Jormungand

First off, for a "gun" anime, its knowledge of firearms and firearms users is incredibly poor. Sure, it names off things, but for the most part, *real gun users use nicknames in combat*. It makes for incredibly clunky dialogue, where they shout out "He's got a Negev LMG" or "Mi 24 Hind D" said out in full. They'd say, "Hind, take cover!" or "Target, machine gunner, 9 o'clock". There's no addressing the amount of bullets one can carry (in episode four the bad guy guns down an entire opera house with what looks like one nutsack, and that does not hold enough to gun down ... as many people as shown with one shot-one kill, let alone firing like a moron), there's no tactics, people take stupid shots (god knows how many times they shoot at held guns, a stupid shot to take under almost any circumstance), and nothing in it gives the idea that the people who made the show or manga have any knowledge of guns beyond their statistics.

If you think that's semantics, it's because good gunplay (if it was there) would be the only saving grace, seeing as the writing is atrocious. The females are otaku-bait, everyone's a philosopher (and a bad one at that), talking is always a free action in supposedly high-pitched gunfights, the three storylines shown thus far are worse than Black Lagoon at its most ridiculous, and it just has nothing going for it.

Trust me, I wanted to like this show. I wanted a good gun show to come out. But this is far from it. Hell, High School of the Dead was better about its guns. And when you lose to HSotD at anything other than pantyshot counts and size of boobs, you know you aren't doing well.

Of all the crap anime I’ve seen over the past year or so, Jormungand is the one that never seems to leave my mind in regards to how bad it was, despite it ending more than six months ago. Every time I think of it, I go back to my MAL, decided I ranked it too high, and lower my score by one point whilst ignoring the fact that everyone else seems to think the anime was cool. For the love of me, I still don’t get what people see in this show. Saying you like Jormungand is like saying you think the original One ... anime is the best thing to ever come out of Key. Newsflash people, “nobody likes the One anime”. Being one of three or four people who feels that way doesn’t help I’ll admit, but I don’t think I’ve ever been as opposed to most people in regards to anime opinions, nor have I had as hard a time finding something to praise, as I have with this crap.

How badly do I think of Jormungand you may ask? Well both seasons are currently ranked a “1″ on my MAL right now and unfortunately there’s no way it can go any lower despite my best efforts to make it so, and I don’t think there are any scores low enough for the show anyways. Or to put it in more concise terms, I would rather marathon everything by KyoAni and Shaft (good or bad) then have to sit through this shit show ever again!

I am seriously confused in regards to what to recommend about this show in any way. Normally I don’t mind recommending stuff like Eureka Seven or Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 despite the fact that I don’t like them just because others may see differently. Hell, I’ll even recommend Robotics;Notes or Psychic School Wars if people want it so badly. But Jormungand is just plain useless without a single thing to recommend. What good thing am I supposed to say about this show?

Well I guess there’s the music. It’s composed by Taku Iwasaki, who composed the soundtrack for Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure and Gurren Lagann as well as the currently airing Gatchaman Crowds, although I can’t remember the BGM for that one. Can’t remember what it was like for this anime either, but I remember it being okay aside from that “her name is Koko” crap. Needless to say, it’s not his best work. And I guess if you want me to be really nice, it’s cool to see Jormungand tackle a topic that isn’t done by most anime. But just because something isn’t in high school doesn’t mean it’s good, and it definitely doesn’t help when Jormungand feels like it was created by hacks who’ve never seen an action movie or read an action story in their life.

First off, the arms dealing is vastly under researched and not realistic in the least. Episode 2 literally had Koko and her group going to an army camp and dealing the weapons out like they were street vendors or something. One of the big advantages that Jormungand has in tackling the arms dealing topic is that because it’s not done very often, the average person wouldn’t know that what Jormungand is showing you is a load of crap. I’ve actually seen some people try and excuse this by telling me “it’s a fictional story”, but I don’t buy that. Now and Then, Here and There is a fictional story, but the guy who wrote it made sure that he accurately captured the torment and suffering that child soldiers go through in war, even if it got way too exploitative and manipulative for me to enjoy in the end. I also wouldn’t call Black Lagoon realistic, as it skews more to the action movie agenda, but the weapons were all carefully researched (I’m not sure about this, but from what I’ve read, there are several gun facts stated in the show that are inaccurate) and any arms dealing that takes place in that show is done in semi-realistic professional manner rather than whatever goofy antics Koko cooks up that we’re supposed to find endearing.

And that leads me to my next problem with Jormungand. So the arms dealing isn’t realistic. An anime can still be fun despite that right? Well, maybe if the show didn’t try to push it so hard and yet treat it like a total joke I could. The combination of anime cliches (sleepwalking, bad cooking, oh look at me I’m so wacky) with the grittiness of the gun market is absolutely abysmal. First off, the premise of the show is that a kid who hates arms dealers somehow ends up working for one, and a teenage girl at that. And he never really questions his choices or anything like that. That is a goddamn stupid premise you’ve got right there, but it might have been tolerable if the show didn’t treat it like an absolute joke or if there was some solid writing and good characters, of which there are none. All of the characters are completely forgettable one-note jokes who are only important when the plot calls for, and then lose importance right afterwards with no real development whatsoever. It’s basically the equivalent of what would happen if Angel Beats actually gave focus to TK or Shiina or any of those other joke characters: completely pointless and a waste of episodes whilst not progressing the story. Did you know that when that Red character got his own arc and died, I didn’t know who the fuck he was? Hell, I know fans who didn’t know who he was at first. That’s a sign of good writing.

