Jormungand 02-04
Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to see Jormungand again?
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WOOH! Best way to finish off the first year of college is with a bunch of GUNS! AND FIGHTS! YAAAHHH! Seriously though, I’ve had to cut off watching Jormungand for a couple weeks because of exams and MAN does it feel good to finally get back into it, haha. Nothing like some good ol’ arms dealing to get you back in the game! |
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Sorry about the delay!!! Zabo had school, I had school, but now we’re both officially done! You know how we’re celebrating? With guns and illegal activity! Yaaay! So yeah, on to the celebrations! |
EPISODE 2
Episode two, Koko and team unwittingly wander into a warzone and are forced to sell weapons. Koko doesn’t want to though. To make matters more complicated as well, a couple of fighters named Mildred and Lew are there as well as their boss, Currie of the British CCAT. Koko explains to her team that she doesn’t want to sell them weapons since it will be on credit (she doesn’t do credit) and also because she doesn’t think the fighting will last long anyways. However, she plays along and eventually ditches her escorts. That the same time, Mildred and Lew kill Currie’s escorts as well, so their team and Koko’s go into hiding together. Mildred and Valmet (who with Tojo, reunited with Koko’s team) have a friendly(ish) battle while scouting and we learn that Valmet was betrayed in the past. However, that’s not important for long since the people they were pretending to sell to show up and Koko and team make a run for it. …They get away because the end, Koko sold the weapons to the people after all. …Yeah.
EPISODE 3
Episode three, we learn that Jonah can’t do math to save his life and that there are assassins constantly after Koko. Jonah ditches his lessons to go follow Koko while she goes out with Valmet and it’s a good thing she does since a group of assassins named Orchestra is after her. The assassin team consists of a sadistic girl named Chinatsu (who also apparently doesn’t wear underwear) and her shark-toothed teacher, who has yet to be named. Both of them are just a liiiitle bit mentally unstable and like the sound of guns. Anyways, Jonah jumps in, a shoot-off happens, Valmet gets injured, Jonah runs to attack them head on (after noting that Koko smiles in the face of danger) and Lehm shows up to stop him from being killed. Jonah gets a lecture about how he needs to ditch the child soldier mindset since he’s part of the team now and so he runs off with Koko. Orchestra runs off after them as well and the team notes that they need to separate Chinatsu from sharkface since they can’t kill them easily while together. While on the run, Jonah talks with Koko about how weapons can make a person lose reason and Koko is just happy that Jonah finally told her what was on his mind.
Episode 4:
After a flashback of how Chinatsu and her teacher met, we’re thrown back into the action. Orchestra catches up with Koko, as does the rest of her team. Both cars end up totaled though and so the action switches to a shootout. Despite Chinatsu’s warnings though, her teacher ends up dying thanks to Lutz’s sniping skills. She vows revenge on Koko and suddenly a new guy shows up. The asshole kicks Jonah to the water and has Koko arrested. It turns out Scarecrow (the asshole) is from the FBI, but the police let Koko go and cover the whole thing up. 3 days later, Chinatsu scales the roof and Koko has her cornered. Her main question for Chinatsu is why she doesn’t wear pantsu though. The answer is because she shoots better without them (duh, why didn’t I think of that?) and in return, Koko tells her why she sells weapons (not that we get to hear it). Lehm then kills Chinatsu after she attacks Koko and the episode ends.
End Thoughts:
Okay so, I definitely cannot deny that Jormungand has some serious balls. There is so much action! And when I say action, I mean ACTION. Exhibit A: at the start of Episode 4 the opera singer just gets SHOT DOWN. HEADSHOT. SHE IS SHOT IN THE HEAD DURING HER FINAL NOTE. SHE JUST GOES DOWN. IT CAME OUT OF NOWHERE. *breathes* Ahem. Seriously, though. It’s amazing. Everything just happens so fast and there’s never a boring moment. I never thought guns could be so, well, interesting but Jormungand makes it happen. I still cringe every time I see somebody die, but it’s almost worth it in the face of all the badass-ery that goes down. As a viewer, I can definitely say that I’m hooked on what’s going on. Sidenote: How did Valmet not bleed out from her leg? She was still able to shoot at the Orchestra people. How is that even possible…?
Unfortunately, what suffers in the face of all this action is plot. It’s so hard to follow what’s going on. As far as I’m concerned, it’s just a bunch of mindless, albeit exciting, shooting. For example, I don’t understand why there are so many people going after Koko. Besides the fact that she’s an arms dealer, we haven’t been given any other information as to what she’s done to merit such attention. This Orchestra group just came out of nowhere with the intent to kill her but we were never told why they were doing this. Did she sell weapons to the wrong person? Or not sell the goods to them? Not only so, but the same action that makes Jormungand so gripping is also its downfall. It makes it very difficult to follow what’s going on as it all proceeds at breakneck speed with no time to process it all.
