Jormungand – 24 (Fin)

Two years after Jonah left Koko, the entire world has been set ablaze by wars and sits on the brink of WWIII. Koko hires Kasper’s men, including Jonah, to guard her as they launch the completed quantum computer into orbit in Kazakhstan. Kasper knows her plan, but he tells her it won’t stop him from selling weapons. Jonah decides to quit, and wanders on his own. Two days later he is in Baku, where Koko and her team are waiting for him. She’ll stop an impending New Soviet attack on the oil fields by activating Jormungand. Jonah agrees to return to her side.

Well, unless there’s a film or another season to follow up, we’ll never see the new world Koko Hekmatyar created, with the help of her hot female scientist friends and merry band of bodyguards. But we’re okay with that. Ending things the very moment she activates Jormungand still leaves open infinite possibilities. Will her way work? Conventional wisdom says no; and so does Kasper. He makes the argument we made last week: people will fight with rocks and sticks if they have to. But Koko is surely well aware of this and any other arguments.

Bottom line: rocks and sticks can’t cause the same mass death and destruction as bullets and bombs from the sky. She also believes putting a proverbial leash on humanity will humiliate them into submission. If they are as nasty, brutish and short as Kasper (and Hobbes) think, there may be nothing Koko or anyone else can do to stop the human urge to wage war. But it’s nice to think that just as two years of watching the world ignite taught Jonah that Koko’s plan is worth a try, perhaps a few years without the use of the skies will convince calmer heads that peace is worth a try.

Rating: 7 (Very Good)

Jormungand – 23

Koko tells Jonah killing her won’t stop Jormungand, so he jumps off the pier and swims away. Kasper picks him up and hires him on the spot. As the plans to shrink the quantum computer commence, Minami informs Koko about Scarecrow and Plame digging into her finances. She decides to summon Bookman to Africa, and when he arrives he is attacked by an armed group that is killed by a platoon of marines who escort him out of danger. Back in America, Plame is arrested by the NSA for breaching the FISA, as Koko made it look like he sent the armed group instructions to assassinate Bookman.

Koko Hekmatyar may be a dyed-in-the-wool supervillain with designs on starting a new world at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives, but when she kicks as much ass and takes as many names as she has of late, we can’t help but root for her. She also seems to have the support of her team: only Jonah and Lutz are conflicted (it’s probably not a coincidence they’re the youngest members of her team), and only Jonah outright resigns his commission over it, only to be ensnared by Kasper. It looks like Jonah’s going to cling to the status quo as long as he can, but Minami thinks he’ll ultimately come back to Koko.

The main attraction of this episode isn’t even the standoff betwen Koko and Jonah, in which Koko delivers one villainously awesome speech (“I hate the world, but it’s lucky I’m going to reform and not destroy it”). It’s yet another demonstration of Jormungand’s formidable, virtually inviolable power over information.It’s essentially carried out to prove a point to Bookman about just how screwed the rest of the world is against her might (and Koko orchestrates it while lying naked in a hot spring.Boss.) Far from taking up the challenge to defeat her plans, Bookman, eager to see the new world Koko wants to build, decides he’ll let her use him however she wants. Can you blame him? In a world where she’s the new god of information, blasphemy will get you nowhere.

Rating: 8 (Great)

Jormungand – 22

Koko’s team successfully kidnaps Rabbitfoot, but they get bogged down in a firefight with Plame’s Night Nine SEAL team. Koko deploys one of her UAVs to destroy the Americans’ recon drone, then uses Jormungand to feed false GPS data misdirecting the SEALs to the perimeter of a Cuban military base. Plame has no choice but to abort. Back in South Africa, Koko finally lets Jonah, Rabbitfoot, and the rest of the team in on the master plan she and Miami have been working on: using Jormungand to end all air travel and control all global logistics, in order to force world peace. When she tells Jonah it will come at the cost of nearly 700,000 lives, he pulls a gun on her.

Koko is an uncommonly disciplined young woman, but in the end, also incredibly idealistic. She has been working her entire career as an arms dealer, amassing the know-how, the clout, the connections, and the capital to bring the best scientific minds (all attractive women too, mind you) together to create Jormungand, the means by which she aims to put an end to war itself and make her own kind extinct. We can’t remember the last anime we saw in which we’ve been following someone for so long, sympathizing with her, seeing her weaknesses and watching her succeed, fail, and succeed again…only for her to turn out to be the most diabolical of supervillains. She has a flair for theatricality, obviously. But she also calmly discusses the instant deaths of all 683,822 souls in the air like it’s nothing.

