Review for Jormungand: The Complete Season 1

Introduction

I know that you have to sell this stuff, and hyperbole is the way these days to grab people’s interest. But don’t begin by comparing this show to Black Lagoon. Black Lagoon is in my estimation the best contemporary anime action show ever made. It is a balls to the wall, eighties style action movie in anime form, the pinnacle of its genre. And if you compare Jormungand to Black Lagoon, I’m going to compare Jormungand to Black Lagoon, the best contemporary anime action show ever made. It is more than likely that it will fall short in that comparison, and consequently I’ll rate it more harshly than if I had watched the show without those preconceptions and prejudices in mind. As it is, I put the first disc of Jormungand into my Blu-ray player, expecting more Rock and Revy style insanity. On the other hand, a PR gamble like that might just pay off. Jormungand might actually be the next Black Lagoon. If I discover the same kind of manic intensity of characters and adrenaline fuelled action, you can bet I’ll be singing Jormungand’s praises from the rooftops.

Jonah is a mess of contradictions. He’s a survivor of a conflict, despises war, soldiers, and weapons, especially the weapons that were responsible for the deaths of his family. And he’s a skilled child soldier himself, a dispassionate and ruthless killer. Among his list of hates in this world are the arms industries, and especially arms dealers. And he’s hooked up with Koko Hekmatyar and her team of mercenaries, as she plies her trade, selling weapons around the world. And Koko is loco, down in Acapulco, where she stayed too long.

Don’t judge me. It was inevitable in this review; I’m just getting it out of the way early where it can do less harm. You’ll be hearing the Koko loco refrain on each next episode preview, and it won’t be long before it becomes an incessant earworm. I went with The Four Tops this time. Next season, I shall be going with the more obscure Coati Mundi reference (El Coco Loco from the Who’s That Girl Soundtrack), so consider that fair warning.


Anyway, Koko has taken a shine to her newest recruit, and is intent on training him up on conforming to her idea of a resplendent human being, which is more than just a child soldier. And she is more than a little unhinged, apt to throw a tantrum or two, often unfazed by perilous situations, and oddly enough for an arms dealer, possessing her own code of ethics. It certainly has Jonah reconsidering his hatred, but that’s only made complicated by the rest of the Hekmatyar family, who also are in the business, and Jonah has more than enough reason to loathe Koko’s brother Kasper.

The twelve episodes of Jormungand’s first season are presented across two Blu-rays thus...

Disc 1
1. Gunmetal Calico Road
2. Pulsar
3. Musica Ex Machina phase. 1
4. Musica Ex Machina phase. 2
5. Vein
6. African Golden Butterflies phase. 1
7. African Golden Butterflies phase. 2
8. Mondo Grosso

Disc 2
9. Dragon Shooter phase. 1
10. Dragon Shooter phase. 2
11. The Hill of Doom phase. 1
12. The Hill of Doom phase. 2

Picture

Jormungand gets a 1.78:1 widescreen transfer at 1080p. It’s a pretty decent Blu-ray transfer for an anime, clear and sharp throughout, with good detail levels, strong colours, and bringing across the action animation in a pleasing manner. The usual banding associated with HD anime transfers from Funimation is kept to a minimum, but there are rare moments of shimmer and aliasing on fine detail, for which you’ll have to get up close to the screen to see. Jormungand uses a deliberate layer of filmic grain to emphasise its ‘realism’, but the character designs are appealing, while the emphasis on military hardware detail and authenticity goes above and beyond the call of duty. Also Jormungand has some seriously pretty skies.

The images in this review are sourced from the PR, and aren’t necessarily representative of the final retail release.

Sound

You have the choice between Dolby TrueHD 2.0 Stereo English and Japanese, with player locked subtitles for the Japanese audio, and player locked signs for the English audio. I went with the Japanese track, and the dialogue was clear throughout, the action represented as well as stereo allows, and Taku Iwasaki’s exceptional music a highlight of the show, driving the episodes with zeal and impact. The subtitles were accurately timed, and marred only by the rare and minor typo, the sort that gets past spellcheckers.

I really don’t get Funimation sometimes; they’ll whack a 5.1 up-mix on practically anything. Pick up a Funimation DVD and it will default to DD 5.1 English and DD 2.0 Japanese, and the same sound design usually applies to Blu-ray, regardless of the show’s content. Even something as dialogue focussed, and effects light as Kamisama Kiss gets 5.1 English. And then along comes Jormungand, one the more intense action shows that Funimation have released of late, and the English dub is merely laid down in stereo, just like the Japanese. Add to that a rather good dub from Funimation, with the actors cast well, suited to their characters, a fair script translation, and actors that really play to the strengths of the genre, means that Jormungand is for me the rare anime that I can watch in Japanese or English.

Extras

These are the US Blu-ray discs simply repackaged for the UK, and present their content with animated menus.

Disc 1 autoplays with a trailer for Robotics;Notes.

You’ll also find a commentary to go with episode 1, with ADR Director Christopher Bevins (Tojo), Anastasia Munoz (Koko), and Carli Mosier (Valmet). A show about global arms dealers featuring a main character that is a traumatised child soldier... and the commentators take the time out to compare breast sizes of their respective characters. I don’t know if that’s a comment on the show, or the usual standard of Funimation commentaries.