Now, with that in mind, we’re starting to get inklings of some sort of plot when it comes to Koko. She comes from an important background, seeing as her father is a figure of authority in global shipping. This begs the question; why would somebody of such an uppity background be involved in arms dealing? Other than the obvious perks that come with such a background (e.g., her treatment by the police in Episode 4) I don’t particularly understand why somebody so young and of such stature would ever desire to sell weapons for a living. If the reaction of the Orchestra lackey was anything to go by, her reason can’t be too good. I look forward to finding why she chose to do so. Either way, I can still understand why she’s girl-crush worthy. Koko’s a bamf.
Well there’s good and there’s bad, but so far Jormungand has been a hell of a ride. I am a complete shotacon for Jonah. The kid is freaking adorable whether he’s shooting people’s brains out or failing at math. …I might be gay for Koko as well. She’s insane for one thing, but she’s such a kick ass leader. Her team follows her pretty unconditionally and there still hasn’t been any backstory, so it’s still a mystery how all of that happened. Jonah opening up to Koko has been done pretty well though. At first it was more of an obligation to stay with her, but as of the latest episode, he’s gone of his own accord to get her and he’s now also opening up about what he thinks. The character progression has been a bit on the fast side, but one could just attribute that to the fast-paced environment, the fact that Koko is pretty open herself, or even just the possibility that more time has elapsed then you’d think. Who even knows how long it’s been since the first episode.
One thing Jormungand absolutely sucks at though is explaining wtf is going on. Episode two was nearly impossible to follow since I had no idea who was who or why they were there. Sure, there was a bit of explanation here and there, but I was very confused even after going through it twice. Why did Koko send them the weaponry anyways? Who the crap were the other people (Mildred and the other two) and how were they involved in the war again? Stuff like that. Maybe I just missed something, but it was still hard to follow. The team movements in episodes 3-4 weren’t really coherent either. When the car crashed, how/when did the team all get out? Also, During the shootout, Orchestra appeared to be completely cornered (or could have been if some more of the team were there), yet Koko and company all ran away. I don’t want a full blown explanation, but even just a couple of words helps.
Stuff Jormungand does well? The action. Despite being confusing, you could hardly call this anime slow. There’s action 24/7/365. The action is animated pretty good as well and while the plot might not be the easiest to follow, the action is easy enough to understand. Also, Jormungand has a pretty awesome cast of characters. While not all of them have had a chance in the spotlight yet, there are little things here and there to differentiate between them. For example, Lutz seems to have a thing against fighting women. Why? No idea. They might not even have a backstory for that, but the fact is that it’s there and I’m impressed by how subtly they incorporated that fact in while not slowing down the action in the least bit. So yeah, there’s good and there’s bad, but let’s see how Jormungand takes off from here…
Preview:
About Tag Team
We live, laugh, enjoy and strictly believe on "more the merrier". When together, we usually come up with very chatty, conversation-based episodics and interesting posts.
POWUH: 700-799 and Parkouring Fanboy with 776 comments
I’m a bit surprised you both like the action so much, because I find it to be quite bad. There’s a lot of it, sure, and plenty of bullets flying around and vehicles being ridden, but the directing is just so poor. There’s no sense of believability in them, and they don’t do it in an over the top that’s-so-cool way. Characters ignore cover, people with handguns get head shots on snipers that are way too far away, and people run at each other shooting while missing with every last bullet, even from point blank. It’s just not fun to watch.
On the other hand, watching Koko has been delightful. I love her happy go lucky attitude to everything, even when she’s throwing tantrums. She’s been what’s made this show worth watching, which is why I think episode 2 was the best of the lot, while 3 and 4 have been boring due to the heavy amount of action in them. I keep watching with hope because the same director did Katanagatari, which was downright horrible for the first 4-6 episodes, but I wonder if a central narrative will develop in Jormungand, much less one with as wonderful a finish as Katanagatari.
POWUH: Meta Team and Megane-chan with 3214 comments
…. To tell you the truth, I think I like the action so much because I’m simple. Give me a show with death and destruction and it will probably be my favourite thing that season regardless of how good it is. That being said though, I just came out of Black Lagoon, which kind of does the over the top-cool thing better, but at the same time, there’s a lot of standing still and bullets miraculously missing. My sense of how realistic these things are is probably off. Never would have noticed the handgun sniper thing if you hadn’t pointed it out.
