War indeed can be viewed as an inescapable and integral aspect of human culture. Sources claim 14,500 wars have taken place between 3500 BC and the late 20th century, costing 3.5 billion lives, leaving only 300 years of peace, but one dynamic concept of war has always been the tools used to wage it. We’ve seen the early man start with stones and clubs to advance to swords and with the discovery of gunpowder, bullets have also come into the fray, and the deadly nuclear and atomic warfare have also taken flight. The latest addition to this devastation inflicting family is information technology, but does this seemingly docile and easily accessible piece of technology be considered the most deadly weapon man has ever created?
The second season of Jormungand, sub-named ‘Perfect Order’ comes with some changes in plot devices as the arms dealing takes a back seat in place of informational warfare. We are introduced to the fact that Koko has some sort of plan in the making as we see her send several rockets into space with the viewer kept completely in the dark as to what could be the reason for this. Although not a mystery series, the way the plot and secrets nicely unfolds is both smart and entertaining at the same time.
Unlike the first season, intelligence agencies such as the CIA play a bigger role in the story. Viewers kept in the dark as to Koko’s plans are smartly inserted into the shoes of intelligence agencies as they try to discover what it is she is up to, this somewhat different approach is a welcome addition as it requires a bit of intuition from the viewer to keep up with the story unlike most series that just require you to simply look at the screen and diffuse any useless information that comes your way. The prequel was never presented with an antagonist that seemed would be able to go toe to toe against Koko in terms of wit but the second season states a claim on this with the introduction of new characters such as Hex and George Black who definitely seem to have the potential to push Koko and her crew to the wall.
Just as in the first season the series progresses in bi-episodic arcs, while this is a good strategy that helps the writer to focus completely on one aspect of the story, it also poses a problem of connection. Once one arc is over, the connection between the previous and the next arc is most of the time thread-thin. Only very brief conversations about the previous arc serves as the basis to connecting two story joints which can make the series seems a bit disjointed a times. Fortunately only being a 12 episode show it manages not to suffer the long term effects of such a predicament as it poses serious problem to character growth.
White fox have of course done a great job with the visuals, some nice notables was the studios use of shading, shadows were nicely placed in appropriate locations such as faces that depicted facial buildup of the characters and especially on the clothes. Some stressed emotions such as rage are also nicely conveyed by use of shading right under characters eyes. Being a show that depicted modern warfare it also consisted of mechanical parts such as vehicles and helicopters, the studio decided to use CGI to animate this. The CGI most of the times remains seamless with the surroundings and impressively a times we see mesh perfectly when interacting with hand drawn characters however those CGI elements that used a somewhat darker color tone seemed a bit sloppy and carried with it all that most anime fans resent of CGI animation. The second season also placed strong emphasis on location, as the team traveled to a large number of different cities around the world and white fox of course did not slack off on doing their research to make sure they capture a city’s scenery and populace accurately into the fray.
The place where the second season seemed to outdo itself far more than the first was with its choices of soundtracks. The soundtrack of the first season was great and honestly it was really unexpected that it would be something that could be built upon, but regardless it was done and with brilliant execution if i may add. The soundtrack consists of tracks from the first season, remixes of those tracks as well instrumentals that spanned into several genres such as rock, rap and even electro. Insert songs were included that to my surprise even included some Indian and French tracks.
In the first season Koko has always seemed one dimensional in her emotions, always reserving a cool, calm and collected demeanor, so it was with great joy that this mask of hers is cast away at certain places as we see a different side to her emotions; Fear, grief and rage are ultimately introduced into her character in certain places that went a long way in making her character seem ‘human’. The relationship between Koko and Jonah is also put to the test as their already seemingly weird unpronounced relationship is put under serious strain in some places and the overall decisions and actions they choose to take make up a big turning point in the show itself.
One of the first departments the series decided to give attention to was with the development of side characters, an aspect that was left barely touched from the first season. We get to see the past of the remaining members such as Tojo, R and Wilee up to their meeting with Koko. Instead of the show simply showing an entire episode of a characters’ past, it approaches it smartly by interchanging events between the past and the present, this ensured both development and advancement of the story at the same time, a “killing two birds with one stone” strategy if you’d like to call it. The lack of development in the first season that would no doubt leave fans with either Koko, Jonah or Lehm as character favorites are immediately put at risk as characters such as Wilee are presented to us in such an entertaining manner that one has to re-think their plans of favorite character.
While we do get to see the whole characters in the series finally developed and create a stronger connection to them emotionally, the end- result however was never built upon. A character immediately having their arcs completed are afterwards seemingly put back under the rock from which they were picked up from and revert to be nothing more than filling spaces as they once were. This blatant disregard and ignorance on the part of the writers will prove to be an extremely wasted potential as it was basically a great chance that opened new pathways and possibilities that the series could have and should have advanced in but never did.
With a mere 4 months between the first and second season we didn’t see too many improvements to the overall series as a whole, but there are little improvements here and there as we see in the thickening plot and the music. The series does still harbor it’s set of entertaining gun fights that with the help of great animation from white fox will leave most audiences dazzled.
As time moves on, man will continue to advance his science and technology, and with information warfare being his latest weapon, we have to wait and see what new toy we can make in future to better and effectively kill each another.
