Bi-canon FTW
I remember when I first wanted to app, I told Kohaku-RPer (without whom I would not be here!) that I would rather play manga!Excel, but I was all worried about it, 'cause most people have only seen the anime. And he was like, "It's Excel Saga. Who cares." Well, I have never heard a more amazingly obvious observation in my life, AND THUS BI-CANON EXCEL WAS BORN.
Some people can't play bi-canon, and I respect that. If you have a character coherent enough to realize that there are problems with self-conflicting backstories, yeah, it can't be easy. Luckily for me, Excel and Ilpala are already coping with those sort of inconsistencies in canon, both canons, so this ain't much of a stretch! But it's still not always as easy as people think... Excel is the same in most ways, but in the ways she's different, she's DIFFERENT; Il Palazzo, on the other hand, is about a stone's throw away from being a whole new goddamn character.
I'm going to take a moment and state that yes, the anime and manga are two very, very different beasts, both in tone and continuity. The anime took the characters from the first five books of the manga (which is why it suffers without the sheer, unadulterated awesome that is Elgala), and then put them in a different genre every episode. It follows some of the same plot points, but it's about as similar to the manga as an AU fanfic. A really fucking awesome AU fanfic, but an AU fanfic nonetheless. While the manga is still cracky, it's not even in the same league. The characters are still fucked up, but not as much as in the anime, and they're more fleshed out. Meanwhile, outside of the demented game Il Palazzo and Kabapu are playing, the world in the manga is relatively normal. And yes, there is an overall plot, and it goes strange and scary places. THAT IS AN ESSAY FOR NEVER SOME OTHER TIME.
So I guess what I'm getting at is that I thought it would be fun to talk about which personality aspects I snagged from which canons. KIND OF A LONG INTRO JUST TO SAY THAT, HUH? ¦D
EXCEL
I play Excel 75% manga/25% cheating to get my way in camp anime. Besides some speech pattern differences (I like the way her voice is translated in the manga the best, so I usually go with that), there aren't many big differences:
Intelligence - When the manga started coming out in English, Carl (its English-language editor... yes, I'm so fangirly I talk to the English-language editor of the manga, WHAT OF IT) had a theory that Excel was a high school girl who snapped under the pressure of college entrance exams. It doesn't really hold water anymore with the recent developments in the story, but at the time, you couldn't really argue with him. As much of a spaz as this girl may be, she's anything but uneducated. This is in sharp contrast with the anime; you can really only see Excel's high school years as one long stream of cartoons, and if she snapped, it's 'cause she decided that she wanted to grow up to be a cartoon.
Manga canon wins out here - as far as I'm concerned, Excel has her as much book learnin' as anybody here. This goes double for science-related fields - unless we're talking one of the alchemists, she probably knows more than most any given character. It just never comes up, because that sort of thing isn't important to her, and I don't think she herself is entirely aware of just how smart she really is, and definitely not why.
Fun/Money - This isn't so much a straight difference as character development she simply doesn't have a chance to get in the anime. As we all know, Excel believes firmly that true blue ACROSS members don't take days off... EVER. But as we also know, the only thing THAT means is that that she finds ways around it - she will simply prospose what she WANTS to do to Il Palazzo as though it is some sort of great mission. This changes, however, as soon as Elgala shows up. Excel - who was already pretty hardcore about living on the bare necessities - instantly becomes a total hardass about absolutely everything. It takes some sly talking on Elgala's part just to get Excel to take a drink of free sake.
It's the same way with money. Excel gets progressively more and more stingy as the manga progresses. This makes sense, considering the ridiculous hardships she has gone through since the beginning of the series - the girl keeps an emergency food supply for a reason. Even as the hardships end, she continues to inflict them upon herself and the other two, because that's the only way she knows how to live. She and Elgala are constantly arguing about things like hot water, TV, and food (or the lack thereof) - at one point, they get into a full-blown, 100%-Excel-instigated catfight... over a 100-yen coin.
This sort of control-freaky, ultra-anal Excel seems almost contradictory with her deludedly cheerful side, but it really isn't. Being deludedly cheerful is the only thing that stops her from KILLING EVERYONE IN THE WORLD way she can balance herself out.
Now, you don't see a lot of this at camp, but it's there. The way I see it is that everything in camp is free of charge (thus transferring her obsessive-compulsive hoarding behavior from money to food), and the open existence of ACROSS takes a lot of pressure off of her. She is still as much of a cruel dictator as she always was in her own home - control issues and all that - but Excel feels like she has no reason not to be amiable and enjoy herself. She looks at camp as training to become a better ACROSS member.
