The Fading Legacy of Jormungand

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]Imagine being locked in a cargo container for 2 weeks in complete darkness. This is Jonah, a child soldier being punished for protecting the lives of orphans. Put there by a man you swore vengeance on for he's responsible for your parents' death. So, he sends you to work for his sister. This is the plot for Jormungand.

[00:00:23]You see, Jormungand takes place in a world very much like our own. A post-9/11 world shaped by war, arms, subterfuge, murder, death. And the only difference is that there's no genocide in this story, unlike real life. But the story for the most part focuses on the conflicts within the Middle East. Now, it's definitely exaggerated in certain ways, not on its scale, but in a way that makes it feel completely detached from reality. Some of the actions our characters take are unbelievable. Much like other shows that share similar themes like Gangsta or Black Lagoon. And much like those shows, it stays just close enough to reality so that when situations get messed up and emotionally black, it's still close enough to be real to feel genuinely uncomfortable.

[00:01:06]Personally, I don't think that the world building in this show itself is anything too special, not in the traditional sense at the very [music] least.

[00:01:13]Jormungand isn't building some massive fictional world from scratch. It's relying on our awareness of the real world and conflicts around us. The show expects you to already understand, at least vaguely, the kind of world that these characters operate in, the world you operate in. Simply put, Jonah is a child soldier. He's from an unnamed Asian country, and he starts the story being stationed in a military base where he's taking care of four other orphans.

[00:01:39]And then one day, one of Koko's subordinates [music] was selling weapons through the deputy commander of the base. During that operation, Malika, one of the children that Jonah was taking care of, was forced into a minefield and killed, used as a living breathing testing dummy. That's when Jonah snapped. He armed himself and completely wiped out the entire bases garrison. And when he got to Yostav himself, well, words couldn't save him at that point.

[00:02:06]When Casper arrived with the rest of his men, Chequita subdued Jonah, but instead of killing him, Casper locked him in that shipping container with no water or food for 2 weeks, leaving him there and refusing to tell him what would happen to the surviving orphans. When [music] Casper finally opened that container, he offered Jonah a simple deal. Become his sister Koko's bodyguard and Casper would take responsibility for the three surviving children, relocating them to Japan and giving them safe lives. Jonah hated Casper with every ounce of his being and wanted nothing more than to kill him in this moment. Before the orphans sake, he accepted. Huge thanks to Tokyo Treat and SakuraCo for sponsoring this video. This month Tokyo Treat sent me their May box, Osaka Snacktacular, which is all about Osaka's legendary street food culture. So, you're getting that Japanese snack experience full of stuff like salted caramel Kit Kats, octopus rice crackers, yakisoba and a lot a lot more. Then there's SakuraCo, >> [music] >> the more regal and formal box. Their theme is heritage of Hiroshima.

[00:03:12]Hiroshima perfume with regional Japanese teas and home goods inspired by the local culture. This plate for example.

[00:03:19]But if you want that colorful Japanese side snack, Tokyo Treat is perfect. And if you want something more traditional and authentic, SakuraCo is the one to go. Or get both. And if you're doing so, use code Josephu to get $5 off your first order. Or you can click the link in the description. Thank you so much for Tokyo Treat and SakuraCo for sponsoring this video. With that being said, we follow Jonah and Koko as they travel the world selling weapons wherever the weapons are demanded. And they do so alongside a bizarre found family of mercenary soldiers and assassins. People who are just terrible.

[00:03:50]But somehow the show frames them, as I said, like a family. Coco Heckmatyar is a strange character because, in reality, she would be so annoying. She is the most Reddit-written mastermind character I've seen in a while. She's always smiling and always acting like she knows more than everyone else and constantly treating serious situations like they're part of some I Think You Should Leave bit. Like, at her worst, she epitomizes everything wrong with Death Note's life.

[00:04:16]Self-deluded chud energy. But, there are those moments where she changes her behavior. She drops the Reddit act and stops laughing and smiling as much. In these moments, she genuinely feels infinitely more intimidating. And it's only because of those moments where she drops the act that you realize that she is working on something else. She has a reason for moving forward that's greater than just selling arms. She understands the world and people and the violence that she commits is all a means to an end. She's playing at something way, way bigger.

[00:04:50]Now, this is usually the moment where I talk about the rest of the diverse cast.

[00:04:53]There's a lot of people in this main roster. So, we're going to have to shoot through them relatively quick. And if you're enjoying the video so far, please show your support by subscribing.

[00:05:01]Anyway, starting with Lem is the veteran of the group. He's basically the granddad. He's old-school. He's a military professional. Narratively, he picks up the slack from all the other members of the crew, whether it's shooting a target that Luttuce can't bring himself to shoot or being the level-headed voice that the group need in a chaotic situation. Velvette's next.

[00:05:18]She is dogmatically loyal to Coco and also just incredibly attracted to her.

