Jormungand

There is some interesting themes in this anime, since its main protagonist is an arms dealer and her companions are mercenaries, including a boy soldier...

Koko is the leader of a troupe of mercenaries and she picks up Jonah along the way, a boy no more than 10 years old and has him join her merry gang of killers. Of course, these killers are actually good guys who are just doing a service (selling arms to despots around the world), but they never kill anyone who doesn't deserve it haha...

Its never overly violent or exploitative, despite the subject matter and the characters are likable enough, although while the animation is good, the female characters don't look very female, but that was probably done on purpose...watch it if you liked 'Black Lagoon' (which I did)...

I loved the series it was so good and I found all of the main characters interesting and the story-lines of the series were also very good and at least seemed to be well thought out.

My favorite character in this is the protagonist Koko Haktemeyer I found her interactions with her team quite interesting most notably those with Jonah and Valmet (particularly Valmet). Also Koko herself is a very interesting character with her guile and intellect also her accomplices are also each interesting characters also given their backgrounds.

All in all this is a great action anime and a must for any action fan!

I like Koko for always having the cheeky smirk on her especially being in dangerous situations and there's Jonah with his not bothered attitude but is a badass shooter all the same.

Totally liked the serious gun action scenes including the comedy. This anime might as well be Black Lagoon's distant cousin regarding its similar assassin topic.

Highly recommend this anime if you are a big fan of the action genre!

"Jormundgand" has a really strong concept - a lot could have been done with the story of an orphaned boy whose parents were killed in the war, which made him dislike weapons, but as a soldier he is forced to use them.

The emphasis here is on "SHOULD", because "Jormundgand" unfortunately doesn't manage to introduce the viewer to this story well.

At the beginning you get a very short scene of the main character looking dreamily into the sky and explaining his situation in an internal monologue, but then you're thrown straight into the series, which unfortunately meant that I had a hard time finding any interest in this anime.

The characters are hardly introduced, so I'm not interested in them at all apart from the main character.

In addition, it's not clear at the beginning whether there is any plan or goal - that just makes the series boring, because how am I supposed to get into the series if I don't know what it's working towards?

In addition, the characters have an almost laughable amount of "plot armor" - characters whose daily business is killing can't even hit someone from 5 meters away with an assault rifle or shoot out a few car tires.

As if that wasn't bad enough, the leader of the whole group feels a very questionable attraction to the main character, who is a whole 10 years younger than her. She's constantly touching the poor boy and while you could argue that the lady is just very "touchy" and there's nothing more to it, at some point she clearly crosses that line and it's just disgusting. Here too, fans of the series try to argue that this is just meant to illustrate certain character traits of hers, but the author knew exactly what he was doing here and how this all looked like.

All of this is a shame because, as I said, the premise is very interesting. I also liked the character design and the intro song of the first season is definitely catchy, but unfortunately this anime is just bad...

If you're looking for something similar to "Jormundgand" I would recommend "Black Lagoon" - the anime is much better!

The first episode there was a strange but balanced mix of casual brutality, dark humor and just a sliver of heart that quickly marked "Jormungand" as something different.

For full disclosure the premise itself was unique enough it sat at the bottom of my queue for months because I had trouble reconciling this fairly serious subject being handled by an anime, but once Jormungand was next I was pleasing to be proven wrong.

The animation style was mirror of the series as a whole, simple and clean and yet at the same time technically perfect when it came to the details that counted.

Not everything was flawless, not every episode had the same depth and some of the stories / sub-plots seemed uncharacteristically outlandish at first (but unfolded interestingly) but as a whole it was a fantastic watch.

Pros:

• Great cast of characters.
• Depth hiding under the action.
• Excellent music and score.
• Above average and consistent animation.
• Surprising beauty at times.

Cons:

• Animation quality dibs a bit in the second season.
• Some predictability.
• The end to the arc needed more than 2 episodes to complete, but I'm biased there.