Hot off the heels of my Disgaea manga review, here’s a review for Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories! Or as I like to call it, Disgaea 2: Electric Boogaloo - The Manga.

Story:
The Disgaea 2 manga serves a cool purpose of explaining what happened in between the two Disgaea stories before getting to the actual story of Disgaea 2. Apparently, Laharl has become a couch potato and Etna’s sick of it. They have a falling out and Etna leaves to become an overlord herself. She and all of the other workers at the castle leave for better employment.

Apparently, there’s an overlord named Zenon who’s the “King of Overlords.” Etna makes her way to Veldime to vanquish him and show Laharl who’s the new hotness. Meanwhile, in Veldime, Adell and his family are busy summoning Zenon to defeat him.

Zenon turned all of Veldime’s residents from human to demon with a curse. Everyone except Adell. Somehow they end up summoning Rozalin, the daughter of overlord Zenon instead. It’s up to Adell to bring Rozalin back to her father, and then defeat him! Sounds like a conflict of interest to me…

Analysis:
I didn’t care much for the Disgaea manga, but the Disgaea 2 manga is awesome! It’s really cool seeing what happened in the gap between the two games. Plus seeing Flonne dressed in Etna clothing is worth the price of admission alone!

For fans of Nippon Ichi Software games, there are a ton of references, like the kart racing game that Laharl plays starring characters from La Pucelle Tactics (my first ever N1 game!). There’s even the parody next episode previews intact, which were probably the funnest parts of the actual game. Even Pleinair makes an appearance!

The Disgaea 2 section of the story plays out a lot like the game, but that’s ok. There’s still some extra stuff, like a bath scene with Rozalin and Hanako!!! FTW! This is the first volume in a series of Disgaea 2 manga, so the story (and relationships!) had more time to develop.

Character Designs and Art:
The character designs and art were major factors in my dislike of the first Disgaea manga. Once again, the cover art is done by Takehito Harada, the original character designer, and another mangaka handles the actual manga. In this case, Hekaton is really good! The drawings have their own style, and they’re different, but they’re still really nice.

The art style seems a lot more fanservicey, which I can’t complain about. Etna is hot. Flonne is hot. Rozalin is hot. Adell’s mom is hot! Hanako is… underage. Suffice it to say, I’m really happy with the way the art turned out this time.

The Actual Book:
As is usual with Broccoli Books, the quality of this book is really good. I noticed one spelling error, but that was it. There’s a lot of extra stuff in the book to explain things to people who aren’t familiar with Disgaea. The translation notes are actually really detailed. There’s a ton of references to anime and Japanese pop culture, so the notes were a nice addition.

Conclusion:
I really like the Disgaea franchise. I’m totally protective of it, and in this case I think a really good job was done translating the story into a manga. I heartily recommend this to all fans of Disgaea, and even non-fans. It should still make sense. Maybe.

Many thanks to Broccoli Books for providing me with a review copy of Disgaea 2 Volume 1. You can get more info on the Disgaea 2 manga at their official site.