[00:05:23]She is the most clingy character in the entire story, and she's also just a bad [ __ ] when it comes to fighting. And she has her little PTSD storyline, which is pretty chill. Luttuce, my personal favorite of the group, is the team sniper. His background is within law enforcement. He's a cop. It makes him feel more grounded anytime there's an emotional situation. He's the one who shows either regret or hesitation that the rest of these soulless heathens don't. May was a little bit similar. He has a family of his own outside of this one. He was working for his local army and then they essentially sacked him.

[00:05:53]So, now he's working for Koko. It's not played on very much in the show, but I really think they could have played with this kind of dual life situation that he's got going. R, I love R. He is charming. He's my favorite storyline in the entire show. I'll leave the talking about him till later. Tojo worked for Casper before he worked for Koko, much like Jonah. But in terms of narrative, he tends to just get ditched by Jonah when he's supposed to be tutoring him.

[00:06:17]Ugo is a former mafia driver. Koko picked him up after the mafia group tried to pay Koko with drugs. And in that transaction, Koko saw the disgust in his face because the substance has killed his brother. So, after Koko wipes out the thoughtless mafia for insulting her with this trade, she hires him as her personal driver. Now, while he is the explosive expert, instead of being some psycho who loves big booms and stuff like that, he didn't play into that archetype. He's really calm and almost academic energy to his destruction. And that comes from the fact that he comes from a family of architects. And he's an architect himself, but he pivoted into demolitions because they play hand in hand in one another. He knows how the buildings are built, therefore he knows the best way to destroy them.

[00:06:58]And that's the crew. Jesus, that took a while and I was being really quick. And that's the issue. One of the biggest problems with Jormungand is not that the cast is bad. In fact, I actually like most of Koko's crew. The problem is that there's just so many of them. Koko's group is built like a proper military unit. Everyone has a role and a very particular set of skills. That should work, but with two seasons and not every episode being focused on one of these characters, the anime only has so much time to spend across all of these people. So, what ends up happening is that the crew get their backstory for the most part, but not always with development. And those are two different things, backstory and development.

[00:07:37]Backstory tells us where a character came from. Development shows us how that past affects the character and how they act today. The way they think, the way they change, and the way they clash with the people around them. In Black Lagoon, the core cast is much smaller, four characters. So, the show has way more time to keep pressuring them as individuals. Rock and Revy are the best example, especially because of how consistently they're testing one another. People are shaped by their environment and how they grow. So, when these two collide, we ask ourselves, "Why does Revy have such an issue with Rock?" Because we don't know what happened to Revy. We just see how she acts because of what happened to her.

[00:08:17]But with Rock, we see his backstory.

[00:08:20]Thus, we know why he acts the way he does. When Revy has an outburst [music] or punches Rock, she's showing her past with those actions. But in Jormungand, because the crew is so much bigger and a lot of character-focused episodes only really have time to answer one or two questions, and the one usually being how did this person end up with Koko, that's not a lot of time to develop the character themselves. And although it doesn't develop its main cast, it does develop its extended cast. The wider world of Jormungander is built mostly through a few major players. And in each one shows a different side to the arms trade and the world at large. The first major player is Kasper Hekmatyar, basically a colder version of Koko. But he's more honest. He doesn't hide behind big speeches and isn't planning some big grandiose play. He's just an arms dealer. He knows exactly what he is and where he's going. And he has the element of being Koko's brother. So, in terms of competition of trade, there's no collision there. He acts as a good mirror to Koko in almost every way. His emotions, his goals, and how he acts is so different from Koko, yet they share so much in common as well. But he serves as a narrative vehicle to get Jonah to Koko. And then he does more towards the end of the story, but I don't want to spoil that. Then we have the CIA, mainly through Bookman, Hex, and Scarecrow.

[00:09:41]Yormungandr loves to play around by showing how governments and agencies orbit the same world Coco lives in because of where they're placed in the Middle East and because of what they're doing, arms dealing. America love their guns, huh? And look, they're from the greatest country in the world. So often times these CIA characters act above Coco, act like they can look down on her and the rest of the cast. But because of Bookman, they never take their eyes off her. They're constantly watching her or trying to control what she has access to. Coco is a really effective arms dealer, okay? Like she is probably better than her brother at the job of being an arms dealer. And Bookman saw that as an opportunity to almost tame her. How much could they benefit from that skill set? And because of that, although he's framed as an antagonist, he's overlooking the situation and, you know, is the enemy in many situations.

[00:10:36]But he's handled more like almost a parental figure trying to steer Coco in the right direction. We'll get more into the CIA later, but there is other arms dealers that Coco comes across and this is usually where the bloodier conflicts tend to happen. They tend to provoke Coco for some reason. She's a woman selling arms, so maybe sexism. But just like Kasper, these other arms dealers act as really good mirrors. If we see Coco killing a group of people or commanding a group of people to be killed, we could feel, well, that's not chill. That's not the nicest thing someone could do to you. But then we see what the other arms dealers are capable of. And that kind of reframes Coco as heroic, even though her actions are anything but heroic. So because of that, they make you feel like Coco isn't the center of the world anymore, at least when the arms trade is concerned. They remind us that if Coco disappeared tomorrow, the arms trade would just keep moving without her. Someone else would simply just take her place. Wars need weapons and the world has war, but it also has doctors. There is a lot of doctors in this show, surprisingly, three main doctors. I can't really say too much about them, but I can't talk about like Dr. Miami. She's probably the most important person for narrative reasons outside of Koko when it comes to character agency in the story. See, Jormungand is mostly guns and soldiers and fights, but Miami shifts the story into the science, into satellite information and control. She's the bridge that brings this story about arms dealers into Koko's master plan. That's spoilers. It's not just Koko's plan. Dr. Miami is in it just as much as Koko is.

