Intro:
I heard about this anime from various places but I have never heard too much about it and I wasn't particularly sure what to think of it until one day when I had nothing to do, so I figured I would take the plunge; having no idea what to expect. I wound up with a pretty pleasant surprise.
Story/Character:
Jormungand is a dark gritty and sometimes comical seinen (geared for a more mature audience) action series about an arms dealer named Koko and her elite team of badass bodyguards and a child soldier named Jonah who is their new recruit into the team and chronicles all of the adventures they have though a mostly episodic set up.
My overall impression of the story and anime in general was pretty good, it had some pretty great action in the form of gun fights, knife fights, fist fights, etc. and a somewhat compelling plot about war and morality on the side. This show was also funny especially with some of the interactions between the characters, Koko's team in particular showing that the all have a pretty good bond and have worked together for a wile. This show is mostly episodic so most of the episodes are pretty self contained.
The characters for the most part are very fleshed out with there own past though not all of them are until the second season but never the less all of the characters were fun and entertaining. I also especially liked the attention to detail some of the use of weapons and firearms in this anime.
Art/Sound:
The art and animation was pretty good and had some really good character designs and it had a nice gritty look to it.
The soundtrack was ok but it wasn't the best but my favorite part was the sound design and yet again they had really good attention to detail to what the guns sound like.
Sub/Dub:
There are animes out there that are to said to have a dub that is particularly better than the original, I believe this is one such anime and I don't say that lightly considering I normally take a neutral stance on this topic but after watching the dub I really didn't care to see the original subbed version and I'm saying the Japanese version is bad because it isn't but the english on this one is just a step above.
The voice acting is good and the voices in english fit the cast so well and dub is little more funny considering they did change some of the lines but subtitles don't always get it right not to mention the cast is kind of multinational with some characters having different accents and all of that just doesn't come crossed in Japanese. Now I'm not here to tell you what you should be watching but I will suggest that the dub for this anime, is defiantly worth checking out.
What I Hated:
I did have some problems with this anime, one being that the main cast which is Koko's team of bodyguards are really overpowered to the point that you know how most of the gun fights and skirmishes are going to turn out with them coming out on top and sweeping away the bad guys. The second problem I had was that this anime despite all of it's action was very anti-climatic, like I said before the enemies and villains are swept away so easily to the point where it takes out most of the excitement after a while and I feel that with many of the villains there was a lot of wasted potential with them considering most of them are killed off pretty quickly and a lot of them seemed like pretty interesting characters. But all in all that's just me.
Final Verdict:
I give this anime a 7 out of 10.
It's not perfect but it is pure unadulterated fun.