She even shrugs off accusations of wanting to become God by saying she’s better than God for doing what he couldn’t do: forbid humans the use of the sky. But no matter how much she teases and flirts with Jonah (going so far as to kiss him in the bath), he’s not on board with this plan. It may well save millions, but the tremendous number of people she’s willing to kill is the ultimate expression of the ends not justifying the means, because the ends are ultimately unattainable. Warfare is awful, but no matter how many toys you take away from mankind, they’ll only find other ways to fight each other. Swords, sticks, stones, Congress…whatever.

It’s the height of hubris for Koko to believe Jormungand will really end anything, other than those thousands of lives. Death, torture, suffering, slavery will all endure. And like Jonah pulling a gun on her, countless other things she isn’t expecting lie on the horizon with the path she’s on. She may look like a god, act like a god, walk and talk like a god…but she’s no god. But she is one hell of a commander, and seems to truly care about her men (and women). When she took out the CIA drone with her own drone (from her hotel room), then fooled seasoned SEALs by scrambling their GPS – fantastic stuff.

Rating: 9 (Superior)

Jormungand – 21

Koko and her team continue to travel the world, making investments in tech companies and kidnapping the scientist Elena Baburin. Bookman meets her at Dulles through Hinoki, and he warns her not to “enter then enclave”, but from Miami she travels to Cuba, to extract the extralegally-held quantum physicist Leila Ibrahim Faisa, AKA Rabbitfoot. Bookman’s underlines believe all of Koko’s actions point towards the development of a quantum computer, which would make all present supercomputers – including those that guide missiles – obsolete. At Fort Meade, MD, Chief Plame of the Special Collections Service is deploying SEAL Team 9 to foil Koko’s plans to capture Rabbitfoot from Camp No in Guantanamo.

As we suspected, there’s far more to Koko and Dr. Miami’s plans than Hek-GG. Hek-GG is just the tip of the iceberg, and even Koko’s brother and father Floyd don’t know exactly what lies beneath the surface. The CIA can hazard an educated guess, though: Koko and Miami’s goal is nothing less than total domination of the digital world. If they succeed in building a quantum computer, stupidly faster than anything else in existence, they could rule a decent chunk of the world. This is supervillain stuff, but we’ve been invested in Koko and her team for so long, we’re firmly on her side even if they’re the bad guys.

Koko is also bored with the current order of things. She wants to shake things up, open the gates to a New World (the title of this arc). This episode was more getting ducks in a row and fortifying her team’s confidence and trust in her. And while they have supervillain plans well in the works, if they don’t have their bodyguards watching their backs and guarding them when they sleep, all of this could go out like a candle in the wind. Just one bullet – out of the millions upon millions of pieces of ordinance – could end Koko’s plans. She’s crossed Bookman and ignored his warnings. Now that she’s peeking out of the shadows, it’s open season.

Rating: 6 (Good)

Jormungand – 20

Koko and Dr. Miami open the new “Marchen Ltd. Facility” where robotic toys will be made. Miami later meets with Curry and Koko with Trohovsky as Kasper announces the Hekmatyar Global Grid Distribution Package, which aims to revolutionize global military logistics and promises to slash the costs of operations through optimization.

The Hekmatyar siblings finally reveal their big evil scheme, and it’s a gigantic global system that will, among other things, make supply lines a thing of the past. This is a network set up by launching 125 satellites into orbit, and military leaders all over the place are liking their lips at the possibilities it offers. Meanwhile, HCLI’s competitors exhibit a mix of anticipatory excitement, panic, and unease. And with good reason: HCLI means to have a monopoly on affordable war.

Those not in on it could see their clients disappearing and their businesses turning to dust. Whether the Global Grid is the full project or merely the opening salvo, Koko and Dr. Miami definitely have a lot of people on their toes, including Bookman. Their grand plan even has a suitable name, Jormungand – a self-devouring creature as the symbol of a business that exploits a self-devouring humanity. For now, Bookman is just keeping an eye on her; who knows how he or her other enemies will respond to this.