Seriously, I can’t remember a single antagonist in this series besides that one rival to Valmet. And I only remember her (and Valmet herself) because Valmet wore an eyepatch and was the only other female in the group, which is not a good sign. As for Jonah and Koko, all I have to say is laaaaammmmmeeee. I’ve written before that Jonah never actually underwent any real growth along with why I felt that way, and the more I think about it, the more I realize that Koko didn’t either. Nothing changed between the two and they weren’t even all that interesting to begin with due to Jonah’s repressed emotions and Koko’s bad combination of grittiness and anime comedy. Whatever praise you could shower on them is mostly memetic aka the same source of praise given to L-Elf. As I also stated in that post, the writing is absolute pointless garbage with an ending so bad I actually wished for the Gundam 00 guys to save me. It was literally one of the worst open-ended things I have ever seen, period. The ending to Kare Kano was better than that.

Also since I want to pick on a low-hanging fruit that even the fans acknowledge, what the fuck is up with the action scenes in this show? The first episode alone had a car chase scenario where the vehicles looked like they were going at 35 MPH and it just got worse from there. Hell the animation for the entire show is unacceptable when compared to Flowers of Evil or even anime around 2001. The bodies are awkwardly drawn and the CG is laughable in every aspect of the word. There are literally fight scenes where the characters run up to each other and fire guns from ten feet away, and yet they don’t hit each other. Explosions that occur are phoned in and have less of a threat than the green screen stuff in Mortal Kombat Annihilation. The plot armor is so inconsistently bad that it breaks all tension from the fights and what should be cool scenes end up boring me more than anything Bee Train could muster. Give me a reason to care about these action scenes Jormungand. Introduce some tension. Make them cool to look at. Don’t introduce more plotholes than the new Spider-man movie (episodes 3 and 4 were just painful).

Jormungand was never a fun anime to watch, not even ironically. It’s one of the biggest wastes of time I’ve ever seen and I have no qualms with saying that Sword Art Online, Guilty Crown, Clannad, and Psycho-Pass are much better watches. Or if you want a good action anime, watch Darker than Black or Black Lagoon. Even the original Hellsing was far better put together than whatever crap Jormungand could come up with. Hell watch almost any anime aside from this turd, because there’s nothing to recommend. The premise sucks. The action sucks. The characters suck. The pacing sucks. The writing sucks. The comedy sucks. The animation definitely sucks. If was to do a Tribute from a Hater on this thing, I’d only be able to praise the fact that its topic is unique. But that’s like praising a businessman in the transportation industry for suggesting we should invent teleporters, yet not having a single clue how to implement them.

This has got to be one of the most ridiculous animes I've seen in awhile. The gun battles are just terribly sad and the dialog is something you'd expect from a little kids cartoon. Yet this anime has a R17+ rating. What exactly is their target audience? I suppose if you live on an island completely isolated from firearm ownership you might fool them into thinking you cant hit someone running straight at you a stones throw away with an ak-47 but come on! You cant have that same character turn and shoot some snipers off a building like it was nothing and expect me ... to disconnect my brain and ignore that! This... This is just too absurd to watch.

Action anime akin to Jormungand are tough to come by, and very rarely any good. Based on a manga of the same name, Jormungand is an adventure through mediocrity not exactly going to appeal to action fans, nor fans of much else. Its’ boring characters, lame action, and unexplained everything compound to become an anime that is very rarely entertaining, let alone exciting.

Jonah is a boy soldier whose friends were killed in some sort of warzone. He winds up killing those who killed his friends, consequently becoming a murder machine. He is picked up by Koko Hekmatyar, a very cunning young arms dealer. He becomes ... her bodyguard, one of many bodyguards as a matter of fact. He joins the ranks of nine shunned or fallen military heroes (and one Mafioso) who, as a unit, protect Koko from all kinds of baddies including assassins, mobsters, militiamen, and pirates.

The episodic nature of the show does provide for a wide array of stories, but none of them are particularly appealing. None of the episodes truly stand out in my mind as they were all fairly straight-forward in story. Jormungand continually uses flashbacks as a means to dole out plot but the flashbacks are very overused. The various members of Koko’s group don’t have particularly entertaining, nor inventive, pasts; one woman’s entire squadron was killed and she wants revenge on the man who did it, there’s a guy who was the lone survivor when Koko took on the mafia, and another was blamed for something he didn’t do. None of it is anything you haven’t watched or read before.

What really bothers me about the show more so than its lackluster plot is how, while we see a lot of minor character background, we never see any of Koko’s background. Questions are brought up during the show of why she became an arms dealer, but the answer she gives is never heard by the audience, instead we are treated to a well-timed rush of wind. That, to me, is not good story telling. I feel like the writer couldn’t actually come up with a reason so makes it a secret, hoping it makes the character look more mysterious. And while Koko is certainly mysterious, the lazy storytelling doesn’t particularly add to it, more so it detracts from the overall experience.

Another huge problem with the story is how Koko gets the arms she sells, where she gets all her money, and how she has military aircraft, among other things. While there is that small mention of her father, we are given no idea as to why she became an arms dealer and how she does it. Instead the story decides to skip what I assume the writer thought would be the boring details and get straight into the action.

This could be okay if the action wasn’t so gosh-darned dumb. Take for example the group’s battle against Orchestra. If you haven’t seen Jormungand allow me to set the scene:

Koko and Jonah hide behind a wall at the end of a plaza. Orchestra, a man and girl team, shoot at them wildly from the center of the plaza. Lehm, an older man and sniper, is to Orchestra’s side with a silenced pistol. Instead of surprise attacking them from the side as they shoot at Koko and Jonah, he waits until they have time to pick up a riot shield and can block the shots. On top of that, why isn’t the group’s sniper…sniping? Take a briefcase upstairs, put the weapon together in perhaps thirty or even twenty seconds if he’s as good as he’s made out to be, and kill Orchestra.

