Sunday Story Ratings #59: Excel Saga Mission 2: Today and Tomorrow for Farewells

 

Excel Saga Volume 1, Mission 2: Today and Tomorrow for Farewells by Rikdo Koshi

Originally published 1997 by Shonengahosha Co.. Ltd, Tokyo; this edition July 2003, September 2003 printing

Publisher: Viz 

 

M

(V, L)

Violence (M) {Comedic, but relatively impactful for that sort in my experience}

Minor Coarse Language (PG)

 

Representations

Gender:

Still Excel our female protagonist and perspective-carrier. Other characters are all either male or a dog whose thoughts no one acknowledges.

Sex:

No indication of sexuality noticed.

Race & Ethnicity:

Continuing to presume characters Japanese unless indicated otherwise. Excel does end up on a ship of 'illegal immigrants' at the end, but their language and origins aren't indicated beyond 'not Japanese'.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

Nothing noticed.

 

Awards

None found.

 

Notes

Primarily serves to introduce Mince / Menchi, with the initial appearance of Iwata also, and a single page preview of Hyatt at the end as teaser. Even though I know the evocation with the dog's name is meant to be mincemeat, for whatever reason I always end up associating the other meanings of 'mince' instead. Think I prefer treating her name as the untranslated proper noun Menchi, but that may be because it was the first version I encountered.

I had wanted to give this a lower rating, but kept coming back to the scene where Iwata beats up Watanabe over noise in the apartment complex and couldn't quite bring myself to do it.