MAKAIPUNK - Manga Senki Disgaea CHAPTER 1

oh god oh man oh god oh man this got done really late i'm so sorry

er, anyhow, when we last left off with our readthrough of the Disgaea manga, i gave a little primer on the Disgaea franchise, gave some information on the publication of the manga and some other details, and actually read through one/two pages of the manga before ending off there and spending a whole month on two completely different articles, and subsequently taking over half a month to do other things.

oh and we got introduced to angel trainee Flonne and our setting for this story i guess

i am definitely a bloke who keeps things on schedule and finishes things in a timely manner.

that being said, let's get rolling. heads up, you might need to click on some of the images to get a better look at them.

 

can't start a story properly without your protagonist being woken up by someone. the asleep antenna'd antihero here is Laharl, and the demon girl in the pigtails is his vassal Etna. not gonna say more on them since we'll find out more about them as we go on. plus you either played the game beforehand or saw the profiles i posted in the last MAKAIPUNK installment of this.

"He was asleep for two years?!" er, yeah. bit of point of mention for those not-in-the-know, Disgaea demons (also angels by extension) age differently than normal people. Laharl's 1313 years old, with Etna in her 1400s and Flonne in her 1500s. plus, it's mentioned in the game that Laharl planned on taking a ten-day nap.

speaking of game things, i'll be getting into that as we go on, but for the most part, the introduction and basic exposition is pretty similar to the game introduction.

so i take it he's not that much of a morning person.

i dunno Etna, there's kind of a huge difference between "waking up in a bad mood" and "waking up and exploding your own bedroom in utter fury". probably terrifying if it's a frequent occurrence, too; how much does it cost to repair someone's bedroom?

eh, bugger's awake, at least. and alive after two years of sleeping. that's going to raise a few questions, but we'll get some of them answered in a while. while his dad's been dead, the rest of the castle denizens seem to have been going just fine.

they're being pretty useless (seriously, how do you even forget that your own boss has a son?), but they're at least doing fine. though uh, on that note, i think there's a bit of a detail that bears mentioning.

in the game, the monster NPCs in the castle do have names. there's Manty the manticore, Dratti the dragon, Ghoss the ghost, Goleck the golem, Zommie the zombie, and Gargo the gargoyle. as for the other humanoid shopkeeper NPCs, their names are randomly generated. from what i recall, Dratti, Manty, and Ghoss (seen below) are the only npcs that appear in the manga. and uh, on the subject of the humanoid npcs...

a lot of the random humanoid-demon blokes in the manga don't bear much resemblance to any of the generic classes/units in the actual game. while it's not something really bothering, the designs kind of look out of place in Disgaea, though that sort of thing is more noticeable when you're more familiar with the kind of charadesigns Disgaea has. it's hard to explain, otherwise.

gonna say though, admittedly i do like the manga designs. kind of a shame nearly all the random blokes in this book don't have names, but i guess the author wanted to give them her own flair so they don't look too generic.

'sides, Dratti looks super cute in a jacket.

naturally, Etna and the other vassals are pretty crushed about King Krichevskoy dying and Laharl sleeping through it. as for the prince himself? eh...

considering the reason he woke up was because of a nightmare involving his own dad completely pummeling him in a sumo match (i really cannot make this shit up), i don't think he's feeling too emotional about it right now. also a handful of other stuff that apparently happened that apparently pissed the kid off.

honestly, from flashback stuff in the game, Krichevskoy's kind of a levelheaded noble sort of guy. granted, maybe Laharl here is just remembering him as being an annoying father; he's not too mindful of his own dad's death in the game either.

or maybe King Krichy was actually an annoying dad in the manga canon. marker fumes from a drawn-on sharpie 'stache will do that to you.

the kanji on the boxers means "evil", by the way.

so yeah, Laharl doesn't give a damn about whatever his father's dying wishes are, and decides to take the throne and the title of Overlord for himself.

naturally, that isn't as easy as it sounds. ever since the king's death, hundreds of demons have tried to take the title of Overlord. how the castle never got taken over during Laharl's two-year nap, i don't know. maybe his useless vassals aren't as useless as they seem.

or maybe the demons who tried to take the throne are just way beyond incompetent. at least this guy's design is kinda cool.

really though, with this panel up, i'll say this. the Disgaea brand of demons are more likely to break the fourth wall than they would the face of anyone important. and said fourth-wall breaking happens quite a lot in the games.

despite having just woken up from a nap under a half-hour ago, Laharl manages to pummel the bloke easily. considering how many more people might try to off him or try to steal the throne, there's only one way to settle this once and for all...

... beat the everloving crap out of anyone who tries to fight him. dunno about you, but that seems pretty effective to me.

