Jormungand Perfect Order 11-12 [END]

Perfect Order? Close enough.

Happy new years to everyone! And what a way to end the year, with Koko being her usual loco self. …Even though I’m pretty sure this came out around Christmas and episode 11 was out way before that. Anyways, this was a fabulous ending to a fabulous series and they managed to catch the ending right before I was about to leave the show disappointed. …But first, on to 11.

Warmonger

For Jonah’s love of the world, there’s Koko’s hate for it. I was kind of shocked at Koko announcing that she hates the world, but I guess it makes way more sense since it explains why she’s going to so many lengths to change it. Her hate for humanity makes sense too when paired with the fact that Jormungand will make her like a god. She wants to rise above the world’s stupidity, and from the sounds of it, she doesn’t want to be human. Koko wasn’t lying when she said that humanity was lucky when she decided to try to fix the world (though whether or not her plan will actually fix anything is debatable). With that mind of hers, the fact she was born into her position in a weapons company, and the fact that she could fathom something like Jormungand, humanity probably wouldn’t be able to stand a chance if she ever wanted to destroy everything. This was a really interesting insight into what’s going on in Koko’s head and with this, I realize just how great of a character foil she is to Jonah. Where he’s pretty straightforward and honest, Koko is always hiding her thoughts and even her true goals. They were both born and quickly introduced to conflict, but Jonah found himself able to love the world while Koko learned to hate it.

Now that line about Koko hating soldiers who just follow orders and only loving Jonah was interesting. Especially since ‘soldiers that just follow orders’ seem to fit her team’s description pretty well. Of course, after all of the character exposition on them over the past two seasons, I wouldn’t call them just soldiers, but who knows how Koko views them. Even with her saying that though, I just can’t bring myself to think that she feels the same way about her team. I doubt that they could have formed the bond they have if Koko was simply looking down on everyone all the time. Nor do I think she would cry over Echo and R’s deaths or ever bother making sure everyone survived each mission. Her team is certainly useful, but I honestly doubt that she ever saw them as just tools or soldiers. Her team didn’t seem that fazed over her announcement either, so maybe they realize that Koko puts them ahead of every other soldier out there. …Though, then again, maybe it’s just because they’ve always seen themselves as simple soldiers or have just decided to be loyal to Koko no matter what. Well, however Koko really feels, at least her team didn’t break up over that speech other then Jonah leaving.

So Jonah runs from Koko and goes… well, pretty much where he started. It’s back to Kasper with him, only this time, they’re on better terms and Jonah seems to have a bit more life in him. As commented by Kasper, he’s even showing emotions now, which is a huge leap from when they first met (or even when Koko and Jonah first met) …Even if he’s experiencing first hand what Koko is trying to prevent. Koko might not be a saint, but Kasper’s comment on having people killing each other with his weapons being convenient for him to build a pipeline isn’t that great either. It hasn’t been too obvious before, but Kasper is pretty ambitious when it comes to the business. I guess it runs in the family.

Despite Koko getting pretty emotional over Jonah leaving, she did pretty well on going on without him. The Plame is off her trail, Jormungand is progressing smoothly and she even managed to troll the crap out of Bookman. Speaking of which, once again, I’m surprised at how… unthreatening he was as an antagonist. After Hex bit the dust, I was expecting Bookman to become a huge thorn in Koko’s side since his plan was unique in the fact that he wasn’t trying to kill her, but he wanted to control her. The tables completely turned this episode with Koko’s orchestrated event and now it seems like Bookman has fallen completely under Koko’s control. He totally realizes it too, but he’s just too interested in what Koko’s new world will be to really do much about it. Even Rabbit Foot, who was a giant pain the last episode seems to be getting along well now that she has a new quantum computer to work with (or at least according to Minami). Overall, things are running smoothly and efficiently for Koko minus Jonah running away and even then she thinks it will only be temporarily.

Century of Shame

…Of all things to throw at us on the final episode, Jormungand chooses a time skip? Not exactly what I was expecting, but it seems that Koko’s prediction about the water wars became true. I know this is a problem in real life as well, but I can’t help but think it’s a bit counterproductive. A large scale war over water is sure to contaminate quite a bit of it, making the problem even worse. …Back to the original topic, it seems like the world has changed, but the characters haven’t really. Jonah grew a bit taller, and I’d say he a bit more mature now since he’s able to come to an actual decision about where he wants to be in the world.

Though on the other hand, we never saw Jonah’s ‘decision making’ point, so I’m kind of wondering what the whole point of the time skip was. We know that Jonah left Koko to figure himself out, but who knows what was going on in his head. Would he have decided differently if he never went around the world with Kasper? Then again, who else would he work for? We saw this episode that he just can’t let go of guns completely and since he never went to school properly, he couldn’t really find a job elsewhere. Anyways, to the ending of the episode. The ‘welcome back’ speeches were cheesy as hell, but it really affirmed that Koko’s team is like Jonah’s home.

