MAKAIPUNK - Manga Senki Disgaea CHAPTER 2

one day i'll learn to start doing MAKAIPUNK installments on a more frequent basis.

er, yeah. anyhow.

last time we left off with the manga readthrough, our princely protagonist Laharl woke up from a two year nap and found out that his father King Krichevskoy died. not really caring about that, Laharl decides to take the title of overlord for himself. and some guy named Vyers showed up, i guess. gen then went on a break from MAKAIPUNK for like three months to do shit involving the Playstation 2, bandicoots, Steam games, cosplay, and JoJo's Bizzare Adventure. alongside other things. ahem.

so yeah, let's get this back on track. will Flonne assassinate the king? will gen remember how to write these kinds of readthroughs after an entire winter? let's find out.

so while my demonless vacation went on for a bit over three months or so, Flonne's been in the Netherworld for a week, give or take a few days. unfortunately, she's about as committed to her whole task of killing someone as i am with being productive at writing. erm, ahem.

and with a flashback, we get our first glimpse at the heavenly land of Celestia, and its ruler Seraph Lamington. who seems incredibly unbothered with sending a young angel into what is essentially hell. on an assassination mission. oh yeah, and she can't return to Celestia until she does so.

don't worry, there's probably a reason for it. probably.

remember back when i said that despite being a seraphim, Lamington lacks his three sets of wings in the manga? well, now you get to see that here in full swing. just for the sake of comparison, here's his official art from the game.

probably might also mention that his ingame sprite in battles lacks the wings, though that's probably due to ps2 limitations with sprites, i assume. as for here, i'm just gonna bank with the fact that drawing this fellow's wings in every panel he's in would get really grinding.

i'd make a joke about what kinds of credit cards angels use, but i'm not clever enough. ah well.

"I know he means well." him asking you to kill a royal dude says otherwise, Flonne.

we'll see how that goes. nudge nudge, wink wink.

and out in the wilderness, our favorite soon-to-be-called-midboss Vyers shows up again.

i said in the last readthrough part that a lot of random unnamed demons don't look much like the ingame ones. same applies to a bit of the monster-types, too. oddly enough, the hellhound-ish critter Vyers is riding actually predates the canine Mystic Beast monsters in the games by around two-three years (while Disgaea 2 (2006) marked the first time they were a playable class, they first showed up in Asagi's cameo in Makai Kingdom (2005)). so is this doge the inspiration for the games' own doges? you decide.

hard to believe he showed up this early to the party. surely he's not going to get involved in Flonne's little mission, is he?

of course he is.

well, lucky enough he showed up to stop a couple of thieves from robbing the poor angel.

okay, i'm not assuming that Flonne isn't able to kill/beat someone up (completely unwilling to, but she's definitely able), but i find it a bit hard to believe that she's gone a week in the netherworld and only now is she getting accosted by thieves. Lamington must have a LOT of confidence in her; though, there's kind of a difference between confidence and common sense.

by the way, these two buggers did show up at the start of the chapter, but they're not that important, so i left that bit out. you can see a closeup of these two here. yes, one of them is indeed a furry.

"I'm a feminist, you know." m'idboss. sorry, not sorry.

y'know, if the game version of Vyers can be summed up as Tuxedo Mask, the manga one can probably be described as James from Team Rocket. I'm half expecting him to just straight-up crossdress eventually.

remember that joke for later, kids.

seems Laharl's been doing fine since we last checked on him. castle's taken a bit of a beating, but it's nice to see the prince's still going strong after constant waves of random challengers/morons.

i know prinnies usually take up jobs in the netherworld, but i can't understand how one can hold a hammer with flippers.

wait, the kid just outed his address to the whole netherworld and that's why everyone's now picking fights with him?

... miiiiiiight've not been the smartest move on his end, but if he's more than capable of taking on everyone, then... well, commendations to him, i guess.

not that his vassals are any much of a help. well, aside from Etna, but she's a main character, so she doesn't apply to that.

useless as they are, you got to admit the monster vassals are at least cute. i mean... look at Dratti. look at that cute dragon.

little known fact, Dratti is canonically female. just thought i should mention that since i hadn't before.

and while that went on, looks like someone broke into the castle again.

... does Laharl have castle guards, or are they just lazy butts too?

 ... make that two someones. Flonne's gotta assassinate the Overlord, and Vyers is... i dunno, probably going to get yelled at by Laharl once he catches them snooping around.

"I thought that all demons were mean and scary[.]" mean? for the most part. scary? only if you're underpowered or fighting on the really hard maps. though, in Vyers' case, i'd still wager the whole 'breaking and entering' thing is a tad scary. ever imagine a handsome man breaking into your house? it's kinda like that.

y'know, i haven't done a nitpick about the game's story in a while, so i might as well nip that in the bud. Vyers isn't even in the second chapter of the game at all. after arriving in the Netherworld, Flonne breaks into the castle almost immediately, introduces herself to Laharl (like a good assassin), and buggers off, only for Laharl and Etna to tail after her. naturally, she ends up joining the team after, though that's the only thing in that chapter that's kept the same in this retelling.

and for some reason, Vyers is very familiar with the castle layout. maybe this wasn't the first time he's snuck around the castle.

y'know. maybe. just a guess on my end.

less "stalker", more "incredibly butthurt about getting his ass handed over to him by a kid".

while that's going on, Etna and the prinnies look around for the intruder(s). and Laharl tags along, though not willingly.

and then he ditches them to sleep for a while. try not to sleep for two years again, Laharl--

ah, nevermind.

guy's just about as well-received as a facebook game. poor Vyers.

and since the guy's day hasn't been going bad enough, Flonne asks if he's been stalking Laharl. which is not received too well by the angry little prince.

while Laharl's quick to call him a creep, he also gives the Dark Adonis the humble nickname of Mid-Boss. and it only took us a chapter for him to get called that.

and Flonne starts thinking he's a creep as well. well, she was the one who thought that in the first place, but honestly Vyers is more of a dweeb than an actual stalker. guy stole a picnic basket in the tenth chapter of the game.

it's not (technically) a spoiler if i don't state the context, but even in context... er...

