Ask Nami

it's an aesthetic thing yeah, my biggest influence is takehito harada (character designer/illustrator for disgaea) and if you look at disgaea characters you'll be like "oh, ok so nami just fully ripped these off"

thanks! nothing came to mind so i talked to my housemate who also loves disgaea and they listed off a few that were meh, but none of them stood out to me in a way that i felt offended by their existence. disgaea 2 bad end is the edgiest, but i just think it goes hard. in retrospect i soured on refrain for feeling like it was miserable just for the sake of it, but i think more than anything i was just personally slighted by velnya and isara not getting to be together in any sense (don't get me started)

1. i had to leave social media for the sake of my mental health, but the typical marketing stuff you're supposed to do for indie games has always made me feel very hollow and fake and i don't like it. i want to just post my game and be like "HEY GUYS CHECK OUT THIS COOL THING I MADE" and not think of it as trying to sell a product. the point has always been for people to play the thing if they want, which is why most of my games are free. i had a day job before that enabled this model.
2. i think i'm better at drawing and writing than actual game design (i don't really care about the details of systems as long as it lets me tell the story i want it to...) but yeah, i'm happy i can make all sorts of things with ren'py if i want to! i'll probably make another rpg with it in the future.
3. WWT is seeming like it's gonna turn out pretty similar... i think BET couldn't have worked as well if it was bigger than it was, just because each choice is a multiplier for how many branches/endings there could be... gets difficult to make all of those paths lead to something interesting/worthwhile. but in a more limited/guided structure, it works pretty well.
4. disgaea knockoff. i don't wanna design levels or code it but designing character classes for a strategy rpg sounds very appealing to me
5. it's tough because i relate to them all for different reasons. syrup's singleminded focus on her craft and drive to improve herself is extremely me, that's what i kept feeling while writing syrup 2. and like the way she's blunt and accidentally says rude stuff all the time, i was like that as a teen. to the point where it was a joke among the friend group, that i just hadn't developed empathy yet. pastille gives me big gender feelings... weirdly, so does timber lately... might just be that he makes me feel more comfortable with my body hair tho... idk. i wanna cut my hair short again, it's time for boymode nami.
6. my tip is to play in japanese, you'll come away from it loving the main antagonist more if you do. but i guess if you prefer eng dubs, the eng is quite good aside from that one character so it's fine... but like... ahh he's very good...... there was so much potential there and they didn't do very much with it in the end..........

first saw it at a friend's birthday party when i was 12, became obsessed on sight

i don't actually know what the lucchini discourse is like, but i remember reading someone's thoughts on ch7 (with mitten) and calling it a filler chapter and that made me feel insane. it's not filler. it's lucchini trying to prove to himself the overcoming fate is possible even if you're a weak little bug. he desperately needs everything he's doing to not be for nothing, and seeing what happened to mitten is like, witnessing the proof that he's going to fail despite it all. that's why he spends the whole chapter trying to help her, and why he breaks down at the end...

witch100 spoilers

if he was JUST evil then that chapter wouldn't be there!!!!!!! if it was always an act, then why go out of his way for mitten!!!!!!!!! why else would it matter to him!!!!!!!!!! in the distortion or whatever when you get his backstory and see him figuring things out and testing what he can change, he genuinely wants to protect everyone!!!! and then seeing that literally killing everyone in his whole village is the only way forward and he's forced to work with his father who he despises with his whole heart, oh my god!!!!!! i just feel like, of course the reveal in the "true ending" he's acting like that, because everyone still died and nothing mattered, in that position i would also be like "HAHA FUCK IT I GUESS!!!!!" it's really good... so yeah i guess anyone who looks at lucchini and thinks he's just a villain or whatever completely missed the point.

nono i'm so happy to talk about witch100 cuz i never get to!!! i actually have a future game i want to make where the ship is a metallia/visco dynamic, so my answer is unfortunately my knockoff metallia girl LOL they'd have fun bossing their gfs around.

oh that's so specific! no it wasn't, i just wanted to make a "dating sim" where you can kiss a bunch of my unused OC designs since they all fit under a halloween theme.

