Once you’ve got a unit on the field, you need to put it where it’ll do the most good. A character’s base movement rate is determined by its job and is represented on the character
screen by the
icon.
You can improve a character’s base movement by equipping accessories (usually Shoes, but a few other items will also do the trick) or temporarily with the Move! spell. On a more permanent basis, you can spend Mana to pass a bill on the Dark Assembly on the character’s behalf, which improves the character’s Movement stat by one per bill passed. This bill only appears on the Dark Assembly menu if your currently selected candidate in the Assembly has 5,000 Mana or more.
As a general rule, a single character’s turn in Disgaea D2 is split into moving and taking an action. The latter includes attacking, using a skill, throwing an item or another character, or using an item; it does not include participating in a Combo or Team-Up Attack, having a friendly spell cast on it, changing out equipment, or taking damage from certain passive effects (i.e. Geo Panels). You have to take a deliberate action for it to count as a unit’s action for the turn.
If a character has moved, but has not yet taken an action, you can cancel the movement with the Circle button and return the character to its starting position to try again. This option is removed if, in the time since you’ve moved the character, something’s come to occupy their starting point, such as another character being moved to that position or an enemy being punted into it by one of your other units’ attacks. If any of those are the case, the character is stuck where it is for the rest of that turn.
It’s useful to remember that you can move and take an action in the same turn, or vice versa. You can run up and attack an enemy, or attack an enemy and then run away. Moving is an all-or-nothing deal, though; you can’t move a short distance, attack, and then move again.