Rating: 6 (Good)

Jormungand – 19

Koko’s team is on a delivery convoy in Iraq, and Wilee regales everyone with the story of how he first joined up with Lehm in 1991, helping Delta forces blow up a chemical weapons factory. When their Excalibur escorts get restless and destroy a passing car, Koko fires them on the spot. They show up later and launch a pincer attack, but Wilee, Koko & Co. are more than ready, and Wilee turns their IEDs and human bombs against them, as is his specialty.

This season we’ve seen more sides of Koko and her usually-merry band of misfit heavies. This steady, efficient, self-encapsulated episode is more reminiscent of the first season, when her team was a nigh-invincible, unflappable force of nature that You Do Not Fuck With Or Else; an episode constantly abuzz with bawdy chatter and hardy guffaws. Sure, they’re in Iraq, the land of ambushes and IEDs, but it’s really no sweat after all this group’s been through. Heck, many of them have already been here: enter Wilee.

Wilee is Wile E. Coyote if he was a human – obsessed with using explosives to achieve his goals. Only they never blow up in his face, and instead of road runners, he blows up other, less wily bombers. He’s a demolition expert’s demolition expert, scarily good at his job. We like the extra history and spice given to his story. All his character’s been in the past is “the bomb guy” and “Jonah’s math teacher” so this episode wasn’t just a means of the whole team kicking back, but a way to let his talents shine when the road gets bumpy.

Rating: 6 (Good)

Car Cameos: HCLI travels across Iraq with their usual convoy of Scania R-Series trucks. The rowdy security team rides in Ford F-Series crew cabs and a Renault Koleos. The car they blow up is a Mercedes-Benz C-Class. Nazar has a motorcade of Mercedes-Benz GL-Class SUVs.

Jormungand – 18

With half the SR Squad eliminated by Kasper’s team, Koko heads to Umihotaru with hers to seek out the other half. The designated meeting spot is a trap, and Jonah is ambushed. Koko and the others drive off, and when Tojo retrieves Jonah, he follows in a stolen car. A multi-car tunnel shootout ensues, ending when the vehicles exit the tunnel and Lehm, Wiley and Valmet mop up the SR Squad pursuers from a helicopter. After having their activities covered up, Koko and Jonah go to the Bahamas with Tojo, where he’s tracked down Colonel Hinoki – and the family he thought was a lie.

So, have we come out of this two-parter with a greater understanding of and appreciation for Akihito Tojo? Well, that would have been inevitable in any episode in which his past was brought up. We’ve only known him to be a calm, level-headed, generally decent sort of fellow who seemed more comfortable handling paperwork and diplomacy than guns and knives. Now we know he once had a similar role with Colonel Hinoki’s SR Squad, but became disillusioned. Little did he know Mr. Hino himself gradually got sick of the SR Squad too. When an opportunity arose to have it wiped out in the bloodbath his subordinates thirsted for, he took it. The other squad members took turns calling Tojo a traitor, but he didn’t really betray anyone per se. He stopped seeing SR as a place where he fit, and no one in SR other than Hinoki really ever liked him anyway, so why stay?

The organization got deeper into arms dealing and also grew more militant and chaotic. In hindsight, Tojo left a sinking ship, and left his mentor behind thinking their views had diverged. But it turns out everything Tojo assumed or expected about Hinoki – be it his actions or his motives – turned out to be the opposite of reality – his fake Thai wife is real, and he has an adorable daughter too. And at the end of the battles, Hinoki makes sure Tojo understands there’s something to be said for being the last survivor of the SR Squad, suggesting Tojo’s spy instincts and talent for survival are better than Tojo himself realizes.

Rating: 7 (Very Good)

Jormungand – 17

As per their family pact, Koko agrees to help Kasper in his dealings with the SR Squad, a rival arms dealers who work in the shadows. Tojo contacts his former bosss, Colonel Hiroki, who confirms the SR Squad provoked HCLI. He arranges meets for both Kasper in Jakarta and Koko in Japan. Kasper meets with his representative Ms. Kurosaka, but she turns out to be an assassin, whom Chequita swiftly dispatches. She and Kasper’s other men fight their way out of the hotel, and the battle begins.

When Tojo started talking, we were worried whether he’d ever stop. Even the episode acknowledges it’s quite a bit of exposition, as Jonah, Lutz, and others start to get antsy and nod off during the briefing. Why the talk is being held out in the airport parking lot and not a hotel room is also weird. But the result of this is, we now know what HCLI’s up against, though Hiroki and his SR Squad switch up their methods, deciding to come out of their shadows and hit hard, perhaps in an effort to scare off or beat down HCLI quickly.