I LOVE METALLIA

GET READY FOR A LONG POST (spoilers for witch100 and labyrinth of refrain)

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i want to start by saying witch100 was my favorite game after disgaea 4, it was only soured slightly in retrospect because of refrain, which i also intensely loved but have problems with. i feel like tatsuya izumi hates women, specifically gay disabled women, so he tortures them in all his games for fun. the bastard. but the characters are also very well written and witch100 does at least have a happily ever after BY SOME MIRACLE--i feel like because isara and velnya kissed on screen that's what kept them from getting an ending where they can actually be together and it makes me so mad. metallia was """ambiguously""" gay enough she dodged dying for it, but her and visco still die so much anyway!! omfg

anyway i wanted to add the context of refrain into this becuase i think it's important, that there are a bunch of queer characters in these games WHICH IS GREAT, BUT!!!! he also doesn't fucking get it, as a writer, as a human!!!!! LIKE THE PRINCE IN GALLERIA, AND HOW KITCAT WAS HANDLED, I'M SO--no i can't get into it, it will have to be another post. even lilian was messy, but it was 2013 and i could look past that. because metallia and visco were so good together. i could ignore the harmful tropes cuz it had something i loved, which is girls who happen to fall in love and face immense suffering but somehow overcome it together. that's the good stuff, that's what im here for...

so like, ok, metallia. she's got so many sharp edges. what she does to malia in ch1, that's a lot for a new player to swallow. who could love a character who does horrible despicable things??? (me, it's me)

i think what i've consistently loved most is characters who are treated one way because of who they are on a surface level, but then you ACTUALLY look at them and realize there is so much nuance and they deserve better. metallia grew up completely alone and confined to her swamp for reasons beyond her control. if she tries to leave, she gets sick and dies. the two women who raised her abandoned her for reasons that are incomprehensible to her, and she was left with a boring golem servant and later an evil fairy. she's lonely and resents her position in life so she pours everything into studying magic to have concrete proof of how great she is and why she shouldn't have been abandoned.

she wants desperately to not be alone but she's also BEEN alone for so long she's like, bandaged over this gaping wound pretending like it's not there. she's mean to people and pushes them further away because being vulnerable and honest with them sure didn't keep anyone around. she doesn't trust that anyone WOULD genuinely like her, which fuels the push and pull between her and visco, like she has to put visco in the category of "thing she owns" to justify her desire to keep her around, cuz she can't just say "I LIKE YOU PLEASE STAY WITH ME!!!" because it would be too painful if visco said no!!!!!!!! ough!!!!!!!!!!!!!

their fight in... oh god what was it, i don't have the chapters memorized as well as i do with disgaea lol, at the big event in amataya where she gives visco the potion that's supposed to cure her curse but it fails in front of everyone and visco thinks she just did it to hurt her and metallia barks back because she only knows how to be combative and can't just APOLOGIZE, because clearly something's wrong and her solution should've worked!!! it's so heartwrenching... cuz by that point you know so deeply where each character is coming from and just want everything to be okay again WAHHH!!!!

the whole... dark hero arc..... stitching together all these disperate parallel worlds to try to get HER visco back, meeting torude, the version of her who failed and can only support the metallia that DOES get to be with visco... oh my godddd toruuuddeee........ witch100's really got everything. the line where dulche asks if visco's metallia's lover and metallia's like N...NO/// coming right after the scene where torude's like hey here's a visco, she's real, wanna rub your hands all over her? it lives rent free in my head.

metallia and visco's love story happens so naturally over the course of the whole story, i just, i couldn't even believe it it was so good. when you make it to walpurgis tower or whatever and visco's like so mad at the witches for being mean to metallia thinking metallia has been locked in her room crying about it this whole time, only to get there and metallia shows up giant and crashing the party and visco just laughs like "oh my god of COURSE you were planning this huge elaborate revenge, that's so funny actually???????" top 10 falling in love moments. visco really gets metallia's appeal.

anyway metallia rules... but my favorite character is actually lucchini, if lucchini has only one defender it is me, if lucchini has no defenders i am dead.