Koko is the best part to watch. I don’t know how much of a narrative this thing is going to get (if it even gets one at all) since this is split between 2 seasons, but I guess we’ll just have wait and see.
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
Congratulations on finishing your exams and finally feeling some freedom!!!
Guns, guns and more guns. Cover ups, shootouts, intel and back stabbing. This show is pure awesomeness.
Koko is the craziest female lead I’ve seen in a while. Her insanity especially smiling in dangerous situations where others would run and cry speaks for itself. And that smile, I don’t know who I should ship her with: The Joker, Alucard or Izaya Orihara. If I ever see Koko pull that smile on me, I’d get out of there ASAP after throwing everything I have to her and hope that’s enough to appease her. She is also increasing the shotacon meter. I can’t see her saying she considers Jonah a little brother with so much intamacy going on between them.
So far, every character is a top class fruitcake with extra nuts. Especially the girls and I’ve categorized some of them:
Koko: Shotacon and sadist
Chinatsu: Psychotic Pervert, shotacon and stategist (Killing targets without underwear? LOL. How twisted is this girl? She gives Kanbaru a run for her money)
Valmet: Yuri girl
Mildred: Psycho, shotacon and yuri girl (thanks to her crush on Valmet)
If given the chance, I’d send them all over to Overcooled for intense diagnostics. LOL. She’d never have a break, moreover with examining these crazed girls. I wish Chinatsu could’ve joined them instead of being killed like that.
What was well done in this was expressions in the character’s eyes to purely show their personality like Koko’s sadism when she’s playing with peoples’ lives to gain the upper hand, the authority when commanding her team. The shift change in Jonah from soul-less, heartless child soldier acting on impulse to survive to willing guardian type wanting to protect Koko. Valmet loyalty and love for Koko. The psychotic, lustful look in Chinatsu eyes when interrogating and basically telling you she’s going to enjoy slowly killing her next target. That expression, however, can also be seen in Mildred.
POWUH: Meta Team and Megane-chan with 3214 comments
Ahaha the preview song speaks for itself. Yep, Koko is insane, yet strangely endearing. She is dangerous for sure, but I just consider that one of her perks since females generally take the role of standing at the sidelines and commenting on everything that just happened in action anime. Koko still doesn’t do much fighting herself, but her insanity gives her more of a role then just sitting there and being protected by her group of badasses.
lololol in Chinatsu’s case, it might just be a change of posture or something that improved her shooting. …Or it might be some complicated psychological thing where she felt more exposed without her pantsu and therefore was more offensive when shooting at people. Either way though, she’s dead and it doesn’t really matter anymore.
Ahahaha I’d love to see OC diagnose Mildred (she seems like the biggest nutcase of them all). Hmm, I was more expecting Chinatsu to become a big force of antagonism, but it seems like Jormungand favours the episodic stories.
Yeah, the eyes are pretty intense in this anime. The design is pretty much the same, yet they somehow made Chinatsu look absolutely soulless in some scenes. It was brilliant. I still haven’t quite figured out how they managed that yet (I think it had to do with colour intensity), but I am impressed.
POWUH: Metanorn Lover with 243 comments
Still have no idea if Koko is meant to be an antihero or just an amoral protagonist. I don’t really know what’s going on, or what on earth anyone is trying to achieve at any given point. But you know what? Who cares?
POWUH: Meta Team and Megane-chan with 3214 comments
I would like to know more about who’s trying to accomplish what, but in the end, it doesn’t really matter since they only seem to last an episode or so anyways. The show is fun to watch regardless.
POWUH: 1000-1099 and Pirate King with 1048 comments
I feel the same as you, Zabo. They seemed like cartoon-type characters that might’ve been found from a missing episode of Black Lagoon.
I agree mostly with lvlln about the action, but it mostly comes from how bad episode 3’s action sequence was. I thought 1’s was cool and what bits we saw in 2 & 4 were decent.
Koko’s great, she’s the main sell of Jormungand. Lehm is my favorite after that talk he had with Jonah in episode 3, and I kinda like how my perception of Jonah has changed from episode 1. He showed a bit of it in episode 1, but my opinion of him is a little better after the 4th ep as Koko mentions the “coldness and kindness” line about his bullets.
POWUH: Meta Team and Megane-chan with 3214 comments
Hmm… I’m kind of cutting in to your comment with Zabo, but I just figured that they never told us the reason Orchestra was going after them was since Koko said that assassins were always after them. The reason didn’t matter to Koko since it always happens, so it didn’t matter to anyone else. Common sense doesn’t seem to function in their anime world. Personally, I was more curious as to why the guy was killing at the opera in the first place.
