- For "Prinny" as a historical nickname, see George IV of the United Kingdom.
thumb|150px|Prinny Prinnies are a fictional race of creatures in Nippon Ichi's turn based strategy RPGs. They are usually found in the various realms of the company's numerous strategy games, making their first appearance in Disgaea: Hour of Darkness.
Characteristics
editA prinny resembles a small, usually blue, pouch-wearing penguin with disproportionately small bat wings and two peg legs where feet would normally be. When thrown, it explodes on impact. A common trait of the prinnies is their upbeat attitude and frequent use of the word "dood" (as an interjection - they constantly end their sentences with "-ssu" in the Japanese dialogue).
According to the game Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, when a human who has led a worthless life (e.g. a thief or murderer) dies, the soul is sewn into the body of a prinny. After being reborn, the newly created prinny will serve as a soldier, slave, or servant in the Netherworld or Celestia until it has earned reincarnation (Either by earning redemption through good deeds, or earning enough money), and leave its servitude in a ritual involving the Red Moon.
Prinnies explode because the human soul is apparently unstable, and thus, a jostling such as being tossed will cause them to do as such. Prinny suits can be filled with demon souls (Makai Kingdom Prinnies) And thus, will not explode. Baal, a demonlord, is often found in one, and doesn't explode either.
In Celestia, prinnies mostly act as maids and domestic servants. The good deeds they do there lead to their reincarnation. In the Netherworld, depending on the lord they serve, they can have horrible after-lives doing excessively hard labor for very little pay, often thrown around just for fun. The money they earn in the Netherworld goes towards their reincarnation.
Prinnies use Machetes as their primary weapons, and occasionally bombs in team attacks. They can also summon a gigantic energy beam known as the "Pringer Beam". In the anime "Makai Senki Disgaea", based on the game Disgaea: Hour of Darkness the prinnies' weaponry is reduced to fish. They keep their arsenal of weapons and various other items in their pouches.
Some prinnies live in a place called "Prinny Land." It is their own world in which prinnies do not explode when thrown. Some prinnies flee there to escape their lives in the Netherworld, and some may have rebelled or have been banished there.
While rarely mentioned in the game, Prinnies have been known to dispense a beverage known as "Prinny Juice". While few know what this fluid actually contains, most surmise that it is literal "Prinny Juice", given Etna's cruel nature.
Another place prinnies can be found is "The Land of Carnage." These prinnies live for battle and look down on new comers. While prinnies manage all shops and such, an old friend can be found here too. Prinny Kurtis makes a comeback as a Land of Carnage ONLY character. While the player can summon Kurtis with cell phones and pass some bills from the EDF (Earth Defense Forces) to help him out, it is not needed to get Kurtis. In the Land of Carnage, the prinnies call warriors who fight hundreds of thousands of battles "Shura." Rumor has it, there is a prinny who has lived in the LoC longer than anyone else and is the master of the land.
Variations
editThere are many different variations of prinnies. Some are just different colors to show their ranks, while others are humans or demons that had enough will to keep some of their physical characteristics.
There are five basic ranks of prinnies. The ranks are similar to a hierarchy starting with Privates, and continuing onto Captains, Generals, Kings, and Gods. Each is a different color. The Prinny God also acts as the leader of Prinny land.
The Prinny Squad is the group of prinnies under Etna's command in Disgaea and Disgaea 2. They serve under her purely out of fear, and even leave her when she becomes no threat to them. She constantly tortures them, and even uses them as chairs. During a summoning accident, Etna loses all of her levels, and the prinnies with nothing left to fear now, quit, hoping with their years of experience will find a higher paying job with a kinder employer. Later when Etna chases down the prinnies, they reveal that they now have a Big Brother who not only gathered all the prinnies together under his command but actually shaped them into a decent fighting force, far surpassing what they were when they were under Etna's command who only used fear as a motivation tactic. It was later found out that this Big Brother, who looked like a light blue prinny was actually a ninja master named Fubuki in diguise.
"Big Sis Prinny" is a large red Prinny that stands out in Etna's group in Disgaea. She seems significantly different, lacking the mannerisms of speech that normal Prinnies have. Instead, she speaks in a soft, motherly voice. She gives advice to Flonne and soothes Laharl into letting his servants go into their proper lives being reincarnated at the red moon. She reveals that the sin in life which doomed her to prinnihood was that she took her own life. Laharl realizes that she was his mother after seeing her human form.