These lapses in logic truly destroy the action sequences for me.

And while we’re on the subject of Orchestra, I’d love to point out the demeaning view of women that seems to permeate Jormungand. I don’t know if anyone else felt the way I did, but I found the show to be…like it was written by a fifteen year old boy. The most disturbing instance of demeaning women comes in the form of the young girl who is part of Orchestra. Her story is that she had to go through a river to kill some men, and it was uncomfortable wearing wet panties, so she decided to take them off and found that she shot better without them on. So, apparently, she wears skirts and no panties much to the chagrin of the viewer. But nobody in the show seems to be embarrassed by this as it is played as a joke.

And if that’s not enough to make you feel embarrassed, then allow me to continue. Koko and Valmet are obvious lesbians and, while nothing explicit is shown, they sleep in the same room in their underwear much of the time. Sometimes it even feels like the same bed. While I’m not offended by lesbians in an anime I’m more so offended by how bipolar the characters are made out to be. In public they are demonic badasses but in private they are always shown either half naked or naked and in some form of lesbian context.

On top of that, the female counterpart to the CIA agent following Koko around is a ditzy, borderline idiotic, person. Also, don’t forget Karen. Completely subservient to her master, she will do anything for him and, despite being shunned from his graces, she comes back to him again and again. Also add the fact that the characters are typically depicted in some form of the nude, from going to the bathroom, to sleeping, to going to the beach, and the male characters even try to feel up one of the character’s breasts.

If those three paragraphs aren’t enough to convince you that this show has a demeaning view of women, even with a woman as the main character, then I don’t know what will. There is no particularly strong female character that isn’t without some sort of lesbian tendency or something silly like that. It just feels wrong.

Something else really embarrassing (one of a plethora of things it seems) is the fact that in a couple episodes, countries aren’t given names. Instead, they are called Country A or something generic like that; as if somebody was supposed to fill that in with an either real or fake name. It’s very bad storytelling and, truthfully, lame. Nothing detracts from a show attempting to showcase realistic action than a lackluster ability to portray that realness. We know they’re in Eastern Europe somewhere, but instead of play off of tensions in that area of the world currently, Jormungand creates a generic and easily dismissed story. It’s, as I’ve stated before, lazy storytelling.

And one last example of lazy storytelling while I’m on the subject. The random meetings of the arms dealers, coincidental meetings in different parts of the world, are really unneeded and I guess are meant to portray tension between two enemies. The problem with this being that while it is okay the first time, showing the characters again just to remind us they are there isn’t particularly appealing. There are a few characters with recurring roles but none of them are ever used to their full potential, nor are any of them exciting enough to care about.

Lazy writing is what Jormungand comes down to. I’m a big fan of Tom Clancy, Brad Thor, Alex Berenson, and Robert Ludlum; thriller books with plots kind of like Jormungand. The difference between Jormungand and the rest is that Jormungand is poorly researched, poorly written, and comes across less as realistic and violent and more so as a pointless, piece of crap anime. One of the only commendable things about it is the fact that Jonah’s child-like behavior in some parts is good characterization of an otherwise demonic child soldier. But the rest is unbelievably dense and stupid. I can’t help but think that a horny teenaged boy with a violence fetish wrote this, perhaps consulting the few news programs he’d seen in the past five years, Google Maps, and a few crappy books and movies as research material.

While I found the animation and sound to be good, I did take issue with the very idiotic tone shifts. What I mean by that is the whole episode will be serious, like an episode of Ghost in the Shell. Not a lot of comedy, more so a serious story being told. But sometimes Jormungand will inject these cartoony images, such as all of Koko’s killers having red eyes. Because telling us they are killers isn’t a good enough indication that they may be dark characters, I need them to suddenly become the vampires from Shiki. And then there are moments where all the characters say the same thing simultaneously or go into a silly little laugh like the end of a bad sitcom. And I’m not complaining that the anime is being a cartoon, because I understand that the 2D images on my screen are, in fact, cartoons. But such tone shifts are unpleasant and take away from how serious the anime is. I mean, I can’t take such stupidity seriously anyway, but the few people who are bound to take it seriously will at least be offset by these moments.

Jormungand isn’t particularly good in any way. It’s very poorly executed story compounded with the inherent sexism and sometimes God awful dialogue makes it a very dull show to watch. It innovates in no way, and it comes across as a young boys fantasy more so than an adventure for the ages.

If you do like Jormungand, there is good news for you. There will be a second season this fall.

And bad news for the rest of us, there will be a season two.

I'm usually pretty lenient with anime that I can turn my brain off to, but this series takes the cake for being worse that painfully mediocre. This has been on my plan to watch list for ages because this looked/seemed interesting. Let's just say I've never been so baffled by a series with a semi-decent rating be so bad.

Art/Animation/Visuals (1/10):
This was comically bad at times. There have been plenty of reviews shitting on the gun play and how it's not right. That aside, characters designs are average at best. Animation is lazy 80% of the time which is painfully bad for a show like ... this where action and fights should be the highlight.

Plot (2/10):
What plot? I'm okay with one-shot types series where each episode is not linear to the next, but holy shit. I doubt there was a single moment where an arms deal actually happened. It almost always turns to shit and looks like hell.

