Disgaea Volume 3   Starring (voice): Kaori Mizuhashi, Tomoe Hanba and Yuko Sasamoto MVM RRP: £15.99 MVD2272 Certificate: 12 Available 05 October 2009

Flonne is a not very successful angel in training from Celestia. Having been given the task of hunting down and killing King Krichevskoy, it has taken her two years to track down what she thinks is his coffin, in a garbage dump. The problem is that, having broken into the coffin with a rocket, she doesn’t find Krichevskoy but his son Laharl. When Laharl discovers that his father is dead he determines to travel to his castle and claim the throne...

Disgaea: Volume 3 (2006) and this rather silly, but oddly fun, series comes to its end with the last four episodes. It looks like Laharl has finally come into his inheritance having been recognised as king of the Netherworld. However, the celebrations are cut short when the Earth Defence Force launches its own attack on his realm with its biggest battleship the Gargantua. The fight takes up most of episodes nine and ten (Space Battleship Gargantua! and The Defender of Tomorrow Is You!) Why would the humans attack the netherworld? Well, episode 10 reveals that the world is slowly dying and mankind must move out into the stars, except Jennifer’s father decided that it was far better to wipe out the Netherworld.

In episodes eleven and twelve (A Night Lit up by the Red Moon and Love... After the Fighting is Over) we discover that Celestia are involved with the humans plans to destroy the Netherworld. Of course this only confirms Laharl's conviction that there will only be safety if he rules all three realms and so sets off with Flonne and Etna to confront his last enemies. Although the earlier stories were very much stand-alone affairs it was nice to see that the makers thought enough about the show to give it a real ending.

The animation remains bright and engaging. The audio comes in flavours of English or Japanese with optional subtitles. The stereo mix does the job but there is little in the way of any noticeable separation. The only extras are trailers for Kyo and The Slayers.

In truth, most adaptations from games are pretty bad, but Disgaea went its own way, taking only a little from the game, not a winner with the games fans but it did open up the world to a wider audience.

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Charles Packer