Jormungand, based on the manga of the same name, follows a young arms dealer prodigy named  Koko “Nick Cage” Hekmatyar and her crew of ruffians; among them is a child soldier named Jonah, who has similarly strange eyelashes as Koko. And for those who haven’t read the manga, that’s about all we know about them so far.

PLOT

To be quite honest, haven’t read through eight (yes, eight) volumes of the manga, I still can’t really tell you what this series is about. The series follows Koko (who is apparently loco, oh no) as she travels from place to place, defeating enemy after enemy and selling weapon after weapon. The rest of the cast, with the exception of Jonah (and to a certain extent Valmet) are rarely talked about. We hear a little about their backgrounds of certain characters, but that’s about it. Much more focus is placed on the relationship between Koko and Jonah and the multi-faceted nature of their characters. Buuuuuuut I don’t want to spoil anything so I’ll leave that for later posts (if and when they come).

In any case, the first episode of the anime appears to have set the tone for the remainder of the series. Basically, gun porn and Koko making a fool out of all her opponents. Oh, and some sweet, pure yuri love.

Not kidding about the “embarrassing opponents completely” thing, either. If this show ends up following the manga faithfully, we’ll find Loco Koko’s group of happy mercenaries facing off against either a) woefully undermanned opponents, or b) really underleveled opponents. As such, a lot of the tension is taken away from the action scenes, as odds of 10:3 aren’t exactly suspenseful.

As for the gun porn, this series has about the same amount of explosions as a Michael Bay movie. Take this scene, for example:

Jonah had just fired a round (shown in slow motion) into the enemy’s head. Then the Humvee inexplicably explodes. Must’ve used one of those JFK assassination bullets there, Jonah.

THOUGHTS AND FEELS

After thoroughly enjoying Steins;Gate, the previous White Fox adaptation, I had high hopes for Jormungand that were somewhat tempered by the varying degrees of quality found in the manga. First off, the music in this episode was excellent, complimenting the action scenes quite well. I expected gun porn and received gun porn. But that’s not the problem here. The problem is, for lack of a better term, “derpy art”. What do I mean by that? Well in the manga, there were certain times where character faces just seemed a bit…off…

While the anime hasn’t reached that level of derpiness, small things like Valmet’s “nose that can break a window” might prevent this show from being “great”, rather than just being “good”. But the music, the action scenes, the voice acting (though Koko sounds like she’s in jailbait territory) are all above average, and as such I will be staying for episode 2.

That’s all for now. See you Thursday!