Laharl and Etna head out of the castle and roam around the netherworld looking for opponents. all while the rest of the castle vassals just doof around and be completely useless back home.

during the walk, Laharl wonders what the hell those weird demon penguin things following Etna are. basically, they're her own prinny vassals (even though the concept of a vassal with vassals is a weird one for Laharl), but they're a bit more than that. aaaaaaaand i might as well address this since the manga doesn't really clarify on the whole lore behind the prinnies.

for those who don't know, prinnies are arguably what the Disgaea series is most known for, as well as arguably the mascot of Nippon Ichi. they're adorable penguinlike demons that tote knives around and have a penchant for saying "dood" at the end of their sentences ("-ssu" in the original japanese dialouge). despite their looks, they're actually the souls of human sinners, and they basically do jobs in the netherworld to pay off their sins.

they also make pretty effective punching bags. in cameo appearances and other media/fanworks, Etna's usually seen with her own group of prinnies (and regularly abusing them). they've also got popular enough to get three starring roles in PSP spinoffs.

so yeah, these guys are pretty popular little buggers. there's a bit more behind them, but you'll have to play/watch the games for yourself to know. spoilers and whatnot.

anyhow, the duo's been wandering around for a while, yet nobody seems to be showing up--

... yet.

well then.

and here we're introduced to our reoccurring doofus, the Dark Adonis Vyers, affectionately nicknamed "Mid-boss". his introduction's noticeably different here: in the game, Laharl decides to raid the guy's castle shortly after training, and meets the demon noble himself in his den. in the manga, Vyers just shows up out of nowhere.

plus i swear the author decided to amp up Vyers' goof factor in the manga. Vyers was a pretty mild-mannered rival sort of guy, not to mention he seemed to be nearly as powerful as Laharl. think Tuxedo Mask with pointy ears. he's got his moments of cool in the manga, but his comedy factor's amped up moreso than in the game. you'll see as we go on.

think i should also bear an additional note as well. was going to mention this in the next installment, but while Vyers got the Mid-boss nickname when he first met Laharl in the game, he gets the nickname in the next chapter in the manga. again, you'll see when we get there.

well shoot, this fop means business.

there's quite a few fight scenes throughout the book, but they're not terribly spectacular, though that could just be me and i'm not too big on action stuff. and yet i read stuff like JoJo. er, getting kind of tangential there.

gotta say though, the actiony stuff is pretty well drawn, even considering the art's "shoujo"-esque style. though, i still find it weird how this was serialized in a shoujo manga magazine, considering the Disgaea games seemed to lean towards more of a male audience. i might be the only one who sees that, though.

yeah, getting way too tangential now.

hey etna how about you try helping

there you go.

oh yeah, thing i neglected to mention: prinnies explode when thrown. i don't know why, but they just do. maybe human souls are the equivalent of gunpowder in the netherworld or something.

not that any humans are even in the manga. you think this might be a nitpick, but stick around, folks.

... did the prinny explode or burst into flames? that doesn't look like an explosion.

honestly Vyers, would you even expect a demon to fight fair?

surprised he recovered from that shot so well.

y'know, it's weird how Vyers never seems to use his wings in the actual game (from what i can recall, at least), and yet his official artwork has wings. even in the anime, his wings show up quite a bit.

SUDDENLY DRAGONS

been skipping most of the panels due to length (also copyright stuff), but this literally happens right after Laharl said "be careful" in the last picture.

pretty weak climax for a rival fight, but at least he's dealt with. for now.

honestly, if memory serves, Vyers seems to show up in every chapter in the manga save for two, so we won't be missing him for too long.

speaking of dudes we missed, Flonne's back, and she's finally reached the castle of the Overlord. wonder what that whole mission thing she's on is, anyway.

... yeah, kinda just gonna ignore the whole "Flonne isn't really cut out to be an assassin" and say that she's kind of two years late to even pull it off.

so exactly what antics are we going to get into next time on MAKAIPUNK? well, stuff involving Flonne and Vyers, most likely.

yeah, sorry this took kind of long to do, and double sorry if it seems kind of rushed. there's only so much i can say on this particular chapter without giving out heavy game spoilers (i'll bear mention of them later in the manga, though), but as an introductory chapter, it holds up pretty well despite some deviances from the game's first chapter. hell, Flonne didn't even show up in the game's first chapter.

though like i said before last time, the manga's more of an alternate retelling rather than a straight-up adaptation: the cast and general premise are the same, but story details are going to be different than in the game. most of the nitpicky stuff is just me pointing out small details that were different in the game as opposed to story-related details, but the more story-oriented stuff will be brought up eventually.

anyhow, till then, stay rad. be sure to tell your friends, your enemies, and your summoned demonic familiars.