Since I needed to kill some time and had writer's block, I decided to get another one of these out to you all. Hopefully, I'll be able to finish up the last two episodes remaining sometime soon. Like... errr... before 2013? Hopefully? Bear with me on this one. A lot of plot points are addressed rapidly in the game, so I'm going to try to make it as readable as possible.

Judge Nemo, Ahoy!

This episode picks up right after the last one ends. The gang is still in President (now ex-President) Hugo's office, stunned by the news that the Netherworld has been secretly run by a human, the apparent secret leader of the entire human race. Their clamoring disbelief is brought to a halt by a voice in several of their heads. Frightened, Desco claims that the voice sounds evil, but Fuka says it just sounds like an old pervert. The invisible man makes his grand entrance, during which Val concurs with Fuka that anyone invisible and spying on them deserves to be called a pervert (a strange little joke that makes sporadic weak appearances). The man is the human who has been pulling President Hugo's strings. He claims that he has long since cast off his name and identity, as he despises the humans and demons alike. He decides that the party can call him Judge Nemo.

So there you have it - the grand evil boss of Disgaea 4 is a dude named Nemo. Moving on... Nemo declares himself beyond humanity, that he is, in fact, a Judge of their very existence. What this means isn't quite clear yet, but it's obvious he's insane.

Val and his merry crew decide that they're going to show Nemo and the humans a thing or two. First, though, there's a bit of housekeeping and character development to do. Fuka and Emizel argue about how the next President should be chosen. Annoyed, Val declares that the job of President is "first come, first serve." With that, our old buddy Warden Axel swoops in from nowhere and claims the title for his own. He explains that this entire time, his intentions have been to remake the Netherworld into "his colors," as he puts it, claiming that he only sucked up to the Corrupterment in order to strike at them when the time was right... but that his acting skills had been so convincing that he'd even managed to convince himself that he was a suck-up and an evil, cowardly tool of the Corrupterment. Nonchalantly, Valvatorez grants him the title of the 62nd Netherworld president, just like that.

Fuka vows that she'll become the leader of the human world. Fenrich mockingly asks Emizel if he wouldn't rather hide out with his daddy, which causes Emizel to flash back on a conversation he had with his father shortly after their confrontation. Hugo apologized to Emizel for being nothing more than a puppet, claiming that his only intent in Emizel's troubles were to get him out of the way so he didn't suffer for Hugo's mistakes. Emizel forgave his father and vowed to continue on to confront Hugo and take revenge for his actions against Hugo.

The party makes the jump to the Human World, teleporting to an area controlled by Judge Nemo. Several robot-like creatures confront the party. Both Desco and Fuka recognize the creatures as works of their father. Shocked, Fuka believes that Desco must have been the creature that attacked and killed her in her father's lab. Desco refuses, but throughout most of the rest of the episode, Fuka has little to say to Desco, doubting that the creature is telling the truth.

After defeating the bio-suit robots, Judge Nemo then introduces the creatures he's been working on - perfected clones of demons, even more powerful than their Netherworld versions. He has taken the demons given to him by Hugo and cloned their DNA. The team rips through them pretty easily (not many of the fights from this point on until the very last battle are too difficult), and they try to talk down Judge Nemo. Val questions why Nemo has so much hate for the humans. to which Nemo responds vehemently. He also accuses of the demons of neglecting their duties, that some sort of event in his past would have been much different if demons had done their part. Volcanus tries to talk to Nemo, but he ignores her completely, as though he doesn't even hear her. Shocked after this confrontation, Volcanus explains that he couldn't hear her because he had lost his faith. Something horrific must have happened to him in his past, but the party pushes on and doesn't dwell on this quite yet.

Meanwhile, Desco has continually tried to convince Fuka that she wasn't evil or to blame for Fuka's misfortunes. Fuka silently tries to pity Desco, but can't quite believe her. At least, not until they run into... Fuka's father and Desco's creator. It turns out he's been in cahoots with Judge Nemo, who has been funding the seemingly mad scientist's work and helping him with demon specimens. Her father recognizes Fuka, but only seems mildly surprised to see her, wondering why she wasn't in Hell. Steaming pissed, Fuka demands to know why her father would assume she'd been in Hell, to which her father has the best line in the game, "Well, you're not really that sort of person!"

Judge Nemo asks if "it" is ready. Apparently, "it" is, so Judge Nemo bids the group farewell and wishes them luck against the true final boss. Fuka's father gleefully introduces the party to Des X, the ultimate final weapon. Fuka realizes that Desco hadn't been the one to kill her, that it had been this monster instead. Des X appears to be just a color swap of Desco, a fact actually mentioned by the party (this is one reason I love NIS games). Des X attacks the party and defeated. Des X shouts at Fuka, claiming that Fuka's father was HER father, hers alone. Fuming, Fuka snaps and goes berserk on Des X, leading Des X to grow larger. A second fight with Des X ensues, and she is defeated again.

Afterwards, Fuka angrily confronts her father, demanding to know why he'd spend his time creating demon clones and monsters like Desco and Des X. Bewildered, he and Desco claim that it's simply what his wife wanted - for Fuka's father to grant Fuka's wish. And what wish was that, dear reader? Why, Fuka at age five or so wanted a little sister. Fuka and Desco realize that they were meant to be half sisters all along and that Des X just had some magnficent daddy issues. Whew. Glad that's resolved.

Oh, wait, no, it's not. Fuka snaps again at her father, wanting to know why he'd create something like Desco instead of something normal. Bewildered again, he responds that it too had been part of Fuka's wish - that she had wished for her sister to be a perfect specimen to aid her in ruling the world! Fuka nervously laughs this off, but no one in the party is fooled. Guess good old Fuka wasn't quite the kind and gentle soul after all, eh?

After all these shenanigans, Judge Nemo shows up and throws a hissy fit. He claims that though his clones had been defeated, the war wasn't over yet. In fact, he had used the time to plant charges all over the place. To what end? Why, Judge Nemo's ultimate master plan is to blow up... the moon!

This does not sound like a game that one can come back to after a long absence. It sounds crazy.

@RenegadeSaint: Once you've got the basics down, it's surprisingly easy. Or do you mean the story? Because yes, until you've played a couple of Disgaea games, the stories are insane enough that it can be kinda hard to follow all the details if you've taken a break.

Finally finished the story after getting sidetracked with enforcer farming. I wanted to transfer managers and brokers into a 125 stack for item world leveling.

It bugged me that Fuka's Dad didn't seem to care much that she died. Nor did he have much reaction to seeing her return from Hades. Maybe he already knew what she was doing?

@RenegadeSaint:

You don't need to sweat following the story too much. They're completely messed up to begin with and meant to be fun and random. Disgaea campaigns for me are more about introducing new characters to pick favorites from. NIS does a good job of carrying over legacy characters to the next game so you can always build your dream team.

@Enns: It's a weak part of the story, mostly because it was never clear if it was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek or not. Given that it's NIS, I assume so, but it still seemed like lousy writing anyways.