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Jormungand
Anime Review
"Let's not get all Tarantino about this..." -- Oh, but we do, and very quickly. It takes all of 5 minutes into the first episode before everyone's shooting at everyone and they start throwing in military grade hardware just to make things interesting.
Jormungand may be the hardest-to-describe anime of 2014. Our protagonist and central character is Jonah, a former child-soldier who's parents were killed, and as such, hates weapons, soldiers and so forth -- and yet, as a solider himself despite his diminutive size, he is a crack shot and a cold-blooded killer. Somehow, he has fallen in with an arms dealer named Koko and her entourage of top-notch mercenaries who act as her bodyguards. He's her newest recruit, and the action starts on his very first day.
Jonah figures that if he hangs around this group, sooner or later they will lead him to the people responsible for the death of his parents and he can take his revenge.
 Koko's group of bodyguards are all professionals, and they are all interesting characters with their own back-stories; but none of that is really important. Hell, even Jonah, the central character in this anime, isn't all that important. No, because it's Koko herself that makes everyone else take a backseat.
And this is because Koko is a cunning, calculating, intelligent, cutthroat, intuitive, amoral, manipulative bitch who's also completely unhinged. I mean she's seriously batshit-crazy, grade-A psycho, and yet, she takes her job seriously, and actually cares for her team, which in turn has earned her their fierce loyalty. Believe me when I say that she takes center stage throughout this show and commands every moment on the screen. She may be selling the kinds of weapons that get entire countries of innocent people slaughtered, but that's just a step in her plan for 'world peace'. And whatever the details of that plan are; well, that's a secret she keeps in her own warped mind.
 With the CIA hoping for her capture, and assassins, friends, enemies, and business rivals desperate for her head, the un-ending potential for every contract to get all Tarantino and end in ultra-violence, Koko and her comrades bring the boom to the battlefield, while also going through a near-endless supply of ammunition on their own. No corner of the globe is safe from her reach, and when she's in your area, something's bound to crash, burn, explode, and leave shrapnel and destruction as far as the eye can see.
Jormungand may be the hardest-to-describe anime of 2014, believe me, we've barely scratched the surface. But I also believe this is one of the best and most original anime series we've seen in quite a while. Sure, the title's a mouthful, but completely cuckoo Koko carries this series and keeps you coming back for more.
Reviewed by Brian Cirulnick, March 2014
Below: Scenes from Jormungand.
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Below: Promotional illustrations for Jormungand.
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