To finish off the season, Jormungand is finally bringing us Valmet’s backstory.
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):
“More Valmet! Yay! New wacky, crazy assassins of the week! No!” That was my first impression of this episode, but there’s quite a lot going on here, with at least three stories running in parallel.
First, Koko has a new weapons deal. It’s a small time job, in which she’ll be delivering some guns to the mafia. It’s kind of sleazy and disappointing to hear, but it reinforces that Koko is in no way a fully moral actor.
Valmet is distracted while describing the plan, however. This is the second thread of the episode, where Valmet finally decides to leave Koko’s group to pursue her revenge on the man who killed her subordinates and took her eye. Valmet reflects back on her meeting with Koko, soon after her unit was wiped out. Koko was a cold young girl, who was able to read Valmet like a book and offered her the key to the world, so that Valmet wasn’t stuck in a domestic existence while her guilt ate her alive. Valmet sneaks away at night, but soon realizes that Jonah is following her. At first, she’s very angry, but Jonah tells her he’s working in Koko’s interests. This placates Valmet, and she allows Jonah to stay with her, at least for the time being.
Story three introduces a group of three assassins, Boss Dominique, Greg, and Liliane, who are quirky, but never fall into the trap of being ridiculous caricatures. It’s a great step up from the disastrous Shark Man from episode 3. Dominique is somewhat of a reluctant assassin, who wants to take on one final job to get enough money to retire. That job, naturally, is to kill Koko and her gang.
We then have a quick shift back to story two, where Valmet’s rival Karen Low has been fired by the Da Xinghai chief for failing against Koko’s group in the previous episodes. This scene, and a concurrent scene where Koko and Schokolade speak together, reveal that Da Xinghai’s executive Chen Guoming is actually the man who took Valmet’s eye. The reason he seemed so much older when Koko had dinner with him at the Chinese restaurant is that he was injured by a landmine, and had to start using a cane.
Koko always knew that Valmet would leave, and she sensed that Valmet was growing more distant, she tells Lehm. In fact, it was she who ordered Jonah to accompany Valmet. Still, she is disturbed and angered by Valmet’s disappearance. When the mafia offers Koko drugs instead of cash, she loses her temper and shoots one of the men right between the eyes, forcing her mercenaries to clean up and kill all of the other mafia men. Boss Dominique watches this from afar, in preparation for the attempted hit.
The episode ends on a cliffhanger with stories 1 and 3 crashing together. While Koko attempts to shower and relax, Greg cuts power to the building and the assassins storm in. Lutz is forced to confront another young girl assassin, much like the one from episode 3 and 4. Will he be able to kill this kid this time? The show ends with Ugo’s throat apparently being cut, leaving the conclusion to all of the stories for the season finale.
In Summary
An extremely busy episode, and the first Jormungand episode where it feels like there’s actually some risk to the characters. Now that we’ve reached the halfway mark and most of the characters have been developed, the show can begin to kill them off in all manner of horrible ways. This episode starts juggling a lot of different storylines, which might make the next episode a total mess, but for the time being, it’s as compelling and exciting as Jormungand has ever been.
Grade: A-
Streamed By: Funimation.com
Review Equipment: Sony VAIO 17″ HD screen