100px|thumb|left|Prinny Kurtis Kurtis becomes a prinny after sacrificing himself. As a prinny, he becomes green to match his previous hair color, and retains some of his cybernetic parts, allowing him to use most of his abilities. His face shows more emotion than a regular prinny. His eyes are given an angry expression while his beak is slightly longer, also showing anger. At the end of Disgaea, he was shown to pass on at the Red Moon, but in Disgaea 2, he was shown to still be acting out his duties as a defender of Earth in his prinny form.
Uber Prinny is the form that Baal takes after dying . It is much stronger than a regular one. It keeps his evil growl and leaves explosions with each strike of its knives. All of Baal's equipment is max leveled as well as all of his prinny moves. His moves have more range than normal prinny moves. As an example, Prinny Barrage has a five target cross patern instead of a single target attack range.
Pringer X is a very strong robotic prinny. It was first shown to be an imaginary being shown in Etna's false chapter previews in Disgaea with a mention of its reincarnation, Pringer Z. The real thing showed up in Phantom Brave after the defeat of Baal. It is a robotic looking black prinny with two antennas sticking out of its head, glowing red eyes, a marking on its stomach and a cape.
Game appearances
editPrinnies have appeared in almost every major Nippon Ichi video game, with minor differences:
- In the game Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, prinnies follow a ranking system, starting at Private Prinny and moving up to Prinny Captain, General, King, Prinny God, and finally the "Uber Prinny". Prinnies are usually under Etna's control. When thrown at a target they explode with a great force, unless in Prinny Land where they do not. The final class of Prinny in Disgaea, the Prinny God, is immune to status effects. Prinny is the only class that doesn't have a sixth 'subclass' in its class, the highest, the 5th, being Prinny God. It is assumed that the 6th class is actually the 'Uber Prinny', which Prinny Baal is, although it's not unlockable. This is later remedied with a class in-between Prinny and Prinny God in Makai Kingdom (Phantom Brave did not use a 'subclass' system)
- In the game Phantom Brave, Prinnies are allowed to use all weapons, but have a less story-backed role. However, "Pringer X" serves as the final challenge of the bonus storyline. Phantom Brave's Prinnies cause explosions upon being summoned or unsummoned - these explosions do not injure the Prinny itself.
- In Makai Kingdom: Chronicles Of The Sacred Tome, another Nippon Ichi game, prinnies are said to possess the soul of a demon, rather than that of a human. Their bodies are manufactured in Ruskan (inventor demons from another dimension) factories, no one has ever seen the assembly line. A note by the Prinny description in Makai Kingdom also note to ignore "past settings", hinting of a possible retcon or the possibilities for a different origin of creation for different worlds. In the game, in order to create Prinny units, the player must first make a wish to create Prinnies in The Sacred Tome. Then the first Prinny class will become available to create. The weaponry available to a prinny is expanded to include expertise with shovels and wrenches. In this game prinnies actually have one of the highest non-special class TEC stats in the game, making them among the best suited for using guns and vehicles. TEC is the hardest of the three attack stats to buff and thus becomes less useful as the game progresses. Also, if the player takes the time to earn it, the final rank of the class ("Prinny God") is immune to negative status effects. Also in Makai Kingdom, the Prinnies do not explode when thrown.
- In Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories, the prinnies lead the "Dark Court" and are responsible for judging the party's crimes, of which a guilty verdict will always be passed. In general the felonies applied by the Dark Court are to the player's benefit but if one wants to remove them from a character for various reasons then the character must reincarnate as a prinny to "atone for your sins." Unlike most other incarnations, "Prinny Gods" do not have immunity to status effects.
- Airborne prinnies will make an appearance in the game Tori no Hoshi: Aerial Planet.
Anime appearances
editPrinnies have an expanded role in the storylines of the Anime "Makai Senki Disgaea" as compared to their role in Disgaea: Hour of Darkness.
Promotion and reception
editPrinnies will star in their own game "Prinny: Can I Really be the Hero?" for the PSP entertainment system. In a preview of that game, Chris Hudak asks, "What better sign that you've warmed the cold hearts of videogamers worldwide than to have your own beloved, signature character? Nintendo has the charmingly stereotyped, can-do plumber, Sega the bad-boy blue hedghog, Square Enik the lovable, smiling slime. And NIS America? The luck-less, double-amputee, peg-legged slave, karmic-reject, faux-penguin, front-line peon known as the Prinny."[1] NIS America's online store is also selling Prinny plushies.[2]