Laharl's other offscreen vassals continue to be useless. and Vyers actually makes a rather sage comment; just because Laharl's a prince doesn't mean he sure acts like it.

and Laharl continues to prove that point about being pretty crap for royalty. though, at the very least Flonne's pretty surprised that he's royalty to begin with.

i'm foreseeing a curbstomp fight happening soon.

classy strike there, Etna.

 seems like Laharl wasn't the only one who found out Krichevskoy was dead a little bit late.

and then a bit of a small fight ensues before the Dark Midboss trips over his own trapdoor.

for someone who's rather dapper, cares about women, and says wise things on occasion, Vyers is a pretty crap fighter. at this point, he's less James or Tuxedo Mask and more like a bootleg Tuxedo Mask.

with a fancy smoke bomb, Vyers escapes through the trapdoor. don't worry, we'll be seeing him again in due time.

so uh. seems like Flonne's assassination mission kind of backfired.

time for another Celestia cutaway and another glimpse of Seraph-ish Lamington, and...

okay, gonna say this right now, but this is pretty much hands down my favorite part in the manga. for all the wrong reasons. i dunno, there's something inherently funny about a angel leader being incredibly chill and interested in bonsai trees. and also the phrase "senile old man in Florida" being used as an insult to said chill leader.

honestly, that in mind, i might as well mention something about the translation, especially since i'm reading a fantranslated version of the manga as i go about with this. the last line in the panel is translated as "stop being so carefree and calm", wheras the official translation is "what are you, a senile old man in Florida?".

akin to the whole subbed-vs-dubbed thing common in western anime communities, there's a lot of debate whether fantranslated manga are better than the official translations. it kinda depends with the series and localization, but in the case of the Disgaea manga, i'd have to say the fantranslation seems more accurate; for the official translation, i think the localizers at Broccoli Books were pissing around with some of the lines.

obviously i'm not going to display the fantranslated panels alongside the official ones, but feel free to poke around some manga reader websites for it and read along with the readthrough. it's like a game of 'spot the difference', only with more words.

oh yeah, we got another angel bloke joining the crowd. Archangel Vulcanus, number one in the spot for "universe's most angriest angel". as his description says, he hates demons, evil, and most likely Flonne right now. he also has a weird moustache.

somehow the author made Vulcanus even grumpier than he was in the game. in contrast, Lamington's more chill, kinda like how he was in the game, though he's a tad sillier here. not as goofy as Vyers, but it's still noticeable in his parts.

in that regard, both versions of Lamington were incredibly calm about sending Flonne off on an assassination mission. again, there's probably a reason behind it. um.

yeah, we won't be seeing either of them for a while after this chapter.

by the way, alongside the demons and monsters, the angels in the manga have designs that don't resemble the angel units ingame. well, considering the ingame ones only have one design...

back to our main trio,  Laharl doesn't seem to be bothered at all that an angel came to kill his deceased dad. ironically, Flonne's rather sad that he lost his father. oddly considerate assassin, she is.

since she doesn't want to leave the young demon alone, Flonne decides to act as a surrogate father instead of returning to Celestia. much to Laharl's chagrin, of course.

not too far off from her reason to stay with him in the game, but this still kinda bears mentioning. at the end of chapter 2 after her boss fight, Laharl tells Flonne that his father's dead, and naturally she ends up crying over it. she gets bothered that Laharl isn't sad at all over it; "sadness is only possible because of love", and Laharl doesn't have an ounce of love in him since he's a demon. with that in mind, Flonne decides to stay with him in the Netherworld for a while longer to see if demons are capable of love.

the whole theme of love is pretty prevalent in the series, though it's more noticeable in the first three games. it's not really romantic love as much as it is a more "personal bond" sort of love like friendship and family and similar things, but the point still stands regardless. the first game even seemed to have tones of anti-racism messages. the themes in Disgaea aren't novel levels of deep, but they're still noticeable, though love seems to be a central theme throughout the games.

as far as the manga's concerned, the themes aren't as flagrantly obvious like in the games, but they're still there regardless, if portrayed rather differently than in the game, what with this being an alternate retelling and all.

i dunno. this is what happens when i like musing about a RPG about fourth-wall-breaking demons and exploding penguins. i promise i won't get into deep talk like this too often.

 with a new mission in mind, Flonne decides to stay in the Netherworld for a while. what would the Seraph think of this?

... yeah, i don't think Lamington will be too worried about her.

so what's in store next time on MAKAIPUNK? hopefully gen getting his ass into gear and Flonne learning more about the ways of the Netherworld.

hoo boy, was one this a toughie. mostly since that there didn't seem to be much i could comment on compared to last time. dunno if it's because i'm out of the swing of doing these after a winter, or i just haven't had much to say about this particular chapter that either hasn't been said previously or just never came to particular observation. probably a bit of all of those. that, and there's only so much wit i have.

that being said, pretty glad to have gotten this done. granted, manga snapshotting was kind of a pain in the ass since i have to do it with a camera, which is honestly the reason why i've been delaying this for so long. with convention stuff and other articles coming up for April and the rest of this month, i'm not sure how soon the next part of the readthrough will get here, but i'll be taking snapshots soon enough and hopefully get that part jumpstarted.

till then, stay rad. got some game recs in the works, so sit tight! c: