]]
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