Disgaea Vol 3: The Netherworld War – Anime DVD Review

So the Disgaea anime and I have been on complicated terms with each other. Volume 1 was passable. Volume 2 was pretty bad. So can we finally patch things up with volume 3? Or is this the end of my Disgaea fanboyism!?

DVD Blurb:
After a long journey filled with mayhem and misadventures, Laharl overtakes the Overlord’s castle. The only problem is that Earth decides to make their move and eradicate the entire Netherworld!

What’s more, Flonne discovers disturbing evidence that the Netherworld, Earth and Celestia share a secret past that’s not so pretty. Betrayal , revenge, and the desire to hurt someone really, really bad all come together to give us a war of epic proportions!

Analysis:
So the Disgaea anime finally does what it should have done from the beginning. It uses the damn game’s plot! The final volume effectively tells the story of the last few chapters of the game, and includes the Akai Tsuki thing that I was complaining about in the volume 2 review.

I knew the game had a great storyline, and I knew the storyline could be adapted well to anime. I’m not sure why the creators of the anime waited until the last third, but I’m glad they came to their senses. While these episodes didn’t tell the story equally well as the game did, they did a good job. It helped that the animation budget seemed to jump as well. I even got all teary during the part where Laharl’s prinny mom goes to have her soul cleansed. This is good anime, folks!

The end they picked was a combination of the normal end and the good end (thanks to my trusty reference). I personally got the normal end the first time I played, so it turned out like the anime! I guess the only real pet peeve I had is that they didn’t have Kurtis return in prinny form to show that he had atoned for his sins against the hotness known as Jennifer…

The Actual DVD:
I actually got a test DVD to review, so maybe things are different with the real release.

I noticed that the picture quality seemed to be better than the two previous releases. The sharpness was better, in particular. And as I mentioned before, the animation budget must’ve tripled or something.

The extras included a Japanese promo that was basically worthless, and parts 3 and 4 of the Disgaea talk. Partway through the Disgaea talk, the subtitles cut out and I was forced to rely on my leet Japanese language skills! Actually, I just skipped it because I had seen it already on the Japanese promo disc. I’m not sure if the subtitle issue was because it was a test DVD or not.

Conclusion:
I’ve had a sort of love hate relationship with the Disgaea anime. It’s been frustrating at times watching one of my favorite franchises suck ass. But like Laharl, the anime redeemed itself in the end and learned to love. Well, at least it redeemed itself. I deem this disk safe for fans of Disgaea to watch.

Many thanks to Geneon for sending me a review copy of Disgaea Volume 3: The Netherworld War!