it's a disgaea 7 thief skill. everyone please view my new about page btw.

thanks! the disgaea series continues to be my biggest inspiration for making art.

i'm going to go on a long tangent about phantom brave 2 that no one asked for now. frickin kento jobana, man. ok so i played disgaea 7 and enjoyed it quite a bit at the time, but there was something scratching at the back of my head the whole time that only really solidified for me when i hit the post game and [disgaea 7 spoilers, if you care] cannon line comes back as an angel. this felt so insulting. because disgaea 1's whole thing is [disgaea 1 spoilers, if you care] it doesn't matter that laharl's mom died in order to save him, "taking your own life is a grave sin" which means even if you self-sacrifice you're going to become a prinny. cannon line self-sacrificed and she got to become an angel. i know d7 is post d1 in the timeline since flonne is an archangel and whatever, so it's possible flonne helped to change the rules after thinking what happened with laharl's mom was unfair, and dd2 even puts more of a twist in that stuff since sicily exists, oh my god. ok we don't need to think about dd2, i have to stay focused. kento jobana is credited as scenario writer on disgaea 7, and he is the director+story guy for phantom brave 2 as well. this is why i'm pointing at him when i say all this: the characters are too nice now, and the consequences are too gentle. we've lost the edge. mugai at least was a great villain, and i haven't played the rest of the postgame still so i don't know if there's anything weird like what they did with void dark in disgaea 5 (i feel like if there was, one of my friends would've told me about it), but the phantom brave 2 villain? oh my god. i think i read an interview or something where the director was saying (about the story) something about like oh no one's really a villain, everyone has their reasons for what they're doing, etc etc. and that made me think like, oh right, okay, so no bad guys. anyone who messes up, well they didn't really mean it. pb2 felt like whiplash sometimes, i was like groaning through the whole end just begging them to let the main antagonist JUST BE EVIL. WE DON'T NEED TO FORGIVE HIM, PLEASE, HE SUCKS!!!!! it's so sad because there were some interesting things going on but even with orange it was like AND NOW I'M EVIL oh just kidding sorry teehee. whiplash, i'm telling you!!! don't even get me started on henna's mom either. if there's one single character you could let them just drop from their lives and move on, let it be the queen. when henna's like "oh but she's my mom and i love her" i felt so lost, like girl are we looking at the same person. pb2's story is so watered down, they were definitely appealing to a wider age demographic but i don't think this was the way. i wanted to post all these pb2 thoughts closer to when i just beat the game but i felt so exhausted by it and didn't want to replay it or dive in deeper or anything, which sucks so much because it's a good game! NIS games look better than ever, the ui is so fun and polished and they're finally getting the hang of the character models. like, they look so cute, and it's such a joy to be in that world, but it's so shallow, too. and again, i enjoyed d7 a lot, but they're supposed to be demons and we just don't get any of the extremeness i'm used to from previous games. like yes, disgaea characters are always good at heart, but also let them be a little shitty to each other????? again, it's been a while since i played both, so i don't know if i'm overstating it, but this is the impression i was left with... it felt like--oh my god--it felt like the version of my games that some people see when they look at the characters, thinking it's a world where all conflict is resolvable misunderstanding and no one truly hurts each other. i think it's nice when characters can work through their problems, but there's a limit to how much harm a character should be allowed to do before it's ok to never forgive them. does that make sense?????? i don't think i worded it exactly right but i guess my point is we didn't need to try to redeem pb2's antagonist, or any of the antagonists in pb2 really... i'm not saying they should've been flatly evil either, i just think at least henna could've recognized that her mom is abusive and didn't need to forgive her for the messed up stuff she did. also cannon line should've been a prinny, there's no excuse, recolor a prinny sprite if you needed an asset for her.

anyway, NIS games made me think too hard about fictional characters, which made me want to make my own games. KAIMA was a disgaea 5 fix-it fic.

