Close, but no cigar.
A/N: This review contains spoilers for the entire series.
If nothing else, Jormungand has always had a "cool" factor going for it. It follows a weapons dealer and her bodyguards as they travel across the world, making deals and taking down the people who are stupid enough to try to cross them. However, the first half really suffered from a lack of focus, and the second season does realize that "cool guys with guns make things go boom" is not enough to hold up a two-cour series. However, while it does bring up some interesting concepts, but in the end it's a case of too little too late.
A lot of this season is concerned with filling in the backstory for the characters in the group who've gotten little to no focus so far, while the main plot involving building a quantum computer (which isn't revealed until near the end of the show) putters along quietly in the background. This would be all well and good--not knowing the main cast very well was a common complaint of the first season--if the story actually did something with this newfound character knowledge afterwards, which it doesn't. For example, R gets a great role in the first arc of the show by revealing to the audience that he's a double agent only to be killed off in the next episode. All of the possible tension that could've been carried through the plot is removed, and the following arcs are similar in this regard. I never knew that Wiley was the bomb guy, for instance, and it isn't brought up again, despite allegedly being a key factor of his character. A past involving one of Koko's subordinates being killed is hinted at and implied that its deeply affected her view on the world, but we never get any details.
And that's really the heart of the problem with this show; it's got a lot of interesting ideas, but just when the plot is in the right place to start executing them, it immediately pulls back and diffuses the situation, creating a lot of lost possibilities. In the first arc of the show, the tension is immediately ramped up by the assassin's declaration that she wants to kill Jonah, which would send Koko into an emotional tailspin. The concept of Jonah being Koko's "limiter" is brought up a couple times during the season, but it never really plays out. In the first arc, Koko's kills her using bombers in what is an amazing scene but removes any further conversation about her "limits" for a while.
It comes up again towards the end of the show, when Koko and Jonah are presumably put at odds; Koko has a plan for world peace that will come at the cost of human lives, but Jonah doesn't want anything to do with it. It's an amazing final setup that could've created an interesting discussion while tying up the loose ends the series has thematically... Except there's no moral debate at all. We get a flash-forward and Jonah rejoins the group without deciding anything, or at least the show doesn't bother to let the viewers in on it. We don't even get to see the "new world" Koko was so intent on creating. If this was supposed to convey some sort of thematic message, I didn't get it.
I think that Jormungand didn't know what kind of series it wanted to be or what themes it wanted to tackle until the very end, and by then it was too late. Koko's declaration of hate towards all weaponry and war seemed a little out of character to me, given that her previous actions seemed to suggest that she didn't really care what the world did, so long as the people she cared about were safe. Still, the argument about weapons and the people who sell them is probably the strongest running line through the series, and it probably could've taken the moral argument even further. Jasper's short speech at the end of the series seemed to hit closer to the true heart of the story: "If I can't sell aerial weapons, I'll sell naval weapons. If I can't sell battleships, I'll sell tanks. I'll sell guns. I'll sell swords. I'll sell hatchets. If you seal away iron, I'll sell cudgels. Such is the nature of an arms dealer." How can world peace sustain itself against something like that?
But Jormungand has no answers, even though it pretends it does. For all its bluster and action sequences, Jormungand went out with a whimper. Looking back, the only element I consistently liked that wasn't changed in the context of the ending was Koko, even with my above opinion that her turn at the end didn't make a lot of sense. She's a compelling character with great lines and grander ideas, and while I don't think she saves the show (in the sense that people should watch it if only to see her) she made the show a lot more fun than it would've been otherwise. Overall, I can only recommend this show to action buffs, and even then it's with a bit of trepidation. Jormungand has its moments, but the times when it avoids becoming something really special make it a bit frustrating to watch.
Images from Hulu.com.
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