Characters (2/10):
They're all cardboard boxes honestly. Koko is hands down the worst, which is bad for the main. character. Quirky, crazy, loco Koko doing her shenanigans again! Gimme a break

Sound: (4/10)
The opening is cringe. It's painful to listen to. That aside, the OST isn't the worst thing I listened to. I can't rate it any higher though since nothing visual is entertaining enough to match the audio.

Overall (2/10):
So. This was 4 hours of my time I am never getting back. If you want interesting gun fights or an actual plot, hell, High School of the Dead does a better job. Please don't waste your time.

PLEAS PAY ATTENTION I AM TRYING TO SAVE YOU

Some reviews are (must be ) sarcastic fake trolling like review from "arch_nightmare" imagine everything that he wrote but opposit and that is real Jormungand

Dont do the same mistake that i did watching reviews thinking "this cant be bad right?", well it is shitshow it was pain to watch i have personal rule to watch what i started to the end no mater how bad it is but i barely finished this one.

"i know the names of weapons i am cool" every time some gun starts shooting someone will say " they are fireing from (name of ... the gun) on us" it is okay to use that two-three times but all the time it gets cringy and stupid i mean if someone is shooting on you from machine gun do you really need to say in the heat of battle "they are shooting on us from M1919 Browning machine gun".
Story is childish, anime literally has 3% to do with arms dealing. Gunfights are boring and so bad and unrealistic that you must have talent to achieve that level of "bad", 90% of gunfights are just static animations of people shooting while laying down or while standing and it switches from good guys to band guys there is no tactical movement or anything to make the fight interesting or intense, you can skip 5 minutes of gunfights and you would not miss anything because after some time you realize that no one important can die, they are important for the story like ads when you watch youtube video.

Therm "arms dealer" in this anime has nothing to do with real arms dealers, here they all have personal mini army and every character in group of one dealer is literally the same like in group from another arms dealer just different name and look, personality and abilities are the same and you get some stupid short poorly written story about some them that does not make you care more about character than before you know their "story".

If you expect any intellectual content like arms dealers outsmarting each others or police dont watch this, you might like this if you are 10 years old if you are not just go on some other anime dont experiment with this one it really is bad just as i said on the beginning read "arch_nightmare" review and then imagine is says everything opposit, he really did good job with sarcastic review i am little mad because it was one of those that made me start watching this but in the end "it is just a prank bro".

The first season of Jormungand is not very good. The animation is uninspired, and the character designs leave much to be desired. The narrative is not particularly interesting, failing to engage the viewer, and the pacing is somewhat inconsistent. The worst part is that it is boring. Despite being labeled as an action series, there is very little of it. The fights are nonsensical and lack any emotional impact. Ultimately, the anime lacks a clear purpose and fails to excel in any aspect. It's not technically a bad series, but it definitely is not a good one. Jormungand is a painfully average anime that offers ... little to captivate viewers.

I began watching Jormungand with very low expectations.

I wasn't searching for a fascinating story or complex characters. I just wanted to watch some fun, badass action.

Jormungand failed to even meet these low standards.

I guess I should start by saying that this anime wasn't offensively bad: it was just boring. It took all of my willpower just to click the play button for the next episode, and I would often leave it untouched for weeks at a time.

For something so centered around action and weaponry, the combat scenes were dull. The occasional knife fight could be entertaining, but Jormungand mostly consists of confusing gunfights with ... zero creativity. We just get to watch bright lights (bullets! missiles! bombs!) hitting things... or missing things... and people hiding behind walls to avoid getting hit by the aforementioned bright lights. It is anything but dynamic.

I understand that the creators may have wanted to maintain realism in their action sequences, and this might have been fine if there were a good story backing it up. However, the story is hardly even there until the last few episodes, and what we're given is hardly anything interesting. It's a revenge story (arc?), made flimsy by one-dimensional characters whom I did not care for at all. And a revenge story only works if the characters are complex, flawed, and intrinsically human, so that we might actually care about watching them carry out their vendetta. (See: Cowboy Bebop). It doesn't help that Jormungand was grasping for straws when it came to incorporating a theme or "profound" question, and landed on something blatantly shallow, while simultaneously lacking the proper subtlety to pull it off.

There is a wide cast of characters, and I can only remember the names of three of them. The cast was too big, there were too many side characters who contributed nothing important to the show, while still having some of their backstories jammed into the twelve episodes. I enjoyed their antics and quirks, but I was never able to really care about any of them.

I did like the weapons-dealing aspect, which could be intense and even thought-provoking at times. I might have enjoyed it a whole lot more if I knew anything about weapons, or if the show had provided deeper explanations of the conflicts that called for the weapons in the first place, such as motives for the opposing armies and whatnot.

I just DIDN'T care about Jormungand. I didn't even care enough to hate it. It's just kind of there. I'm sure there's plenty of people who love it; I'm just not one of them.

The story is just garbage. The author has no idea about arms dealing, guns, military operations, or even how organizations function. There are lots of overrated shows on MAL, but this has to be one of the most blatant examples.

Seriously, in the first episode the arms dealers get shot at by the military to prevent them from delivering weapons. Makes sense right? Except, the military that's shooting at them are the ones that ordered the weapons. And they're not doing it for any sensible reason like skipping out on paying. They're actively trying to prevent the delivery of the weapons THEY ALREADY PAID FOR. Not ... because they don't want to pay anymore, but because they want to ensure they remain WEAKER than their neighboring countries.

Then in the second episode, the dealers head out to deliver the weapons to a low-level unit commander directly in the middle of a battlefield. Like large-scale international arms dealers are some sort of door-to-door salesmen that go out of their way to sell peanuts to small fry who don't have the authority to pay in the first place. And they do it in a location where they have a high chance of being shot at for no reason, because there wouldn't be an excuse for some unrealistic action otherwise.

