Disgaea anime now playing in Japan.

Attention all Nippon Ichi lovers, got your attention? Good.

Well, NI has finally entered into the arena of TV anime. with Geneon producing their anime Disgaea launched last week for a pretty measly 12 episode run. Not surprising considering this is NI's first anime, so lets hope they do a good job with it.

As for how many episodes have aired, so far only two. And as for the story, it's somewhat repeating the games story, just remixing things up quite a bit. Summaries on Episodes 1 & 2, the only ones to have aired at this time, follow with the typical spoiler space warning.

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Episode 1

In the anime Laharl was poisoned, tossed into a garbage dump, and was eventually found by Flonne who was looking for King Krecheskvoy to asassinate him. Seeing the royal seal on Laharl's casket, she mistakes him to be the king and tries to kill him using the ultimate attack, dynamite, heavy construction equipment, a rocket launcher, ect. Eventually Laharl wakes up, and is beset upon by Flonne's love talk, and demon guardians when he tries to get away. Despite being powerful, he is still weak from the poison, and is saved by Captain Gordan, Thursday, and Jennifer as they land in the Netherworld (and on top of the demons) to prepare to conquer it. Flonne cure's Laharl of his poison, and he, now being at full power, blows captain gordan away using his blazing fist technique and manages to defeat the remaining guardian demon easily. Unfortunately, Flonne's pendant is blown away with the humans, and she is now dying, but vows to kill the Unloving Lharl and make sure he cant harm anyone else. She does so by summoning her pet Dragon, and as Laharl and the Dragon square off Etna shows up and looks on, and so ends episode 1.

Episode 2.

Episode 2 starts off with Laharl and the Dragon getting ready to rumble, but before that can happen Flonne faints rather anticlimactically due to the weakness her not having her pendant brings upon her, and the dragon disappears with a poof. She starts to ask for laharl for help, promising something good, and Etna shows up and asks Laharl what's he gonna do.

Seems the Etna and Laharl already know eachother, and Laharl chooses just to let her rot, being the nasty guy he is. He and Etna take off.

Meanwhile the humans are repairing their space ship, and gordan is snacking on pizza's while jennifer is strutting around with Flonne's pendant. Then a ball of light appears, frightening the trio so bad gordan throws his pizza into the air. Vulcanos appears out of the ball of light, all dramatic and imposing, until Gordans pizza lands flat on his face. Vulcanos tells them that the pendant belongs to heaven, and that it was stolen long ago, and thanks them for recovering it, telling them that heaven is on their side and fighting with them. Yah right. The humans take off looking for the overlord, and Vulcanos returns to Celestia. He then wonders why the Seraph would give the pendant to flonne, an angel trainee and dismisses her impending death as punishment for failure. The pendant then burns his hands and begins falling, soon disappearing into thin air.

Back to the demon peeps, Laharl is hungry, and orders flonne to get him some food. Enter her loyal servents, the prinny's. And yes they are every bit as goofy as they were in the game. The reveal Etna's cussing out Laharl behind his back, fight, play craps, and just look really goofy as well as not returning etna's phone calls until she gets ready to hand out whup tickets. Eventually they cook up a meal for Laharl only for it to be interrupted by the humans. Laharl couldnt care less, he whupped them before and he's eating. Etna is wondering what Laharl did to piss off Earth so much. and the Humans use thrusday's Robo Bazooka mode to fire a beam of energy, only to have it reflected back at them, causing their ship to fly out of control and the humans to retreat once again. Seems Mid bo... I mean Vyers the Dark Adonis showed up and is helping flonne out, as she was the one who saved Laharls bacon. She's ready to continue the fight only to once again, faint. Vyers decides to fight in her stead, only to have Laharl rename him as mid boss. The prinny's think it's hysterical, he thinks its appalling, and flonne seems to like that name. eventually a pissed off and newly renamed Mid-Boss gets ready to rumble, only to have flonne's pendant fall on his head. He talks some more, gets dissed some more, and finally laharl smacks him with the blazing fist, destroying the ground beneath him. He gets caught on the cliff by his foot, and the pendant seems doomed for certain, only to be saved by laharl. Well Laharl gets the same divine punishment Vulcanos got and is only too happy to give it back to flonne for that "something good" only to have a hilarioius scene play out where flonne breaks out in a fittingly sappy (complete with sprouting angel wings) tribute on the growing power of love in Laharls soul. Laharl is horrified, Etna is amused, and the prinnies are laughing that Laharl got so totally conned. Flonne states she is going to follow Laharl until he accepts love, and Laharl decides he is going to make her the prinny's new servent. To which the prinny's, and her, are only too happy to have one another. So ends episode two with Mid Boss asking for some assistance as he is still stretched like the proverbial rope hanging over the abyss, but noone cares. The end

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So what do I think? Well as you can see by the length of the summaries episode two was a drastic improvement over episode 1. Not that episode 1 was terrible, but if you wern't a fan of the game it would have done little. Jokes like Laharl getting weak around Jennifer or Gordans over the top heroic posturing would have done nothing for yah. But if your a fan of the game, its like a reunion with good friends you lost touch with a while ago. Everyone is perfectly in character and the seiyu's from the games all reprise their roles. The dialogue perfectly captures the wackiness of the game and the animation, while not being the highest quality ever, does manage to do its job nicely. Unlike FFVII Advent Children, you dont really care about seeing the characters bust out their limit breaks or recite tired cliche's, the appeal of disgaea was that the characters were so wacky and over the top that you just had to love them. And that same appeal is carried over to the anime. As far as storytelling goes, #1 had its moments, but was pretty weak overall. #2 picked it all up nicely and really did a much better job with character development, storytelling, an putting that trademark disgaea wackiness we all love into animated form.

But still, I am worried. 12 episodes isnt a heckuva lot. Im keeping my fingers crossed and hoping the writers can make it all work. There is also a rumor that Baal is going to show up at one point, so I do have my concerns, but so far the anime is showing that it has promise.

I've been religiously downloading this anime, and I must say I am quite pleased with how it's been handled.

This might be in part because Nippon Ichi owns my soul, but I digress.

As far as the rather drastic differences between anime and game, I actually don't mind because it gives me a bit more incentive to watch the anime, just because it isn't just a total recreation. The characters from Disgaea that I absolutely loved are back and they are the same wacky, over-the-top characters I remember.

It's not the best anime by any stretch of the imagination, but I love it nonetheless, and am eagerly awaiting the rest of the episodes. I'm not too worried about the 12 episode length, there were 14 episodes in the game and I think the story points can be easily condensed into a 12 episode series, especially with the liberties they've already taken with it.