Around 1995, Japanese animation (anime) began pouring into North America, Europe and across the globe in video form. Most of these titles were unknown outside of Japan and never covered by animation journals. Whether a title is highly popular or very obscure, a high-quality theatrical feature or a cheap and unimaginative direct-to-video release, they all look the same on a store shelf. Therefore, Animation World Magazine will regularly review several new releases (including re-releases not previously covered) that have merit and about which our readers should know.

Excel Saga. V.1, The WEIRDNESS Has Begun. V.2, Missions Improbable. V.3, When Excels Strike (Out). V.4 & V.5, titles to come.
TV series (25 episodes), 1999-2000. Chief director: Shinichi Watanabe. V.1-5, 5 episodes/125 minutes. Price & format: DVD bilingual $29.98. Distributor: ADV Films.

Excel Saga (Quack Experimental Anime, Excel Saga if you add the subtitle, which comes before the main title in Japanese and plays havoc with alphabetization in English) has been a hit in a fannish subtitled bootleg video version among American anime fandom almost since its 25-episode TV run in Japan (October 7, 1999 to March 31, 2000) ended. The first pressing of ADV's licensed American DVD volume 1 was one of the hottest sellers at the 15,000+ attendee Anime Expo 2002 convention in July of this year.

© 1999 Koshi Rikdo / Shonen Gahosha * Victor Entertainment. English language and subtitled versions © Victor Entertainment.

Tohru Fujisawa * KODANSHA * FUJI TV * SME Visual Works * ST. PIERROT. English language version © 2002 Mixx Entertainment, Inc. TOKYOPOP is a registered trademark of Mixx Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved.

Anime has produced some wildly bizarre adolescent comedies in the past. The goal of Excel Saga was to top them all. It has barely more plot than Monty Python's Flying Circus, and an adolescent raunch level about equal to Beavis and Butt-head or Ren & Stimpy. (ADV's age advisory is 17+.) The deliberately surrealistic plot provided many opportunities for equally crazy limited animation (by the J.C. Staff studio), such as a crowd scene in which only the main characters are fully drawn; all the background characters passing by are crude paper dolls.

There are some vaguely interlocking subplots. Excel, a hyperactive blonde so irritatingly airheaded that she is killed three times in the first ten minutes of the first episode, has just graduated from high school and gotten her first job. She is a secret agent for ACROSS, a two-person totalitarian organization dedicated to forcibly improving the world. Her first assignment is to rid the world of all comic book artists, beginning with assassinating her own creator, cartoonist Koshi Rikdo (who appears in a barely-human self-caricature singing, "Manga artists are the scum of society, failures of life..."). Earth is invaded by disgustingly cute Martians (so cute they make everyone puke) who parody Pokemon-type plush toys. An immigrant laborer, Pedro, is trying to get home to his wife before Gomez seduces her. The unpaid Excel, who is usually starving, captures a cute little dog, Menchi, to dine on. Menchi is the only character who has any apparent intelligence, and her desperate attempts to escape Excel have made her a favorite. (Menchi barks the program's closing credits song, a blues lament asking to not be eaten.) An ultra-cool action hero, NABESHIN (director WataNABE SHINichi's exaggeratedly egotistical self-caricature, drawn like Cowboy Bebop's Spike Spiegel wearing Lupin III's distinctive suit) races around the world and into outer space saving the world. These and other regulars constantly run into each other and foul up whatever each is trying to accomplish in that episode. Each episode is also a parody of a movie/TV genre (sci-fi spectacle; jungle commando warfare bloody action; TV dating game silliness; political corruption social-commentary drama; family intelligent-pet adventures) with "guest appearance" caricatures of anime icons like Leiji Matsumoto's Maetel. Like South Park, Excel Saga is a guilty pleasure that you can't resist!

GTO. V.1, Great Teacher Onizuka. V.2, The Bully. V.3, Outcasts. V.4, The Test. V.5, Betrayal. V.6-V.9, titles to come.
TV series (43 episodes), 1999-2000. Executive (series) director: Noriyuki Abe. V.1, 4 episodes (episode l is 50 minutes)/125 minutes, V.2-V.9, 5 episodes/125 minutes. Price & format: video dubbed $19.98; DVD bilingual $29.98. Distributor: TOKYOPOP.

GTO, a.k.a. Great Teacher Onizuka, is one of those lucky pop-culture works to become an instant media sensation. It began as an "outrageous" comedy/romance manga for older adolescents and adults by Tohru Fujisawa in 1997, serialized in Kodansha's Weekly Shonen Magazine. The next summer it became a weekly 12-episode live-action late-night one-hour dramatic serial on Fuji TV (July 7 - September 22, 1998), starring heartthrob Takashi Sorimachi as the charismatic young teacher who wins over his class of teen delinquents. The final episode got a rating of 35.7%, which TOKYOPOP's publicity says "was the most watched TV program ever in Japan." A two-hour TV movie followed in August, 1999, and a theatrical movie in January, 2000. (Fujisawa's GTO comic-book serial has just concluded. It is collected into 25 paperback volumes in Japan, which are being published in America by TOKYOPOP.)