prinny 1 i managed to get to the final boss but he's too hard so i never beat him either. prinny 2 i got stuck a few levels in and i think because of the brick wall that is prinny 1, i decided i'd spare my thumbs rather than seriously try to beat the sequel... i don't like action games at all so i never felt like going back to it. the voice direction in 2 was bananas, that also made me not want to play it as much... but i really love the spritework in it, and all the cameos from makai kingdom monsters, i'm glad they got to live on in prinny! to this day i am always thinking "gotta have guts, dood!"

it was fun! disgaea 4 came out while i was in college so i mostly cared about that. i wasn't in any clubs but there was a dnd group that i joined because i liked the idea of designing a character for it but i didn't like when they showed up at my dorm to bring me to the dnd session while i was in the middle of my d4 playthrough (sorry to my friends at the time). this was when i realized i don't like dnd at all.

she was a revenant called vengeance and i only really remember using the spell create water. i only played for a session or two, i don't enjoy dnd at all.

actually disgaea RPG did it for us, because they aren't cowards

fenrich disgaea 4, and it changes from time to time but my top 3 are timber treat and pastille

....and now i want to write an essay on how each of those characters has things in common with the parts i love about fenrich. they're extremely different on the surface level but it's like i threw fenfen in a particle collider and made him into new elements...

i always use story characters! i think it helps engage with the story more when you're cheering them on in battle.

my generics usually play a support role, i always make myself as a thief (i've done this since 2) and name the rest after various friends, OCs, or other characters i like. i also make a point to try to use the new units so i can get attached to them too--omg zombie maiden in 7 is so good. she moves and throws forever, it's amazing. i named mine eleanor.

she doesn't but if she did i think itd be funny for him to be inexplicably gigantic like mao's dad in disgaea 3. i think every demon should have a dad the size of a mountain.

ok these are all personal taste and not what is objectively better edit: actually screw it, i'm confident in my opinions, i think you'll have a better time experiencing them like this and if you prefer sub over dub as a general rule then you've already made up your mind haven't you

1. original dub, before they replaced etna's voice
2. dub
3. dub (it's literally vic's only good role if you can stand him)
4. dub (LISTEN THE JP IS EXTREMELY GOOD BUT YOU HAVE TO HEAR VALVATOREZ IN ENGLISH)
5. sub, i don't like the english cast
6. skip
7. i have only heard it in japanese so i gotta say sub

• infinite: absolutely the dub omg
• d2: probably sub for this one actually
• the anime: if you're not watching it dubbed you're not having enough fun

lucky for you i already wrote a big text dump about this!

disgaea is about doing things that are completely ridiculous but taking it 100% seriously. (there was an interview or something where they phrased it like that, and i haven't stopped thinking about it since)

basically all the characters are allowed to be fun and wacky but they have an emotional core that makes them endure in your heart more than the average rpg character i think... disgaea catches you offguard by making you care deeply for characters that are, on the surface, kind of a joke. it's all demons in the netherworld so the setting is free to be whatever it wants (like in disgaea 3 the entire netherworld is a school so their whole society is structured around that). it's fun!!! but also deep!!!! it brings me so much joy and i want my games to make people feel the way disgaea feels to me!!!!!!!!

omg yes a disgaea question

1. 2 is simply the best. great song, iconic bits. extremely high quality.
2. 3 is next. they were on a roll. some of it's a little messy but overall it's real fun and they dance, which is always good for an op. the song fits the vibe of the game really well too.
3. drpg maybe...? this one is weighted pretty high because they were so faithful to harada's style (laharl/etna/flonne all look great). i like the 3d prinnies. it's forgettable otherwise... at least fenrich is in it.
4. 4 this one's rough because it's my favorite game but the op is so budget-looking in places lol. im not thrilled about the song either... i'd be more happy to watch this one than drpg's (and have many times) but that's just because i love disgaea 4 in general.
5. 5 it's fine. i remember reading some developer commentary where they said they were trying to make a song that felt like the attack on titan theme (huge at the time) but i don't think they really got there. it looks better than 4's op but in the end i dont care as much about 5's story.
6. d2, i just think it looks the worst. i think this is kinda universally agreed upon as far as i can tell. maybe i'm wrong tho, it's not like that many people are around to talk about it especially these days hahaha