Koko went through a few changes herself though. For one thing, there’s the hair cut. Now cutting your hair in Japan can be this huge symbolic thing about becoming a new person. Paired with the fact that Koko has been actively proclaiming herself as a villain and her new black outfit when she’s predominantly wearing white this whole time, it seemed like Koko was exactly how her character was set up to be in these past few episodes. She definitely came off as a tyrant who would stop at nothing for her goals. However, when Jonah reaches a decision, her wardrobe reverts back to a lighter colour scheme and she’s shown to be the same Koko we’ve always seen. I assume this was all intentional build up and sort of mimics Jonah’s point of view on Koko’s plan. At first he thinks it’s wrong, but in the end, he realizes that Koko’s plans always seem to work out in the end (you have to admit that she has a pretty great track record of getting what she wants). Why was she waiting the two years? …I just assume that she was waiting for Jonah to make his decision. The team just wasn’t the same without him and he might have not come back if Koko went on without him. Not to mention that Koko’s policy seems to be ‘leave no one behind’.

Of all of the people who I expected to be antagonistic to Koko, Kasper was one of the least likely. However, it doesn’t seem like too big of a jump here since we’ve seen a bit more of how he operates since Jonah started travelling with him. No, it wasn’t really a lot, but it was enough to show that he’s ambitious enough to sell weapons despite his sister trying to eradicate them entirely. I imagine that if Jormungand went on, Kasper might become Koko’s biggest threat. Not that he’s a bad person, but he seems to be the only one actively wanting to sell weapons/have anything to do with war at this point. Even more so since their father was only ever mentioned and never actually given a real character. At this point, I’d say that Flyod is more of an embodiment of conflict or something similar instead of an actual person. Though even with that, I’d say that Koko isn’t fighting him as much as she’s fighting the world and how humanity functions.

I was getting worried about the last 10 minutes of the episode where it seemed like absolutely nothing had been resolved, but Jormungand managed to turn it around and make it work for me. The conclusion was extremely open ended, so I guess it’s up to the viewer whether Jormungand actually works or not. There were good points on both sides of the argument. Kasper kind of reaffirmed what I said the last post about people killing each other with pointed sticks if technology was taken away. …I don’t know how profitable selling those would be, but sine he’s willing to continue the arms dealer business even with Jormungand, I’m sure humans would still go to war with one another as well. There’s always something to fight about and there always has been. On the other hand though, if Jormungand is as powerful as everyone seems to make it out to be, then people really don’t have much of a chance of fighting back. Koko will have the last soldiers and many chances of anyone trying to build something to overcome Jormungand could be easily destroyed by it since it’s THE supercomputer. Maybe Koko is underestimating the tenacity of humans a bit, but it certainly would set people back a lot if they suddenly lost access to air technology.

I think a huge hint as to whether it worked out or not is in the name of the episode: Century of Shame. Since Koko talked about humanity not fighting due to being humiliated, perhaps that shame is enough to keep people from fighting for a century. …Either that or a century of shame is what Koko and Jonah both wish for, but either way, the world is going to change because Koko has the power to change it. Even if Jormungand doesn’t work, I’m sure she’ll come up with a new plan to overcome that. I don’t think she’ll ever experience a century of shame herself because Jonah is there to support her, which seemed to be a huge part of the episode since the series chose to end with Jonah’s return and his trust in Koko’s vision. The last line of the series was great. I like that Jonah’s usual line about travelling with an arm’s dealer was changed to ‘Koko Hekamatyr’. With Jormungand in effect, Koko will never have to be an arms dealer ever again and Jonah is okay with that.

I think it was great that they left conclusion open ended. Any story regarding society completely changing is hard to do, so a lot of the time, we’re left with the person giving up their master plan and letting the world run it’s course. Or even in stories where a huge change happened in society, the world usually reverts to how it is in reality on some level at the end. It’s just hard to imagine the world working any other way. Jormungand on the other hand, lets us form our own conclusions. I have mixed feelings with these types of endings since I like closure and it sometimes feels like it’s just a lazy way of ending a story because whoever put the story together just wanted it over with. Jormungand left me with enough to be satisfied though. Maybe it wasn’t super dramatic, and it didn’t really fit in with the rest of the chaos and destruction this series could bring, but since the goal for Koko was world peace, having a feel good ending with a small impact seems… fitting in a way.

Overall? Well, Jormungand started off at 579189235 miles an hour and threw us into Koko’s world without really stopping to explain things. The story became more interesting once the characters had a little more exposition to them, but other then that it was fighting, guns, explosions and more fighting. Then came Perfect Order and Jormungand became great, if only for the fact that Koko’s team became people instead of just a bunch of faces who were good at shooting things. Maybe Lehm didn’t get an episode to himself (which I’m kind of disappointed about), but at the same time, the plot left us with enough hints so that he does have an actual character to him. The same goes for Lutz, though the Chinatsu arc was probably the closest to giving us his character backstory. Moving on to the main duo, Koko’s plan was pretty badass and Jonah was a great mix of innocent kid and lethal child soldier. It was great to see him open up to Koko as the series progressed. I feel like I’m talking about the characters a lot, but really, I’d say that Jormungand was more character driven and the plot only really was important the last couple episodes. There were a few hints of Jormungand in the episodes before the end, but the focus has always really been on Koko’s team and what they’re doing. In the end, I’m a bit sad over Jormungand ending, but with the way they ended it, I think I might be disappointed if it went on from here. Of course I’d watch it if there was more Jormungand, but I’m quite fond of the vision of Koko’s team heading off into a bright new future.