Jormungand

I decide to post about Jormungand now that the second season is over.  The first season didn’t actually ‘end’, leaving everything hanging without even much indication where anything was going to go, so of course I couldn’t post about it.  I like to wait for final endings before deciding if I like a series.

Jormungand follows the exploits of a young woman named Koko Hekmatyar and her merry band of killers.  Koko is an arms dealer - a very smart arms dealer.  Koko got into the arms dealer business by following in the footsteps of her father and her older brother Kasper.  Although not much is said about her father other than hints and innuendos, Kasper is very much a part of the series.  The other main character though is Jonah, a young boy who hates arms dealers and is one of Koko’s trained killer, bodyguards.

Jonah’s family and connections were destroyed by wars made possible by arms dealers, so he despises guns and their dealers.  On the other hand, he has grown up using guns and killing.  He runs afoul of Kasper Hekmatyar, killing one of Kasper’s people while trying to save and protect other children.  Kasper takes him captive and ends up negotiating Jonah’s life and the children’s lives in exchange for Jonah working as a bodyguard for Koko. 

The first series is Koko, Jonah and Koko's merry band traveling around the world and doing arms deals while filling in this background information and the back story on the merry band members.  Also introduced in the first series is Dr. Amanda Minami, aka Dr. Miami, a weird, genius-level researcher with a love of butterflies.  Basically the first series positions all the characters and then ends.

The second series, subtitled Perfect Order, begins where the first series ends and where Koko begins to get serious.  Unknown to everyone, Koko and Dr. Miami are plotting to end all war on the planet.  They are plotting to do this by creating a quantum computer and launching it into space.  With this computer they can control all air traffic and all intelligence satellites, basically controlling the worldwide flow of information.  The second series is a dance - a dance of Koko outwitting and manipulating everyone around her, including people who are trying to rein her in.  Toward the end of the series and the ultimate realization of her plan, Koko announces the plan to her gang and Jonah realizes that setting the plan in motion will cause a significant loss of life.  Jonah jumps ship, literally, and joins Kasper’s group for a couple of years.  In the end though, he returns to Koko and her group and the series ends with Koko ‘pushing the button’ to put her plan into action. 

Jormungand is quirky and brutal at times, but I found the series and the end of the series oddly satisfying. The plot is deep, and the surface jaunting around the world doing arms deals masks the deeper plot for much of the series.  None of the characters are particularly loveable, and Koko can be frighteningly freaky, but overall I enjoyed the series and recommend it.