It seems to only be getting worse from here, so I dropped it. If you're just looking for some action, and have the coveted ability to turn off your brain's ability to reason, then you might like this. However, if you're expecting something even remotely realistic from a supposedly Seinen show, do yourself a favor and skip this one.

I saw this anime in recommendations after finishing Black Lagoon and Gunslinger Girl. Both shows have unique charm and are very enjoyable so I thought Jormungand would offer similar entertainment.
Story is cheesy like most of action shows: protagonists are involved in dangerous business, threats are everywhere and gunfights occur frequently.
Art is allright, some landscape scenes are outstanding.
Though voice acting and sounds of weapons are great, most of music is very unfitting to gunfights which lowers enjoyment.
Variety of characters is the strongest point of this show, all of them are very lively and show their attributes. Their interactions are most of the time amusing ... to watch and each one has an obsession (for example obsession with butterflies) and all of them are quirky.
Sadly, I didn't manage to enjoy the show. I expected the show to have cheesy action scenes but they lack in thrill and tense which make them boring: most of the time some unfitting song playing in background while protagonists get attacked and after some time either enemies decide to make a stupid move which gets them gunned down or some protagonist goes banzai and kills everyone without a stretch, there is no element of surprise which makes fights more interesting or danger that protagonists may die, that ruined my enjoyment and no matter how much I liked characters and other elements, I couldn't have enjoyed the show. Another sad thing is that many characters were given too few time, for example two assassin crews were very interesting and too bad they got so little time, there is enough of material for each crew.
Enjoyment ruined my rating of this show, even though there might be some deeper ideas in the show (for example dangers of getting involved with illegal business and how that affects on people, especially what kind of people is in that business), they aren't easy to find because it's difficult to focus on uninteresting show.

Starting Jormungand after Black Lagoon and Gunslinger Girl made me expect cheesy and thrilling fun with some charm, not sure was it a good thing because the show didn't match my expectancy, though I might have missed some things because poorly made action scenes annoyed me.

Jormungand is one of the very few shows that I've actually dropped. I went into this expecting something decent, but instead, I've found something less enjoyable than Ex-Arm.

Story 2

From the 2 episodes I valiantly fought my way through, the story seems to be an incoherent mess. The plot is awful and feels like it was written by a middle schooler. My son was writing better scripts straight out of the crib. The tone flip-flops between pseudo-comedy and trying to be serious so often that it feels like the characters (and possibly writers) are schizophrenic.

Art 3

Everything in this show is ugly or forgettable. The ... characters, the backgrounds, the music. Koko whatsherface looks like a frog, and the kid looks like an FMA scar clone.

Sound 1

I gave it a two originally but deducted a point because of the Op, a song that often haunts my dreams. The explosions sound like they are straight out of Roblox, and all of the other music just sounds like hot garbage. At first, I thought I was listening to an industrial accident before it clicked that this was a soundtrack that someone somewhere thought sounded good.

Character 2

Characters all either look the same, or look flat-out stupid. Jonah Hill looks like a mini-Scar, and Koko Liebenshitter reminds me of a frog. The characters are just as 2d and flat as the art. The 2nd scene in the show just reveals the motivations behind mini-Scar. He doesn't like guns because his parents were shot or something. Yeah, thrilling character traits.

Koko is the worst character in any show.

I hate her. Every time the show seems like it's taking itself seriously for a second, she provides some asinine comment or rolls around on the ground like a lunatic. It drives me up the wall and ruins any gravity that the horrible plot might have generated. All the other characters are useless and boring.

Enjoyment 1

There isn't any to be had unless you are a lobotomy victim.

Reading all of the reviews is pretty funny, though.

Overall 1

I'm going to hunt down whatever joker recommended me this show. Fr tho it sucks.

I like anime with plenty of action, whether it’s about guns, explosions, and close combat, especially modern ones. That’s why I was eager to try out Jormungand. Sadly, I ended up mostly disappointed. I really tried liking it, but the issues became bigger and more numerous with each episode. I don’t regret watching it, but I don’t think I’ll do it again. The show had a good idea, but the execution was terrible because of bad story, pacing, boring characters, lack of character growth and arcs, and a bad ending.

Story & setting

The story focuses on Koko Hekmatyar and her group of mercenaries travelling around the ... world illegally selling weapons and military equipment. It’s a dangerous business where you must keep a close eye on everyone, where allies and customers can quickly become enemies. The story takes place at various places around the world, including Africa, Europe, and Asia. I know this is a Japanese anime, but I was a bit annoyed with everyone speaking Japanese, including Americans and Africans. I wish the darker aspects of being an arms dealer could have been explored. For example the fact that Koko’s weapons may be used to kill innocents. Everyone in Koko’s group seems perfectly fine with being a bodyguard to one of the most wanted arms dealers in the world.

A big issue I had with the anime is that there’s no overarching plot. Many episodes are simply slice of life settings for Koko and her group. They take on various assignments and meet all kinds of customers, with some being more dangerous and shady than the others. You can watch some of the episodes in random order and you wouldn't be able to tell. You can even skip entire episodes without missing anything. Occasionally there’s a short arc that spans over two episodes instead of one. There’s also a fan service scene where the guys and the girls go to the beach, which of course leads to bikini shots and ogling.

The characters.

