Excalibur

Excalibur (Japanese: エクスカリバー Hepburn: Ekusukaribā) is a Japanese fantasy manga series written by SIX and published by Akita Shoten in their Weekly Shōnen Champion magazine since February 2013. The rights to the English translation of the manga are held by Viz Media. Set in a world heavily based on Arthurian Legend, the series follows protagonist Gawain was he faces several challenges and attempts to prove himself as a worthy heir to his father, King Arthur.

An anime based on the manga produced by White Fox was announced and eventually premiered on July 18, 2016.

There were also two films made that were based on the series. The first was Excalibur: Once and Future, released on December 20, 2018, with the second, Excalibur: Malice Awoken, being released on July 16, 2020.

Premise
Main article: List of Excalibur Characters

The series is set in a fictional fantasy world and mostly set in the fictional nation of Britonia (ブリトニア, Buritonia) in the country of Camelot, which is based on the kingdom from Arthurian legend. The series follows a young man named Gawain, who comes from a poor family that he struggles to support. After discovering that he may be the son of King Arthur, ruler of Camelot and wielder of the magic sword Excalibur, he travels to Arthur's castle and confronts him, hoping to gain a way of supporting his family. However, in exchange for Arthur supporting Gawain's family, Gawain must join Arthur's Knights of the Round Table and agree to be his heir, as Arthur has none. While training to be Arthur's heir, Gawain gets to know his fellow knights better and battles against many enemies of both Camelot and Arthur, while also competing with his supposed half-brother Mordred to become the rightful heir of Camelot.

Publication
Excalibur began as a web comic published by Japanese American manga author SIX (whose real name is unknown), published to his Twitter account and drawn with pencils some time around 2012. The web comic set up the eventual main storyline of the manga, following Gawain in medias res, was inspired by the fact SIX had been reading up on Arthurian legend. SIX was a native English speaker and grew up most of his life in America, so he had heard of King Arthur and enjoyed the myth. However, as SIX continued to research more and more about the characters and myths, he developed more and more ideas for a potential storyline for the comic, which made him decide to scrap all of his original plans and try to get the comic officially published. He was promptly rejected by every manga publisher he pitched it to due to the fact he had only ever published one shots before, which left them not trusting him with a long-running series. SIX was ready to publish the manga online as a rebooted web comic, only to get an email from Weekly Shōnen Champion, who informed him that his rejection letter had actually been sent by mistake and that his manga had been picked up.

As he began working on the series, he based the characters on how he personally saw them based on his interpretations of the work. Because of this, he intentionally altered things from the myth, such as making Gawain Arthur's son rather than his nephew, as he believed that they had more of a paternal bond. He also plotted out most of the important character's backstories and decided on the "big moments" of the manga early on, but left the rest up to his whims, wanting to add an air of chaos and unpredictability to it, though he did write notes of how some stories should go. According to SIX, the most challenging thing about the manga art-wise was deciding on Mordred's design, as he couldn't figure out one that showed off his personality well. At one point, Mordred had bright purple hair, a stark contrast to his current black and white hair, which was rejected for being "too cute". He also decided upon the character's dynamics early, comparing them to how a family would operate, stating things like how Gawain and Mordred are the sons of the family that always fight, Arthur is the strict father, Lancelot is the beloved uncle, so on and so forth.

Manga
Main article: List of Excalibur Chapters

Anime
Main article: List of Excalibur Episodes

Will be added soon.

Film
Main articles: Excalibur: Once and Future and Excalibur: Malice Awoken 

Mid-way through the third season, it was announced that White Fox had been working on a film since the end of season two and that it would premiere in December. On December 20, the film, Excalibur: Once and Future (エクスカリバー:ONCE&FUTURE, Ekusukaribā: ONCE & FUTURE) was released to the public. Sometime later, on July 16, 2020, a second film called Excalibur: Malice Awoken (エクスカリバー：キャメロットの下にある悪, Ekusukaribā: Kyamerotto no shita ni aru aku, "Excalibur: Evil Beneath Camelot) was released.

Both films were also dubbed by Funimation, with the dub of Once and Future being released on February 13, 2019, and the Malice Awoken dub being released on October 2, 2020. Both the Japanese and English dubs feature the series' original cast reprising their roles for the films.

Video Games
Main article: Excalibur: Cleave

On July 16, 2019, it was announced a video game was in the works and was being developed by Arc System Works, who are known for their work on the BlazBlue series. The game was released on January 5, 2020, by Bandai Namco under the name Excalibur: Cleave (styalized as Excalibur: CLEAVE) for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and Microsoft Windows. The game featured most of the characters introduced in the anime up until that point. Three DLCs for the game were released. One a few months after the game's release and the other two released alongside the seasons that followed the game's initial release.