They make a statement in their first strike with a friendly assassin with a flexible katana hidden in her belt. Chequita proves she may be the toughest, craziest of all the tough crazy women in the series, operating as a both a lightning-quick shield for Kasper and a one-woman SWAT team cutting and shooting through the SR Squad like butter (Ever shot at butter before? Not as fun as it sounds). The burst of action in the end makes up for all the dull exposition earlier on. As for Valmet undressing a drunk Koko and suggesting they shower and sleep together – their evening ends…ambiguously, so it’s anyone’s guess what ultimately happened there.

Rating: 7 (Very Good)

Car Cameos: Colonel Hiroki drives (himself!) in a Nissan Cima (F50) AKA Infiniti Q45, whose elaborate “gatling gun”-style headlamps were groundbreaking when the model was first unveiled in 2000. Other cameos include a Suzuki Wagon R, Toyota Prius, Toyota Vanguard, a Toyota Alphard, Volvo S80 (not Koko’s) and a couple Toyota Hiace vans and trucks.

Jormungand – 16

Kasper, Chequita, and his team are in Jakarta, attempting to meet Colonel Nualkhair, but they’re stood up. They go to a hole-in-the-wall restaurant where he laments that a “phantom company” is trying to edge them out of southeast Asia. He orders an assault on Nualkhair’s son’s compound, which is made to look like an accident but will be seen by the phantoms as a declaration of war. The company based in Japan, which is where Koko and her team are headed. During the flight, Jonah reminisces about his previous life. They meet up with Kasper’s team at Narita, and Kasper takes Jonah to see his three orphaned friends at an international school. Kasper asks to speak to Tojo, who once worked for the Defense Intelligence HQ or SR Squad, whom he believes to be the “phantoms”.

With R and Hex dead and Bookman currently hand-less, HCLI moves on to other things, as they’re threatened to be pushed out of SE Asia by a mysterious company that’s messing with their would-be clients. Kasper, who is essentially a beefed-up, more ruthless version of Koko, isn’t going to take it sitting down, and seeks the wisdom of another one from Koko’s team, Tojo. Both teams are so eclectic in their composition, it’s not surprising that they all may have past connections that may prove useful. Tojo is more brains than brawn in ops, so we may be in for a more cerebral arc than the one with R and Hex – though the tidy raid on Nualkhair’s pad was a powerful statement that Kasper doesn’t play around.

This episode was a little weighed down by frequent flashbacks that amount to clips from the first cour’s fifth episode, chronicling how Jonah ended up with HCLI and Koko. This smacked of recapping, which we never like to see in regular episodes. The clips didn’t really reveal anything new, but only served as a large, padded segue to Jonah asking Kasper about the kids he promised would be cared for in Japan. He sees them, and their clean clothes smiling faces are a striking contrast to the abject misery of that wretched base. But Jonah just sees them; he doesn’t meet them. He’s almost confirming that he deems his existence incompatible with normal life and other kids in particular. He couldn’t bear it if the sight of him changed the look on their faces from contentment to fear.

Rating: 6 (Good)

Jormungand – 15

Renato pleads with Chief Black to call Hex off, warning that Operation Undershaft will be compromised if she kills Jonah. Black gives him Hex’s location, but leaves it up to him. While walking through Praha with Koko, Jonah senses danger, and they’re jumped by two of Hex’s ten men. Jonah is shot with a paralytic drug and can’t move. R confesses to Koko that he’s a spy, but helps her and Jonah escape. He and Hex face off; he misses, but Hex shoots him through the eye. Lutz and Leim take out all of Hex’s men but two, and she retreats. Black visits R’s grave and meets Koko, but then learns Koko used HCLI to track Hex down to Iraq, where the cave she’s hiding in was bombed by a B-52. Black starts seeing ghosts of R and Hex.

Chief Black’s left hand Hex told him Koko was a monster who must be methodically dismantled and destroyed. Chief Black’s right hand Renato told him Koko was nothing but a normal girl beneath her iron mask. The truth is, she’s both. We saw more sides of her this week than perhaps any time in the past, as she faces the prospect of losing Jonah, is told she’s been betrayed by one of her most-trusted bodyguards who taught her how to carry herself, and then loses that bodyguard shortly thereafter. The mask disappears the moment she hears the truth from R. Her viciousness returns when she orders Hex hunted down. And her mask returns for her meeting with Bookman, save a tear she sheds when leaving a bottle of liquor on R’s grave.