The first of the main three characters is the arms dealer Koko. She has no moral compass and thus has no problem selling weapons to the mafia, rebels, dictators, and various military groups. She doesn't care what her goods are used for, as long as she gets paid. Sure, Koko is at times a bit funny and quirky, but you don’t really get to know who she is. Only small details of her background are briefly mentioned. Even Koko’s own henchmen admit that they don’t really know her, as she keeps all secrets and history to herself. I was annoyed a few times that she always smiled no matter what. She never got surprised or shocked. She didn’t feel very human to me and it was impossible to relate to her.

The second main character is the child soldier Jonah, who hates weapons and that they’re used for killing. He’s a big hypocrite, because he uses weapons all the time to murder people. He also hates those who sell weapons, yet he has no problem travelling together with one of the world’s most famous arms dealers. While Koko is charming, outspoken and extroverted, Jonah is reserved, shy, blunt, and introverted. We learn a bit more about his background than Koko’s, but not enough to make him that interesting. In most scenes he’s just “there”, having no real purpose.

Both Koko and Jonah are bad main characters because they have no character arcs or growths. They’re the exact same characters as they are at the beginning and the end. Since Jonah hates weapons and arms dealers, I would have liked if there was some sort of conflict between Jonah and Koko, but there is none of that. He does ask a single time in a normal manner why she sells weapons, and she ignores his question. Koko treats Jonah like a caring, big sister, often hugging and teasing him.

The third main character is the deadly, sexy, one-eyed, female soldier Valmet, who is Koko’s most loyal subordinate. Perhaps the writers did not intend it when they wrote the script, but I found Valmet to be the most interesting character and main protagonist of the show. She gets plenty of flashbacks, internal thoughts, a character arc and growth.

The series has a character bloat. We're introduced to too many protagonists, villains, and supporting ones, but none of them get any real depth or focus thanks to the bad storytelling and limited episodes. Some characters are in one or two episodes before going away or dying. There were a few that interested me, but unfortunately they didn't get the focus that I hoped for. The lack of interesting character focus and developments is the second reason why I didn’t like this anime.

Action

Of course I gotta write about the action, which is a big part of the anime. I had mixed thoughts on it. The weapons look very detailed, but they have no recoil and almost infinite ammo. There’s a couple of cool close quarters and knife fight scenes. I found it a bit silly when characters called out what weapons they were seeing in the middle of fights. For example someone says “That guy is using a Negev LMG!” Or, “Up there, a Mi-24V Hind E gunship with thermal sensors!” That’s dialogue just for the gun nerds.

Koko's soldiers must have super powers that stop bullets from reaching them, because I was annoyed that in almost every action scene none of them got killed or seriously hurt. The only exceptions are Valmet being wounded twice. At several scenes Koko’s gang are outnumbered by enemy soldiers who have worse aim than stormtroopers, while Koko's gang quickly and expertfully gun them down. Even at very close ranges, trained enemy soldiers with automatic rifles are unable to hit someone right in front of them. Another stupid scene is where some of Koko’s members are in sitting in a regular, non-armored car and they get fired upon by a heavy caliber machine gun just a few meters away, and still none of them suffer a single injury! I felt that was quite immersion breaking. I felt there was no tension. I never had to worry about anyone dying, not that it wouldn’t matter because you barely get to know most of the characters. I was disappointed that the final fight with Valmet, one that was built up over several episodes, happened offscreen.

Music:

I didn’t find the music to be any special. The opening soundtrack however is quite good and catchy.

Jormungand is an attempt to create a new Black Lagoon but just from the pilot episode you get a more than lazy shot at it. The exposition is stupid, the dialogues are stupid, and the characters are… well, you know. Not that Black Lagoon was exactly an intelligent show (it was just throwing in a few poor monologues around the cruel way the world works) but at least it had great production values and slightly better dialogues to have more fun with. This on the other hand is making you think it was written by a very angry kid who likes to play cops and ... robbers. Not that it was their fault entirely if the source material, the manga, was dumb to begin with.

Animated by studio White Fox, which is very new to the field; only 4 titles so far. They don’t have a huge budget to do miracles but they always offer and above average result. Two of their anime received very positive feedback (Katanagatari, Steins;Gate) so it is definitely a studio that can offer quality material. Their latest work definitely looks nice but that is as far as it goes; it doesn’t pay much attention to secondary details and this tends to make it feel artificial if you see past the obvious. The direction is done by Motonaga Keitaro, whose roster is nothing but bellow average harems, and as an exception he also directed Katanagatari, one of the best troll comedies ever. Although even there it was mostly the original script that did the work and not so much his talent. He is clearly not someone to look forward to watching his work.

So, aside from being a Black Lagoon wannabe, is the show anything else? Well, sort of, its theme also gives of vibes close to The Lord of War (live action film with Nicolas Kage) and Gundam 00. The premise has to do with a group of arms dealers, who make bargains with several shady operations and their reason for that is not just profit but also to end wars faster, if they are offered to the right people. So they are constantly up against merciless warlords and war mongers, as well as fighting numerous military groups for a race to whom gets to make a deal with whom faster and better.

As cool and smart as the premise sounds though, its execution is completely retarded. Just like a typical show with shootouts, it is hardly realistic and you get the usual “Heroes beat a hundred elite soldiers without a single injury” type of theme. It is not a problem if it can make up for it with great production values or amazing battle choreographies, yet sadly it fails even there. Most things that happen in this show make you feel like they are useless, stupid, forced, or even done invisibly instead of being shown. Here is a list regarding the messy stuff I found.