Again, I just like seeing blood. How good/ bad and realistic/unrealistic the action is doesn’t matter to me so much as it’s animated well.
Koko is a BAMF and she hasn’t even really done anything action-wise. I think that speaks volumes about her character. Lehm is definitely one of the wiser and more insightful members of the team. Jonah? I’m not sure how he fits in there yet other than Koko’s main bodyguard, but I am liking his character progression as well.
POWUH: Metanorn Lover and NPC #1 with 164 comments
The action was quite easy to follow in the manga. The direction in the anime was just terrible. The scene where the car went for that choice to avoid the whatever gun was just very underwhelming. Same with the moment with the guy got sniped. There was just no momentum built to highlight the scenes which deserves attention.
POWUH: Meta Team and Megane-chan with 3214 comments
Was it? I may have to check that out.
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1557 comments
I’m enjoying the show and the action, it’s fun! I think I’m the opposite of Ivlin, I’m thoroughly enjoying Jormungand and all the action. Even with Katangatari, I liked it from the start. I didn’t really like the ending, but I can respect it.
Other than Koko, none of the cast has made an impression on me. They’re kinda like fodder.
But haha, Chinatsu’s reason for going commando o.O Odd though in the end she decided to wear them. If you’re going for revenge don’t you go all out?
And I finally found out about the loco sentence. I usually skip previews so I was wondering where this phrase was coming from, since people kept quoting it.
And now I know.
POWUH: Meta Team and Megane-chan with 3214 comments
Yeah, I liked Katanagatari from the start as well (though the end had me crying tears of disappointment).
Hmm, maybe because their character traits have been introduced so subtly? They don’t have that much of a personality yet, for sure though.
Yeah, that does seem weird that she wouldn’t go all out. Though if you’re scaling a building, I guess wearing pantsu is a good idea.
Ahaha I think they have another track that’s similar to it that plays sometimes , but yeah, that’s where it comes from xD
POWUH: and Yaoi Fangirl~ with 2320 comments
I have to agree with lvlln. The action is fun, but it just doesn’t make sense at all.
I’ve noticed that the characters are pretty much stereotypes . We’ve seen those kind of characters before, and I’m fine with it. Except the Orchestra. Seriously man, WTF is up with the Orchestra dude? He’s so cheesy as hell. Talking about music? Why are the characters being dramatized during the action? I will never like that aspect of anime.
POWUH: Meta Team and Megane-chan with 3214 comments
Yeah, they do seem a lot like stereotypes. Even Jonah is pretty stereotypical if you break it down to his basic character traits. LOL yeah, the Orchestra guy though. I guess they wanted to get that out there since he was going to die anyways. It’s better to have an over the top character with a personality than one who doesn’t have a personality at all.
POWUH: Meta Team and The Mad Scientist with 5525 comments
First of all, nice to see you girls come back with a bang. I consider confessing your love to both a psycho woman and a little boy to be quite a bang. : > I can see it now…”weekly love confessions to Koko.” Everyone just goes anon in the comments section and confessing their undying love for the crazy almost-albino girl.
I really like Jormungand. I like seeing Koko and Jonah work together, and the flashes of insanity from the other members of her team as well. I’m in it for the carnage and the chaos. I will admit that the action is all over the place (which a lot of the other commenters seem to be saying) but somehow, I don’t mind. I don’t know how, but I’m totally okay with the leaps in logic as long as people are getting shot at, which isn’t always the case for me. Jormungand is just good at senseless violence, I guess.
POWUH: Meta Team and Megane-chan with 3214 comments
LMAO oh god, I did confess my love to a little boy and a psycho woman, didn’t I. Hell, if Koko keeps this up, she could have a full-on harem by the time this season is over.
…Yeah, I don’t mind that this is all over the place either. Though I’m fully willing to admit that as long as there is blood and carnage, I’m a happy viewer and it’s always the case for me.
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
Wow, I haven’t heard any of you swoon over a female character like this since Mirai Nikki’s Yuno Gasai and she was equally psychotic in her way. Both she and Koko are calculated in what they do.
If things stay good, action packed and all over the place like this with so much destruction and casualties, then I won’t mind that there is a lack of plot. There are show that are just there for you to turn your brain off and enjoy the mayhem.
POWUH: Occasional (51-75) with 67 comments
Her name is koko she is loco i said on no
Yeah I would totally name somebody just for that song to be about them.
POWUH: Occasional (51-75) with 67 comments
Oh no*
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
I agree with you on that. That song definitely suits her. *High five*