Aichmophobia - This one doesn't actually contradict with the anime, but it's something that only comes up in the manga - Excel is deathly afraid of sharp objects, particularly near her face. What she means by "sharp objects" is open to some interpretation, but even ignoring her gleeful, machete-swinging anime side, her manga self is still perfectly capable of wielding knives/scissors/arrowheads. While I think she might freak out of any of these things were pointed at her eyes (hell, that'd freak me out), her fear has only ever been shown in reaction to needles in specific, thus, that is I see her as being afraid of. (This is something I totally forgot upon arriving at camp. I chalk up anything she said to Ishida on that very first day as lying to make a friend. Heh.)
Sexuality - There's a specific example that I think illustrates the difference pretty well - in both canons, there's a point where Hyatt, silly corpse that she is, has frozen over. In the anime, Excel strips and says, "I'll warm you up, Ha-chan~" In the manga, she stares at Hyatt and says, "How about warming her with my own body? ...I'm scared she'll just suck away all my heat until my blue-grey necrotic flesh is rimmed with hoarfrost."
Anime!Excel is, in a word, fanservicesexual. If a joke can be made over her being horny, HORNY SHE SHALL BE. Manga!Excel... isn't. Actually, I'd go so far as to say that she's the exact opposite - repressed and insecure. Far from swooning over half-panted rockstars, she gets pissed off even just by being hit on (though, to her credit, it's always sexual harrassment or Elgala... which still falls under the qualifications of sexual harrassment). In the hospital AU, she's self-conscious just wearing a feminine costume. Manga Excel would never leap at Il Palazzo demanding sexual intercourse; in fact, she's never outright stated that she loves him, not even to herself. Don't get me wrong, it's still pretty damned obvious, but that alone speaks volumes.
On this subject, of course, I play anime. I feel DIRTY, but I play anime. In the end, it's more fun to have a character with no sexual inhibitions or issues. *shrug* Even then, I don't want to play it up too much - thus, Excel only goes out of her way to lust after uber-bishonens. (Hooray for basing my character's entire sexuality on one episode of the anime! Thank you so much, Key!) Oh, and as much as I can see her fanservicesexing a girl... I definitely can't see her getting into a relationship with one, even if she is all-but-married to Hyatt. I don't think I'm goin' out on a limb to say that she prefers the cock. Camp needs more het anyway.
IL PALAZZO - I play the Ilpacock 90% anime/10% CFUW manga. I tried to integrate him better, but... it just doesn't work. They really are two totally not-the-same characters, ane only one of them is easy to play. ^^;; Add into the mix that both of them have split personalities, and none of the personalities are the same, and... yeah. He's a tough cookie.
The way I play him, he has three personalities - 1. shoulderpads!Il Palazzo (mostly anime), 2. mysterious!Il Palazzo (totally manga, rarely used outside of CFUW), and 3. shadow!Il Palazzo (totally anime). I've got slightly more of an explanation-thingy here, but that's the gist of it.
#1 is the one I play most of the time - he's the easiest to play, and by far the funniest. This is the Il Palazzo who is obsessed with dating sims and rock music, the tantrum-throwing, lazy, gun-happy Il Palazzo. #2 is when he's feeling calm and calculating... this is the one who actually thinks things through. He's the personality that TOPS. #3 is nothing more than a personification of #1's INHUMAN RAGE.
OKAY, SO I MADE A TABLE. GO ME.
ANIME
MANGA
HOW I PLAY IT
Abilities
Ridiculous superstrength, M. Bison psychokinesis, nigh-invulnerability, gunspace, THE ROPE.
A vague sort of sixth sense and the ability to somehow teleport, the ability to at least POSE with a sword, mad-sciencing, THE ROPE.
LORD ILPACOCK CAN DO ANYTHING. 8D
Hobbies
Video games, rock music, dominoes, teen magazines. Basically, he's a teenage boy in a megalomaniac's body.
None. The only non-ACROSS-related thing he ever does is attempt to order a pizza. Ironically, manga!Il Palazzo makes the sort of video games that his anime self so loves to play.
The stupid hobbies are one of the things that makes Il Palazzo so much fun to play.
Position in ACROSS
Middle-management, at best. He refers to himself as though he is in charge, but he answers to ACROSS HQ.
Supreme Commander, alpha and omega
Il Palazzo refers to himself as the Supreme Commander, but will acknowledge That Guy and company on demand. Honestly, I think he'd have doublecrossed them eventually anyway.
Memory
You get the feeling that if he "forgets" something, it's simply because it embarrasses him and he doens't feel like dealing with it anymore.
