Anime Review: Jormungand

Have you ever had this feeling to just watch something with a whole lot of action in it? Well, if you haven’t, stay the heck away from Jormungand. You may as well leave this review now if you hate action shows. Okay, now that all of the action-haters have left the room, let’s talk about Jormungand. A lot of people like to compare today’s show with Black Lagoon, another anime that focuses on high-flying logic-defying action. I’m going to be upfront about this; I think Jormungand is the superior show. I personally couldn’t get into Black Lagoon, no matter how hard I tried to get invested into it. Jormungand, on the other hand, had me invested within the first few minutes. So, it’s obvious that I really enjoyed the show subjectively; but how does it hold up objectively? Sit back, relax, and read on as I review Jormungand and its second season Jormungand: Perfect Order.

The Setup:

Jormungand’s setup is rather simple; a child soldier named Jonah is brought into the arms trade as a bodyguard of Koko Hekmatyar, a female arms dealer. From there on, action ensues; explosions, gunfights, fiery deaths, crazy chicks with guns; you name it, Jormungand’s pretty much got it.

The setup of Jormungand involves the arms trade

The Characters:

The characters of Jormungand are what I believe to be the both the best and worst part of the show. Each character introduced into the show is fairly interesting and likable for the amount of screen time that they’re allowed, but some characters are more favored than others. For example, a character named Valmet had a character arch that is basically the climax of the first season, while a character named Lehm barely gets any backstory but was equally as important to the plot. Then there’s also the fact that character motivations are sometimes completely shot, with the most obvious target being Jonah himself. Jonah lost his parents earlier in his life due to his village being attacked, and because of this he claims to hate weapons and those who use them. However, this makes him the biggest hypocrite in existence because he constantly uses weapons during his time as a child solider and in defending Koko. His character was just a huge walking contradiction, and I was waiting for the show to address this and give us a full explanation of Jonah’s backstory. That never happens. We learn why he got involved with Koko, but we never learn anything else beyond that. The show attempts to justify this by saying that Jonah uses weapons because he can’t live without them, but that statement is both incredibly weak and doesn’t explain why Jonah became a child soldier in the first place. I also couldn’t help but think that this was the creator’s attempt to make Jonah seem more human than he actually was, as this character trait plays close to no part in the entire story. I suppose I would be able to overlook this if it only happened once, but Jonah’s character isn’t the only one who suffers from this lack of backstory. This flaw also affects a lot of the more minor antagonists and side characters. I won’t go into detail about them because then I would be spoiling a lot, but let’s just say that this flaw is very noticeable and the show seems to be unaware of that fact. The show just seems to expect you to connect the dots yourself, which in a lot of cases would be fine; except in this case, the show doesn’t give you enough dots to connect, and therefore you don’t have the entire picture. As for character personalities, they were fleshed out enough so that they felt like real people, but they weren’t very complex or even original in a lot of cases, with the exception of Koko herself. Koko is a fantastic character, and she was just so much fun to watch. Her personality is that of a fun-loving person, but at the same time is cold, calculating, and all-knowing. She always seems to be one step ahead of everyone else, and has enough charisma that her bodyguards would die to her sake. The side characters were just kind of there to create excuses for more action scenes, which in this show’s favor is a rather good thing, but I still would’ve liked to see a little more development on that front.

Koko and her team

The Story:

Jormungand’s story is one of those stories that starts off episodic and then concludes under an overarching story. The first season and around half of the second season is split into archs, each ranging from around one to three episodes (as displayed in the episode titles) and focusing on either a member of Koko’s team, some opponent that the group encounters, or both. In my opinion, this is where the show shined the brightest, but that’s only because of my own tastes, as I like more character-centric shows. When the show’s overarching story kicked in, I was more than a little disappointed. Granted, the story wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t nearly as strong as the individual character stories that were featured previously. Then there’s the ending. Wow, that ending was just…it wasn’t as bad as I anticipated it to be, but it was incredibly open-ended and felt like a cop-out on the creator’s part. I also want to address the overall tone of the show, which is rather lighthearted. Some might view this particular tone as a horrible aspect, because the show makes it seem like child soldiers and the arms trade are perfectly fine and don’t involve any moral dilemmas. Now, I don’t want to get political, but having read A Long Way Gone…it was harder for me to overlook than it probably will be for most. If you’re sensitive towards that kind of stuff, then Jormungand is not the anime for you.

The story begins episodically, but then near the end develops a much weaker overarching story

The Animation/Sound:

Produced by White Fox, Jormungand looks pretty darn good, but it’s not White Fox’s best. In comparison to both Katanagatari and Steins;Gate, Jormungand looks a lot more jagged and is outlined with darker colors, as a contrast to the constant white that is the show’s main color. On top of that, the characters don’t always look all that three-dimensional and more like drawings. During the action scenes, however, the show looks  really good and barely cuts any corners. The character designs were also pretty top-notch, with each character looking fairly realistic but at the same time retaining that anime feel we all know and love, which is preferred in my book. The OST is good at getting you excited for action and accompanies each scene well, featuring a lot of techno, auto-tune, and rap lyrics that are in ENGLISH (heck yeah). Both openings for the show are great, and the second ending theme is a nice listen too, but the best out of all is Jormungand’s first opening. This song is what kept me awake when studying for finals, and has cemented itself as one of my favorite anime openings ever. Finally, English or Japanese? No contest, English. I tend to like English dubs a lot more when the main setting isn’t Japan because it feels more natural, and Jormungand is no exception. The best performance goes to Anastasia Munoz as Koko, for providing a convincing performance that make Koko sound confident, fun, and manipulative when needed. As for the Japanese dub (I did listen to some of it), honestly I couldn’t stand it. It may have better acting, but the English just sounds a lot more natural to me.