By Rikdo Koshi, Released in English by Viz Media
Volume 22 of Excel Saga continues to start the beginning of the end of the series. The plot is heavy in this volume once again as Rikdo starts laying the ground work for the final arc. Not that the silliness of the earlier volumes is forgotten, instead it is ramped up even more in places. In the end it makes for a healthy mix of story and chaos that makes Excel Saga such a fun read.
We begin the volume with Excel and Elgala continuing to hideout on the river bank. Here we get to see the start of a running theme in this volume, Excel's manic genius making insane yet reasonable plans based on the situation. She still acts on crazy logic and her loyalty to Il Palazzo, but more often than not her actions are based on sound logic. Excel easily notices that she is under surveillance on the river bank and decides to do some spying.
She heads back to Shiouji's lab and flashback to her time as Teriha. She ends up getting captured by Matsuya and company, which leads to the start of Matsuya starting to steal the volume. Her questioning of Excel and stating her motivations of her actions (she just wants to live a normal life) lead to some great comedy. Not to mention she has the best kiss of the manga, as she and Iwata finally kiss. But just not in the way anybody would expect, except it makes perfect sense for the manga. Her reaction to being kidnapped by Excel is also awesome, making her the character of the volume.
Shiouji also has a few good moments, as he does some field work spying on Excel. He also lays out his motivations as well, being cryptic much to the annoyance of Matsuya and Excel. We get more hints that his mother, Miwa, may be the true ring leader of the chaos in the series. And he also gets involved in a rather amusing fight with Elgala near the end.
But perhaps the best part of the volume was the Excel/Robot Excel fight where Excel easily beats her robot double. We learn a lot about the robot here, in between some amusing domestic scenes of her living together with the across girls. And we end the volume with her holding a fainted Hyatt being run into by Watanabe. We end the volume with him powering up which is a fairly mean cliff hanger and makes me wish we didn't have top wait 6 months to a year for the next volume.
For fans of the series this is more of what makes Excel Saga really good. Rikdo ability to mix plot with absurd satire and silliness is in full effect here. And once again Carl Horn does another bang up job translating the jokes, making it one of the better reading titles in English. Plus the oubliette section is an amazing read as always, with some great insight into Japanese culture and translating. It may be hard to track down (Volume 2 is hard to find/expensive) but if you do give the entire series a read. Excel Saga is one of the better comedy manga published and it deserves to be read by more people.
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