Il Palazzo can't remember ANYTHING. He assigns and forgets missions, ranks... at one point, he forgets Elgala exists.
This I have to play anime, simply because I think it'd be really annoying for other players for me to forget everything all of the time. ^^;; (He does still have multiple personalities, but he only has one LJ. He stalks himself. XD)
Attitude
Il Palazzo is a dotdotdotter and a twitchtwitchtwitcher and a SLFKSJKLFJSLKFJSKDFJSKer. He is full of RIGHTEOUS SMITEY WRATH.
While still a dotdotdotter, he is far more likely to smile or laugh. He doesn't lose control of his anger, either; he gets irritated and pulls the rope, but it doesn't go much further than that. He's a COOL CUCUMBER.Split-personalities FTW!
Excel
Over-the-top cruelty most of the time, but after he finally snaps and tries to kill her, he can't think of anything else. It's more than just guilt, 'cause he sure as hell doesn't feel guilty about trying to shoot Kabapu or, y'know, tyrannically enslaving F City. One could make a good case for him genuinely reciprocating Excel's affection, but just being in SUPER-DENIAL about it.
I know I've said this a million times before, but he fell down the hole with her. That's just plain fucking romantic.
It's impossible to tell how Il Palazzo feels about Excel in the manga. He ropes her when she is bad, compliments her when she does well (the girls actually sometimes do things he considers right in the manga - usually when they've accidentally blown something up), and encourages her when she is feeling doubtful. When she is gone, he ropes a cardboard cutout of her, and whatever the hell corporate!Excel is, he seems pretty cozy with her.
BUT. All that having been said... I'm not feelin' it. There's something wrong here. I've never seen any indication that he sees her as anything more than a commodity. And then when you get into possible explanations for fucked up backstories... I LOVE YOU, THE MANGA, BUT ALSO I HATE YOU.
Ahaha. ^^;; I try to mix it up, and of course I stay out of the realm of shippiness for what I hope are obvious reasons.
Hyatt
The favorite. He respects her a great deal more than Excel, which... says very little. And NO, HE IS NOT CRUSHING ON HER. Do not make me hurt you.
Though he does maintain not roping her (he states that the guilt would keep him awake at night), and though he's still plainly biased, I'm gonna go with the same diagnosis I had with Excel. I mean, he laughs when he thinks she's permanently dead. I know that's when he just hired her, but he freaking laughs about it.
Anime. I mean, no need to make him even more of an asshole than he already is.
Some people can't play bi-canon, and I respect that. If you have a character coherent enough to realize that there are problems with self-conflicting backstories, yeah, it can't be easy. Luckily for me, Excel and Ilpala are already coping with those sort of inconsistencies in canon, both canons, so this ain't much of a stretch! But it's still not always as easy as people think... Excel is the same in most ways, but in the ways she's different, she's DIFFERENT; Il Palazzo, on the other hand, is about a stone's throw away from being a whole new goddamn character.
I'm going to take a moment and state that yes, the anime and manga are two very, very different beasts, both in tone and continuity. The anime took the characters from the first five books of the manga (which is why it suffers without the sheer, unadulterated awesome that is Elgala), and then put them in a different genre every episode. It follows some of the same plot points, but it's about as similar to the manga as an AU fanfic. A really fucking awesome AU fanfic, but an AU fanfic nonetheless. While the manga is still cracky, it's not even in the same league. The characters are still fucked up, but not as much as in the anime, and they're more fleshed out. Meanwhile, outside of the demented game Il Palazzo and Kabapu are playing, the world in the manga is relatively normal. And yes, there is an overall plot, and it goes strange and scary places. THAT IS AN ESSAY FOR NEVER SOME OTHER TIME.
So I guess what I'm getting at is that I thought it would be fun to talk about which personality aspects I snagged from which canons. KIND OF A LONG INTRO JUST TO SAY THAT, HUH? ¦D
EXCEL
I play Excel 75% manga/25% cheating to get my way in camp anime. Besides some speech pattern differences (I like the way her voice is translated in the manga the best, so I usually go with that), there aren't many big differences:
Intelligence - When the manga started coming out in English, Carl (its English-language editor... yes, I'm so fangirly I talk to the English-language editor of the manga, WHAT OF IT) had a theory that Excel was a high school girl who snapped under the pressure of college entrance exams. It doesn't really hold water anymore with the recent developments in the story, but at the time, you couldn't really argue with him. As much of a spaz as this girl may be, she's anything but uneducated. This is in sharp contrast with the anime; you can really only see Excel's high school years as one long stream of cartoons, and if she snapped, it's 'cause she decided that she wanted to grow up to be a cartoon.