In a way, we like how this arc turned out. It didn’t cheat by letting everyone stay alive, or eliminating all threats around Koko and her crew. Hex is dead, but the rather strange scene of Bookman conversing with her and R’s ghosts tells us Bookman remains as dangerous as ever, and he vows to continue “dancing” with Koko “till she screams”, which is just creepy when accompanied by his attempt at dancing. Losing Jonah would have definitely had more impact, though. Koko’s loss of composure is only temporary, and she roars back fast after R’s death. We’re not so sure she’d so quickly forgive someone enough to give them so quick a death as she gave Hex if it were Jonah who was killed – nor do we think she’d forgive herself so quickly.

Rating: 8 (Great)

Car Cameos: The cars that line Praha (Prague) include a Peugeot 406, a BMW 7-Series, and many Mercedes-Benzes: an S-Class and GL-Class, plus Bookman’s CL-Class coupe.

Jormungand – 14

This episode, like the last, was a lot of table-setting, but we got more specifics about the relationships between Chief Black, Renato, and Hex. Those specifics give us a better understanding of what drives them. All of this is leading up to Hex going after Jonah, the one life she believes will matter to Koko above all others. Koko isn’t just hanging off of Jonah to tease him, or as some kind of act. He’s her restoration project, her bodyguard, and her little brother.

Is Hex hunting him just because she’s evil? Well, no. She’s a bitter former elite special forces officer who was cast aside by the military and joined up with the CIA. She also lost her fiance in the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers. That attack was orchestrated by terrorists who got weapons from arms dealers like Koko. In Hex’s eyes that makes Koko every bit a terrorist as Bin Laden, and she’s going to make her pay nice and slowly.

Black won’t allow her to kill Koko, but he’ll allow her a “sacrifice” if it makes her feel better; after all, she’s his left hand while R is his right; and he needs both to fulfill Operation Undershaft. Yet Hex and R have totally different mindsets; Black’s two hands don’t know what the other is doing, nor do they understand. R owes Black a debt and wants to be loyal, but he’s none too pleased about Jonah’s life being dangled in front of Hex like a mouse for a cat. He’s safe right now, with the trust of both of his bosses, but inevitably he’ll have to make a choice he won’t like that will betray one of them.

Rating: 7 (Very Good)

P.S. In one  of the many flashbacks, Koko is totally freaking out; fearing for her life. You know, like any normal person would. R tells her he’ll protect her…but she has to keep smiling no matter what.

Jormungand – 13

Click here to browse our reviews of the first season (12 episodes) of Jormungand.

Dr. Miami finds Karen Low on the street in Port Elizabeth and hires her as a secretary. She meets up with Koko on a ship in the Solomans to watch the launch of the last of the 126 rockets sending up satellites for a navigation support system that will give HCLI a decisive business advantage. Meanwhile, R meets with Bookman, who wants Koko kept on a leash, while Hex – who sent the three assassins to Koko – wants her dead…but not before she hurts her.

The last time we hung out with Koko & Friends, Valmet was gettin’ her catharsis on, Koko was getting rid of assassins, and R was revealing himself as a CIA mole. This week picks up pretty much where we left off, but also shows us what was going on in the first episode with the rockets. It’s a huge project that will no doubt make Koko more money (whether or not that’s what she wants), but is also netting her plenty of unwanted attention from concerned (she’d say nosy) parties all over the world.

Like R for the two years he’s worked for her, we’ve still only seen the Princess, the girl with the mask so perfect and complete, ascertaining her thoughts and true self are all but impossible. R believes that mask isn’t indestructable, and even saw her lose composure for a brief moment. Hex, a new face this season, is planning on shattering that mask, and the episode is not subtle about her potential first target: Koko’s teddy bear Jonah. We’ll see if the Real Koko (if there even is one) comes out this season as a result of external forces.

Rating: 7 (Very Good)

Car Cameos: Many cars seen in previous episodes are also seen here, including a Citroën C4 3-door, Mercedes C-Class, and Volkswagen Touareg 2. Hex drives up in a yellow Bentley Continental GT convertible.