1) Show; don’t tell. A lazy method of plot exposition is when the characters are using explanatory monologues to reveal new information. In a medium that uses both image and sound it is best to show them instead to simply tell them. A variation of this is when something is actually shown on screen and yet the character tells us about it anyhow, as if the scriptwriter is afraid we are too stupid to get it. Most fighting shounen anime are guilty of this, as there will always be spectators commenting on everything and even describing what just happened. So in this case the heroine is constantly making rhetorical questions of the sort “It’s the military? Are they chasing us? Is he laughing?” The answer is of course obviously yes to everything and it is plain stupid to even have them there. I mean, it’s an action show for crying out loud; there is nothing philosophical worth of talking about it. Instead of having a character saying “I am shooting at the bad guys” just showing us, him, shooting at them, is more than enough to get it. If not, it is the director’s fault for not investing enough time and proper camera angles into making it understood. Yet most of whatever they are doing in this show is nothing but a lame attempt at pointing their fingers at whatever is going on instead of just letting it happen.

2) Walk; don’t jump. The directing is messy to the point no scene seems to last as much as it needs. They either skip very important stuff or stick too much on useless info. An example is the no-pantsu girl, a minor villain who gets several flashbacks as means to explain why she became an assassin or why she doesn’t wear underwear. And guess what, nothing of what they show makes any sense. They dedicate almost a whole episode on her and we still have no idea why she became an assassin or why she didn’t get new underwear all this time. And you think all that were perhaps important to flesh her out and be likable thereafter? You would be mistaken since we never see her again after those episodes. SO WHAT’S THE POINT?

3) Explain; don’t imply. As if that wasn’t enough, they also chose to leave lots of important events taking place out of screen. There are multiple accounts where a warrior taking out several opponents without showing us how. There will be deals being resolved without ever showing us how they used diplomacy to make a contract. There will be escapes from certain doom without showing us the method they used to survive. This is not just about skipping things that may seem unimportant in the long run. It is making them feel unimportant exactly because they don’t show them. It is also making the whole show run on magic convenience if you can kill elite fighters and convince veterans to change their minds and not kill you, without even bothering to show how you do it. It is an action show for crying out loud (again) you make it interesting by showing such things.

I have heard by some that the above is not really a problem as it is supposed to offer plot twists and thus keeping you excited exactly by having lots of sneak actions taking place out of screen. We are supposed to think “Whoah, these guys use smart tactics”. That is not working very well though for two reasons. First, their tactics are taking place and are resolved way too fast to build up and matter, and secondly, this is a dumb action show with shallow ideology, where having such things is only making the whole show feeling stupid.

4) Make it exciting; not expected. Then it’s the whole importance of the missions. Aside from rushing through the whole thing and keeping lots of events unseen, they also don’t seem dangerous (and thus exciting) if the bad guys are not dangerous at all. You get these supposed elite gunners and snipers and they can’t do the slightest thing against the good guys before being slaughtered without inflicting the tiniest injury on them. Hell man, even god-level Kenshiro was getting a few scratches from nobodies in Hokuto no Ken. The first ringleader didn’t even try to have proper precautions while making that deal with the heroine. Sure, he had snipers in place but they wouldn’t save him in time if anyone pulled a gun against him, would they? He also didn’t even bother to have them searched for guns before accepting to talk to them. Instead we get five minutes of shallow macho talking that was completely useless plot-wise, since all the events that REALLY mattered in the mission happened out of screen (taking out the snipers and cancelling the deal). So what was this mission all about? Nothing for you to care about.

5) Make it cool; not stupid. Then it’s the whole heroine’s attitude that just pisses me off. While Revy in Black Lagoon would be full of cocky attitude and would act way too seriously and creepy during her missions, Koko in Jormungand on the other hand will act like a spoiled rich girl whose daddy didn’t buy her a dozen ponies. She feels completely out of sync with what is going around her and looks like a slapstick comedy character yelling, and laughing, and insulting her buyers, thrown in a serious war drama. She acts like they are playing hide and seek instead of someone who makes dealings with warlords that will cost the lives of millions of people. And her whole ideology of trying to bring peace by making both sides in the war to have equal strength and thus giving up is plain dumb. This can easily prolong a war indefinitely. Plus, how can we even believe that a person with such humanitarian ideals and aloof personality even managed to be such an important arms dealer in the first place? No warlord would trust this sort of people.

The same can be said for all the characters in this show. They all try to pass as cool but only act and feel like spoiled fat kids with plastic guns playing war. And then there are plain details I personally didn’t even like, such as the heroines name being… Koko! And the ending song is plain ridiculous with those lyrics (Her name is Koko and she is a loko, I say KO-KO!). And what’s with those wide white eyebrows they have? They are annoying. And those wide smirks they make when they try to gloat? Makes them look totally stupid.

6) Evolve; don’t rewrite. The second episode has a much different feeling than the first, to the point the characters feel like they are completely different people who happen to have the same bodies. While in the first episode they wouldn’t think twice to kill someone, in this one they will do their best not to hurt anyone. And no, the soldiers they are up against in this episode are not any better than the ones they fought in the first. In fact, they made a massacre out of the defenceless civilians and news reporters of the area, just so they can keep their oil pipeline without any witnesses around to tell what happened. And by the way, once more it is IMPLIED they did that since they never bothered to show us all that.

Furthermore, this episode introduces another group of arms dealers who are basically the evil counterparts of the heroes. They will be shown doing the exactly opposite things the heroes did and how that will automatically make them feel like assholes in the eyes of the viewer. But the good guys? No sir, these now are humanitarians, they never kill people… too bad this is a complete contradiction of what we see in the first episode. It was obviously done deliberately for us to see the killers of the pilot as some sort of paragons of goodness but the whole thing was done in a very childish and lazy way to matter.