Manga canon wins out here - as far as I'm concerned, Excel has her as much book learnin' as anybody here. This goes double for science-related fields - unless we're talking one of the alchemists, she probably knows more than most any given character. It just never comes up, because that sort of thing isn't important to her, and I don't think she herself is entirely aware of just how smart she really is, and definitely not why.
Fun/Money - This isn't so much a straight difference as character development she simply doesn't have a chance to get in the anime. As we all know, Excel believes firmly that true blue ACROSS members don't take days off... EVER. But as we also know, the only thing THAT means is that that she finds ways around it - she will simply prospose what she WANTS to do to Il Palazzo as though it is some sort of great mission. This changes, however, as soon as Elgala shows up. Excel - who was already pretty hardcore about living on the bare necessities - instantly becomes a total hardass about absolutely everything. It takes some sly talking on Elgala's part just to get Excel to take a drink of free sake.
It's the same way with money. Excel gets progressively more and more stingy as the manga progresses. This makes sense, considering the ridiculous hardships she has gone through since the beginning of the series - the girl keeps an emergency food supply for a reason. Even as the hardships end, she continues to inflict them upon herself and the other two, because that's the only way she knows how to live. She and Elgala are constantly arguing about things like hot water, TV, and food (or the lack thereof) - at one point, they get into a full-blown, 100%-Excel-instigated catfight... over a 100-yen coin.
This sort of control-freaky, ultra-anal Excel seems almost contradictory with her deludedly cheerful side, but it really isn't. Being deludedly cheerful is the only thing that stops her from KILLING EVERYONE IN THE WORLD way she can balance herself out.
Now, you don't see a lot of this at camp, but it's there. The way I see it is that everything in camp is free of charge (thus transferring her obsessive-compulsive hoarding behavior from money to food), and the open existence of ACROSS takes a lot of pressure off of her. She is still as much of a cruel dictator as she always was in her own home - control issues and all that - but Excel feels like she has no reason not to be amiable and enjoy herself. She looks at camp as training to become a better ACROSS member.
Aichmophobia - This one doesn't actually contradict with the anime, but it's something that only comes up in the manga - Excel is deathly afraid of sharp objects, particularly near her face. What she means by "sharp objects" is open to some interpretation, but even ignoring her gleeful, machete-swinging anime side, her manga self is still perfectly capable of wielding knives/scissors/arrowheads. While I think she might freak out of any of these things were pointed at her eyes (hell, that'd freak me out), her fear has only ever been shown in reaction to needles in specific, thus, that is I see her as being afraid of. (This is something I totally forgot upon arriving at camp. I chalk up anything she said to Ishida on that very first day as lying to make a friend. Heh.)
Sexuality - There's a specific example that I think illustrates the difference pretty well - in both canons, there's a point where Hyatt, silly corpse that she is, has frozen over. In the anime, Excel strips and says, "I'll warm you up, Ha-chan~" In the manga, she stares at Hyatt and says, "How about warming her with my own body? ...I'm scared she'll just suck away all my heat until my blue-grey necrotic flesh is rimmed with hoarfrost."
Anime!Excel is, in a word, fanservicesexual. If a joke can be made over her being horny, HORNY SHE SHALL BE. Manga!Excel... isn't. Actually, I'd go so far as to say that she's the exact opposite - repressed and insecure. Far from swooning over half-panted rockstars, she gets pissed off even just by being hit on (though, to her credit, it's always sexual harrassment or Elgala... which still falls under the qualifications of sexual harrassment). In the hospital AU, she's self-conscious just wearing a feminine costume. Manga Excel would never leap at Il Palazzo demanding sexual intercourse; in fact, she's never outright stated that she loves him, not even to herself. Don't get me wrong, it's still pretty damned obvious, but that alone speaks volumes.
On this subject, of course, I play anime. I feel DIRTY, but I play anime. In the end, it's more fun to have a character with no sexual inhibitions or issues. *shrug* Even then, I don't want to play it up too much - thus, Excel only goes out of her way to lust after uber-bishonens. (Hooray for basing my character's entire sexuality on one episode of the anime! Thank you so much, Key!) Oh, and as much as I can see her fanservicesexing a girl... I definitely can't see her getting into a relationship with one, even if she is all-but-married to Hyatt. I don't think I'm goin' out on a limb to say that she prefers the cock. Camp needs more het anyway.