Disc 2 autoplays with a trailer for Aquarion Evol, and you’ll find further Funimation trailers on the disc for, Psycho Pass, Appleseed XIII, Eureka Seven AO, the plasticised Dragon Ball Z, the tarted up Funimation Blu-ray of Akira, Black Lagoon: Roberta’s Blood Trail, and a generic Anime Classics trailer.


The rest of the show’s extras are also on disc 2, beginning with a 20-minute featurette that looks at the casting of the show, hosted by voice director (and voice of Tojo) Christopher Bevins, and ADR engineer (and voice of Ugo) Cris George. It’s really 20 minutes of organised and scripted back-slapping, with the odd spoiler for the series thrown in. While it is presented in HD, there’s something odd going on with the close ups, which look suspiciously like they’re in slow motion.

The episode 12 commentary features Cris George with Micah Solusod (Jonah), and Chris Smith (Lehm), and for a Funimation track, it’s actually bearable. I managed to listen all the way through without succumbing to the usual inanity, as there was a bit of character observation in it as well.

You also get the subtitle locked and marred opening and two closing credit sequences, somewhat fraudulently labelled as ‘Textless’.

Finally you get the US trailer for the show.

Conclusion

Jormungand is no Black Lagoon. It’s no Black Lagoon at all, although it was a foolish expectation of mine for it to live up to that singular anime creation. Quite frankly, aspects of Jormungand disappointed me, although had the comparison with Black Lagoon not been made, had I encountered it un-hyped and measured it on its own merits, my complaints about it would have been exactly the same.

Jormungand is fun though. What it does have in common with Black Lagoon is some balls to the wall action, without the usual reluctance to show the more grisly aspects of gunplay and violence in general (albeit with the odd moment where the show fades to black rather than show an action sequence, resuming only to show the aftermath. I get the feeling this was done for a combination of dramatic impact and a suddenly tight budget, especially in the climactic scene of episode 12), and the show also has characters that can chew the scenery, larger than life anti-heroes and villains that fill the screen with bold pronouncements and sheer chutzpah. You can put on an episode of Jormungand, and partake of its bizarre gun-running world, and just eat up its general insanity with a daft grin on your face.


The show lacks depth however, the first thing that I noticed while I was still in ‘compare it to Black Lagoon’ mode. The stories in these episodes are pretty simple, straightforward affairs, with little in the way of twists and turns. Koko Hekmatyar and her band of arms dealers have a certain mission to run for the HCLI, they come up against some kind if impediment, they overcome the impediment, run end credits. That said impediment requires copious and graphic violence to deal with is what makes the show so watchable.

The characters too are single note affairs that fail to engender much in the way of audience empathy, not even damaged survivor and conflicted killer Jonah, the child soldier turned bodyguard. Okay, so Koko is quite loco, never losing the maniacal smile no matter how sticky the situation, but there quickly comes a point where you need to know what else there is bubbling under the surface. Black Lagoon too had its larger than life characters, but very quickly it went about developing them and defining who they were. Little bits of back story do put the Jormungand characters in context, but they still remain all surface in these twelve episodes.

And that surface is unashamedly anime, which in a show that tends towards realism in its look and animation style sticks out like a sore thumb. When Koko gets stressed in one scene, she rolls around in frustration like Hideki in Chobits. When Jonah says something stupid there’s the comedy pause, and then everyone falls to the ground in shock. Then there is Valmet, tough warrior chick, bad ass, lethal, gruff and no nonsense, and nursing a girly squee crush on Koko that has her blushing like a schoolgirl. And everyone’s eyes glow just before they’re about to cut loose with some serious violence. The undercover CIA operative is an over the top, loudmouth psychotic who fails completely to blend in. On top of that, the whole world is Japanese. In the South African episode, where Koko and her team go looking for a weapons researcher friend of hers, that friend blows her off to go butterfly hunting. Her subordinate then apologises profusely for her superior’s misbehaviour, with a whole lot of bowing involved; a very Japanese South African. All of which pretty much shatters any semblance of realism.


If that isn’t enough, there’s also the dialogue which is at times dire. This is a show that has been tailored for the guns and ammo otaku, such that whenever there is a piece of kit on screen, the characters will first announce its presence by reading out its full designation. If you’re under attack by a helicopter, you’re much more likely to say, “Gunship, duck!” instead of “We’re being fired upon by an AH64-D Apache Longbow with the Fire Control Radar upgrade armed with a 30 mm M230E1 Chain Gun and 16 AGM-114 Hellfire anti-tank missiles.” That throws me out of the show every time it happens, and it happens a little too often in Jormungand. I needn’t mention how the main characters seem to be pretty much immune to death and serious injury, despite taking damage that would put everyone else in the show in the morgue.

It’s not all bad though. The story is interesting, the episodes are fun, especially the two-parters, and the final four episodes finally move things up a gear when it comes to fleshing out the characters, making them interesting, and delivering stories that have more than just surface detail to them. It’s the final four episodes in this collection that will make you want to watch the second season, and hopefully that season will offer the depth of character and complexity of story that this first season lacks for the most part. We don’t have long to wait, as Jormungand: Perfect Order is out next month. But the lasting impression of Season 1 of Jormungand is a show that’s a lot of shallow fun, but one that also disappoints with its lack of depth.