When Koko’s brother Kasper stops by for a visit, we learn that mental illness runs in the Hekmatyar family.
What They Say
A ruthless arms dealer on a quixotic quest for world peace. A child soldier born into chaotic conflict. Their lives will intertwine as they journey together through the seedy underbelly of the world’s arms market.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
We skip ahead an unspecified length of time, and join Koko, Jonah, and their crew on a freighter off the coasts of Africa. Jonah watches some of Koko’s mercenaries play with a new gun, and laments how Koko has bewitched him. Koko’s running around deck taking care of business in a sun hat and sunglasses when she receives a call. It’s some kind of minor emergency, and Jonah is to be taken immediately to a private room for language lessons.
His instructor this time is Wilee, another amiable cutthroat who sympathizes with Jonah’s hatred of math. Language is better, he says, because there’s more than one right answer. Jonah brings up Koko’s colorful use of language and her saying that “weapons dealers are allowed to speak in contradictions.” Wilee picks up on the joke, as in Chinese characters, the word for contradiction is made from a combination of the symbols for pike and shield. It comes from a Chinese myth, Wilee explains, about an ancient weapons dealer who sold both a pike he claimed could pierce any armor, and a shield he claimed could deflect any attack. But then what happens if you use the pike against the shield? The strange moral standards of weapons dealers appears to have a long history.
Jonah is not amused by the tale and asks for permission to go to the bathroom. Wilee escorts him to the toilet just in time to see why Koko ordered Jonah secluded: Koko’s brother, Kasper Hekmatyar was on a nearby ship, and asked Koko for permission to board. Kasper warns Koko about the CIA agent Scarecrow, whose attention she attracted, and he also warns her about an overseas Chinese dealer from the Da Xinghai company. She remarks that these must be grave warnings indeed to come from her brother.
Kasper, too, requests to use the restroom, and Jonah and Kasper meet up under awkward circumstances. As soon as Jonah realizes who Kasper is, he attempts to kill Kasper, until he is captured and disarmed by Kasper’s lady bodyguard, Chequita. We learn that the two have a history. Jonah was taking care of some orphans at a military base in his home country when a weapons dealer affiliated with Kasper arrived. This dealer, Yasuf Gadud had an important package to pick up, and one of Jonah’s war orphan friends was decided to be the one to walk through a minefield in order to clear a path. Enraged by his young friend’s death, Jonah goes berserk, and somewhat-too-easily manages to neutralize the entire military base, and kills Gadud.
Kasper soon arrives at the military base, and is somewhat amused by what he sees. Both Koko and Kasper seem to share the same kind of smiling sociopathy, which Kasper chalks up to being born and raised on a container ship at sea, without any hometown or feelings of patriotism. Kasper enjoys talking down to Jonah, and explains that what Jonah did was stupid, because he was merely using the allure of weapons to get the military of his country to work on economic development. Since Jonah is unable to see the glorious bigger picture, he throws him in a container with only water, and returns to him in three days. Jonah has grown weak and desperate with fear, and when Kasper realizes he has broken the boy, he confesses that he was the one who sold the weapons that killed Jonah’s parents. He considers himself a fair man, though, and offers to see the other orphans safely adopted in Japan if Jonah will agree to work as a bodyguard for his sister. Jonah really has no choice but to agree.
With this episode, the writing improves a great deal. While Jormungand still appears to be introducing characters at twice the rate those characters are developed, there’s a great implied here by the relationships. Koko and Kasper seem to share a similar philosophy of using weapons dealing as a path to prosperity, although Kasper seems to lack even the basic empathy that Koko has. It’s clear that Koko pulled some strings with his brother to help save Jonah, in whom she has a personal interest. There are a lot of great character touches as well, especially in how Valmet silently greets Chequita, and how the mercenaries share Koko’s interest in improving Jonah’s lot in life.
That said, with the key plot elements involving sacrificing war orphans, the dark humor that made the first two episodes so much fun is almost entirely missing. Things don’t look to get any brighter anytime soon, as the end of this episode strongly hints that Valmet’s backstory, the story of how she was betrayed and lost an eye, will be coming up next. I’m definitely disappointed in having the humor replaced by straight, gritty drama, but there’s always hope it will return once the characters are more established.
In Summary
While the action sequences are still ridiculously unbelievable, the character motivations remain truthful, keeping me interested in where Jormungand will go with Koko and her crew. The show has introduced a great deal of characters, and it’s good to see we’re finally going to get more development on that front. Jonah is further established here as the conscience of the show, aware of the right thing to do, but seemingly unable to change anything without the use of violence. As lords of violence, Jonah realizes Koko and Kasper are extremely powerful people to know and to use. We’ll have to see if Jonah can resist being bewitched by Koko, however, as the other mercenaries seem completely under her spell.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Funimation.com
Review Equipment: Sony VAIO 17″ HD screen