IL PALAZZO - I play the Ilpacock 90% anime/10% CFUW manga. I tried to integrate him better, but... it just doesn't work. They really are two totally not-the-same characters, ane only one of them is easy to play. ^^;; Add into the mix that both of them have split personalities, and none of the personalities are the same, and... yeah. He's a tough cookie.
The way I play him, he has three personalities - 1. shoulderpads!Il Palazzo (mostly anime), 2. mysterious!Il Palazzo (totally manga, rarely used outside of CFUW), and 3. shadow!Il Palazzo (totally anime). I've got slightly more of an explanation-thingy here, but that's the gist of it.
#1 is the one I play most of the time - he's the easiest to play, and by far the funniest. This is the Il Palazzo who is obsessed with dating sims and rock music, the tantrum-throwing, lazy, gun-happy Il Palazzo. #2 is when he's feeling calm and calculating... this is the one who actually thinks things through. He's the personality that TOPS. #3 is nothing more than a personification of #1's INHUMAN RAGE.
OKAY, SO I MADE A TABLE. GO ME.
ANIME
MANGA
HOW I PLAY IT
Abilities
Ridiculous superstrength, M. Bison psychokinesis, nigh-invulnerability, gunspace, THE ROPE.
A vague sort of sixth sense and the ability to somehow teleport, the ability to at least POSE with a sword, mad-sciencing, THE ROPE.
LORD ILPACOCK CAN DO ANYTHING. 8D
Hobbies
Video games, rock music, dominoes, teen magazines. Basically, he's a teenage boy in a megalomaniac's body.
None. The only non-ACROSS-related thing he ever does is attempt to order a pizza. Ironically, manga!Il Palazzo makes the sort of video games that his anime self so loves to play.
The stupid hobbies are one of the things that makes Il Palazzo so much fun to play.
Position in ACROSS
Middle-management, at best. He refers to himself as though he is in charge, but he answers to ACROSS HQ.
Supreme Commander, alpha and omega
Il Palazzo refers to himself as the Supreme Commander, but will acknowledge That Guy and company on demand. Honestly, I think he'd have doublecrossed them eventually anyway.
Memory
You get the feeling that if he "forgets" something, it's simply because it embarrasses him and he doens't feel like dealing with it anymore.
Il Palazzo can't remember ANYTHING. He assigns and forgets missions, ranks... at one point, he forgets Elgala exists.
This I have to play anime, simply because I think it'd be really annoying for other players for me to forget everything all of the time. ^^;; (He does still have multiple personalities, but he only has one LJ. He stalks himself. XD)
Attitude
Il Palazzo is a dotdotdotter and a twitchtwitchtwitcher and a SLFKSJKLFJSLKFJSKDFJSKer. He is full of RIGHTEOUS SMITEY WRATH.
While still a dotdotdotter, he is far more likely to smile or laugh. He doesn't lose control of his anger, either; he gets irritated and pulls the rope, but it doesn't go much further than that. He's a COOL CUCUMBER.Split-personalities FTW!
Excel
Over-the-top cruelty most of the time, but after he finally snaps and tries to kill her, he can't think of anything else. It's more than just guilt, 'cause he sure as hell doesn't feel guilty about trying to shoot Kabapu or, y'know, tyrannically enslaving F City. One could make a good case for him genuinely reciprocating Excel's affection, but just being in SUPER-DENIAL about it.
I know I've said this a million times before, but he fell down the hole with her. That's just plain fucking romantic.
It's impossible to tell how Il Palazzo feels about Excel in the manga. He ropes her when she is bad, compliments her when she does well (the girls actually sometimes do things he considers right in the manga - usually when they've accidentally blown something up), and encourages her when she is feeling doubtful. When she is gone, he ropes a cardboard cutout of her, and whatever the hell corporate!Excel is, he seems pretty cozy with her.
BUT. All that having been said... I'm not feelin' it. There's something wrong here. I've never seen any indication that he sees her as anything more than a commodity. And then when you get into possible explanations for fucked up backstories... I LOVE YOU, THE MANGA, BUT ALSO I HATE YOU.
Ahaha. ^^;; I try to mix it up, and of course I stay out of the realm of shippiness for what I hope are obvious reasons.
Hyatt
The favorite. He respects her a great deal more than Excel, which... says very little. And NO, HE IS NOT CRUSHING ON HER. Do not make me hurt you.
Though he does maintain not roping her (he states that the guilt would keep him awake at night), and though he's still plainly biased, I'm gonna go with the same diagnosis I had with Excel. I mean, he laughs when he thinks she's permanently dead. I know that's when he just hired her, but he freaking laughs about it.
Anime. I mean, no need to make him even more of an asshole than he already is.