The above turns to an anecdote in the middle of the episode, when the “good” Koko will be insulting and questioning the morals of the buyer while her antagonist will be kind enough not to do that and shut his mouth just so he will sell his merchandise without making the buyer to feel like executing them on the spot. And this is exactly what happens; the buyer gets so pissed with Koko’s accusations that he is one step away from ordering his men to kill them all. That is NOT good public relations in this sort of work. Yet a few minutes later Koko will be presented as a heroic figure for not executing her military escorts but instead capturing them alive, while the “evil” team will just have killed them for being annoying. See how this part makes a huge contradiction? The spastic heroes who don’t like the whole thing will magically be organized and go through a lot of risks to capture alive the enemy or escape the battlefield, while the amoral antagonists who care only about making money will suddenly feel like killing the escorts and ruining the deal because the escorts were a bit annoying in their remarks.

7) Make it flashy; not fake. The action scenes make absolutely no sense. You get all sorts of events that simply defy logic to the point you can’t even consider them cool. Here are a few examples from the third and fourth episodes:
- Some assassins are paid to kill Koko. They will not try to kill her from afar via snipping, nor will they stab her stealthy in the back without saying a word. They will introduce themselves to her, explain their motives, and then give her enough time to react and escape. Then they pull out a bazooka and instead of firing at her, they choose to hit a minor police vehicle passing by them.
- Then follows a shootout that makes no sense. One guy takes cover behind a few bushes that barely help in stopping bullets. Another guy stands up without taking any cover. They fire at each other at least a thousand times yet they don’t hit a thing. It’s as if the bullets bounce off them. Then the police arrive and although they are wearing protective gear, hold bullet proof shields, or hide well behind walls, they are all killed immediately with a few shots.
- Then they start a calm philosophical debate in the middle of the battle while shots are still fired. It’s like they are sitting calmly to have some coffee in the middle of a war zone.
- Then some guy tries to sneak and shoots at the assassins while FOR NO REASON using a silencer. But they magically “hear” the silencer and dodge in time. A few minutes later, a sniper manages to hit one of them without any reason of why they didn’t hear that coming.
- Then the assassins chase Koko in a car and apparently know where she is randomly running in the city all this time. And it’s not like she is trying to hide because she is running IN OPEN AREAS while laughing as if it’s all a game. The bad guys manage to find her but her allies arrive and shield her with their car, even though they began the chase with a delay of several minutes next to the bad guys. A thousand bullets are fired at each other with a few meters distance from each other and again all we get is three bullet holes, and no injury. All this time Koko is still running along with the car instead of taking cover or getting it in.
- We get yet another “out of screen” scene. The bad guys use some weird super rifle that trashes their car really bad. We don’t see what happens to the people in the car. Then Koko orders a retreat and everybody does so… without showing us how. Hell, they just disappear from a messed up car and we never see them again but we are left to assume such a devastating attack didn’t kill any of them.
- Then this CIA agent appears and starts to act like a complete asshole and even hits them for fun. They can outrun and deflect bullets but suddenly don't see a punch coming from an arrogant asshole right in front of them.
- Then Koko figures out how the second assassin will try to attack them again later on, date, hour, and method included. HOW DID SHE KNOW THAT? It’s not like she knew them for years to tell how they think.

In all, it is a very messy and passable show and there is no chance in hell it will please the fans of Black Lagoon or of action in general.

And now for some excused scorings.
ART SECTION: 5/10
General Artwork 1/2 (generic)
Character Figures 1/2 (generic)
Backgrounds 1/2 (basic)
Animation 1/2 (basic)
Visual Effects 1/2 (basic)

SOUND SECTION: 6/10
Voice Acting 2/3 (corny but fitting with the feeling of the series)
Music Themes 2/4 (average)
Sound Effects 2/3 (ok I guess)

STORY SECTION: 3/10
Premise 1/2 (typical)
Pacing 1/2 (messy)
Complexity 0/2 (messy)
Plausibility 0/2 (none)
Conclusion 1/2 (cheesy)

CHARACTER SECTION: 5/10
Presence 1/2 (generic)
Personality 1/2 (cheesy)
Backdrop 1/2 (generic and simplistic but it’s there)
Development 1/2 (overblown but it’s there)
Catharsis 1/2 (overblown but it’s there)

VALUE SECTION: 1/10
Historical Value 0/3 (none)
Rewatchability 0/3 (no reason to rewatch)
Memorability 1/4 (too badly done to bother remembering it)

ENJOYMENT SECTION: 1/10
Art 0/1 (looks lazy)
Sound 0/2 (sounds stupid)
Story 1/3 (feels generic)
Characters 0/4 (they are stupid)

VERDICT: 3.5/10

This anime can only be watched and enjoyed somehow only if you like the characters. The art style looks really pretty in my opinion. Apart from that, there is almost no storyline, things are just happening and getting resolved as quickly as it gets heated by Koko's intelligence (?) though I liked Koko, the characters are nice but you never actually get too attached to them, for example, if one of them died, I would not be crying rivers, my maximum reaction would be getting surprised and going on with my day.

They slapped in some tropes, -no panties, lesbian couples, big boobs, muscle mommy, ... a girl who acts bubbly but actually is hurt, and so on- to make it look more appealing but this anime feels like an empty gift box with fancy, shiny wrappings.

I genuinely wanted to give it a chance and waited for it to get better somehow but it's just okay. The very positive reviews I read here made me feel so puzzled after seeing it for myself. There are some reviews here that talk about in detail why this anime is so empty etc so I'll keep this short.