Her name is Koko, she is loco – but she’s also great fun to watch. Here comes the first of two seasons of the adventures of arms-dealer-with-sort-of-a-conscience Koko Hekmatyar and her mercenary associates. With whom you really do not want to mess.
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.
The Review:
When he was younger (although to be fair, he’s still very young), Jonah professed to hate arms dealers and all that they stood for. That was then – now, he’s just started working for a weapons dealer, Koko – a woman with a rather unique attitude to her trade. On his first job, they run into some big problems delivering their merchandise, forcing Koko’s team to take extreme action to put things right. Meanwhile, there’s a rival group that ants a piece of their action – and money…
A typical day in the work of Koko and her team, then. Representatives of an arms company run by her overbearing older brother, Koko and her team are charged with making sure that the company’s deals – some perfectly legal, others decidedly more shady – go off trouble-free, but between the efforts of rivals dealers to undercut them, and the shady pasts of the certain members of the team that keep coming back to haunt them, there’s a certain amount of chaos that keeps following them around. Fortunately, the team are very close-knit. Newest recruit Jonah, ostensibly Koko’s personal bodyguard, is very much the baby of the group and is often treated as such, much to his annoyance. Tojo is the team’s computer expert, Lehm the eldest member in the group and thus the voice of experience and common sense, while Valmet spends much of her time between firefights daydreaming about getting into Koko’s pants, or catching her when she sleepwalks out of aircraft that are in midflight (possibly hoping gratitude for the latter will make the former easier). An eclectic, varied bunch, but a group that know they can rely on each other when they find themselves in a spot of bother.
Which is often. Between Somali pirates, freelance assassins, American “intelligence” (the operatives we see here seem to be rather lacking on that front, to be honest) and Balkan freedom fighters, there’s no shortage of people who would like to take Koko and co out of commission. Let battle commence…
The first show that came to mind when I started watching Jormungand was Black Lagoon: both featuring mercenary groups with a tendency to go overboard when they’re backed into a corner, both featuring the new recruit with a rather wry outlook on it all (Rock vs Jonah), and both using several multi-episode story arcs to break up their seasons with. It’s anot a bad show to be compared with, as Black Lagoon is both action packed and damned funny at times – and Jormungang does a pretty good job of keeping up with its spiritual stablemate. WHere it falls down, though, is in having characters – in the core group, at least – that aren’t quite as engaging as they could be, and who get outshone by arc villains and minor characters from time to time. Enter assassin Chinatsu, who ritually goes into battle underwear-free (a tradition that really bugs Koko until she finds out why); and US agent Schokolade, who’s so enamored with Koko that she’ll side with her over her partner Scarecrow (big, mean, and as thick as two short planks) any day of the week. Both characters who have comparatively minor roles in the series, but both characters I would gladly pay to see more of. The way that the minor characters almost get more love on the personality front than the leads is a little strange, to say the least.
There are also times when the story just doesn’t seem to be trying, like when we’re told the gang are in Middle Eastern Country A, looking to fly to Country B International Airport. I’m not just using “Country A” and “Country B” because I can’t remember the names, those are the terms used in the show – yet in other arcs Dubai, South Africa and other real-world placenames are freely bandied about. Again, strange, and for no apparent purpose.
In Summary:
For all that the series isn’t quite hitting all the marks that it could, it’s still pretty damned good. It’s action-packed, has a decent sense of humour about itself, and away from the action scenes still moves along at a decent pace, all of which put it up near the top of my list for the Spring season. It could’ve been better – and I suspect that what failings it has are inherited from the manga, although I haven’t read that – but there’s still not much room for complaint here. Recommended.
Content Grade: A-
Streamed by: FUNimation
This article originally appeared at Anime Vision where Bryan writes about the UK anime market and the world of anime itself.
