Saturday, June 30, 2012

[Ended] Jormungand: Excitingly Explosive, and Intricately Crafted


At first, it may look like a Black Lagoon style shoot 'em up story, but as the story progresses, it quickly transformed into something that is much more: it combine geopolitical issue and negotiation tactics along with some very interesting character development and some philosophical discussion about weapons and arms dealers.

First thing first, Jormungand is an action anime, and this story got some gooooood bullet flying, blood spilling, and even brain splattering actions. As many head shots as this anime has, I don't think this is suitable for the faint hearts.

The story is on a case-by-case format, where the previous case really doesn't have much connection with the next one. But there are some small key details that do spill over. It's very much like how the original Darker than Black is formatted, which makes me think whether there's also a grand conspiracy towards the grand finale of the story (not this season obviously, but we already know for sure the second season is coming in October). The plot format too somewhat resembles what we've seen in Darker than Black: The arcs shifts between being character centric and plot centric. With a large central cast, this is probably the best way of introducing all characters without getting too dry.

At the center of the story, Koko is the key to all everything. While her goal is only to profit from arms dealing and wouldn't really hesitate on killing people that got in her way, she does have certain principles. Those principles are really what distinguishes her from the other low lives in the story. In certain sense, you can even say she's a dark knight, without the will to go after bad guys that is. LOL

Final Scoreboard:


Drama: 92 (Dramatic)
Comedy: 90 (Dark humor)
Action: 96 (Explosive)
Art/Animation: 89 (Interesting enough)
Sound/Music: 90 (Great theme songs)
Character: 98 (Very interesting)
Plot: 90 (Slowly building up)
Ending: -- (To be continued)

Re-watch value: 75 - Still might be interesting

Overall: 93 - Explosive and Exciting

Recommendation: While many may still disagree (include my fellow contributor to this blog, danchou), in my opinion this is unquestionably the best anime of the season. So I'm handing it

Anime of the Season for Spring 2012 Season

4 comments:

Reik said...

Totally agree with Jormungand being "Anime of the season". This season on my opinion had "weak endings" overall. I think of all the endings i saw the ones that pleased me the most were Jormun, Nazo no Kanojo, Fate/zero and natsuiro kiseki. What was your opinion on the overall for the season?

The Evil Cat said...

Jormungand didn't really end, it's as much of an ending as Fate/Zero's first season, since it announced at the end of the last episode that the next series coming in October. Fate/Zero ended really well, and I haven't caught up with Nazo or Natsuiro, expect to do so in next couple of days ^_^ so stay tuned

Reik said...

Well by ending i ment that it was not disapointing or anything it left me excited to know what was coming next if you know what i mean. I'll be waiting for the other reviews :P

Reik said...

GOD i forgot Sakamichi no Apollon
perfect ending imo