[00:12:15]I genuinely quite enjoyed the story all in all. My favorite storyline though, it's one of the CIA storylines, >> [music] >> mainly because of a character I mentioned I'd get back to earlier, Orr.

[00:12:25]Up to this point, Orr feels like another member of Koko's crew. He honestly was really forgettable. He was comedic and he could hold his own in a gunfight and blends into the group so well that you kind of forget he's even there. But then the show later reveals that Orr is not just one of Koko's men. He's a CIA mole working under Bookman. Bookman, who's being developed throughout the entire story, boom, reveal. And this is where the taming element of Bookman's storyline kicks in as well. See, the main goal is not to kill Koko. It's It's to tame her. It's to gain access to HCLI's logistics network. HCLI is the company that Koko Kasper work for and they have a huge satellite network at their disposal. But Orr's been with Koko's crew for so long. He's loyal to Bookman still, but he clearly has become attached to Koko and her crew. He's not pretending anymore. Stockholm syndrome has kicked in. Somewhere along the way, the mission stopped being the mission.

[00:13:23]The people he was supposed to be spying on, well, they became his [music] family. And that conflict gets, you know, pushed to the breaking point when Hex enters the story. [music] She kind of personifies everything that's wrong with patriotism. And kind of all stemmed from the fact that she lost her fiance during the September 11th attacks, and then was later stationed in Afghanistan, and then went way off the rails. So much so that the CIA couldn't really control her in any conceivable way. And in the past, she has already killed someone that Koko really cares about. Spoilers, not really. So, she's already guarded against her. So, Hex is on this patriotic mission that she thinly veils as fighting for her country, but it's really just because she wants to kill or hurt Koko Hekmatyar. She kind of realizes quickly that she's never going to get to Koko, but there is someone who she can get to. And that would probably hurt Koko more if they died than Koko herself. And that's Jonah. Bookman lets Or know about Hex's plan. This puts Bookman in a pretty interesting spot where he's got two characters. One who's working for him and doing what he's saying, following orders, but he's very close to basically an international terrorist. But then the other one is an international terrorist. And that's where Or finally has to choose. He knows Hex is going too far. He knows Bookman is willing to let Jonah be sacrificed because it doesn't affect his scheme at controlling Koko. And for the first time, the CIA clashes directly with his loyalty of the people he's been living beside for the past so many years. So, Or tells Koko the truth. He admits he's a spy. And instead of using that moment to save himself by fleeing or something, he uses it to save Koko and Jonah. And that's when he gets shot.

[00:15:11]That's why his death lands. He's one of the few characters whose actions show genuine emotional friction. He chooses the family he infiltrated over the organization that gave him everything or confronts Hex buying some time for Koko and Jonah to escape and dies in the process in their shootout. Both shoot a bullet at the same time. Both hit each other's eyes, but Ors wound was fatal.

[00:15:35]In the aftermath of this fight, Hex walks out of the fight basically unscathed only losing an eye. And it's one of the moments where Koko doesn't feel like a smoke mastermind. She's angry and she's hurt and she makes Hex pay.

[00:16:05]I look forward to our next battle in hell.

[00:16:15]The strange thing about Jormungand is that it wasn't unfinished or had any real production issues like basically every other anime I cover on this channel. The manga had already ended by the time the anime was airing and perfect order, the second season, was able to adapt the final stretch of the story. So, this is not a case of the anime catching up to the manga or having its own ending. But, it doesn't mean that the ending was smooth. If anything, Jormungand has the opposite problem. It reaches the real ending, the ending from the manga, but the ending itself feels incredibly backloaded. For most of the series, the structure is the same. Koko travels somewhere selling weapons, a deal goes wrong, a crew member solves the problem, and maybe that problem was tied to their backstory. It's just a standard disconnected episodic set of episodes. And there's hints here and there, but it's nothing like concrete or interesting. And then there's the final stretch where the show suddenly reveals that Koko's real goal is to build Jormungand, a plan to force peace upon the world by controlling global movement through the HCLI's satellite network and the quantum computer she's gathered all these doctors to build. And that's so huge. It's such a massive shift and such an interesting plot for a story, not three episodes. Like suddenly the show is not about guns and deals, war zones and fights anymore. It's become a story about global control, forced peace. The scale gets so unbelievably huge and heroic out of nowhere. Although there's mass casualties applied and that serves as Jonas' last straw, they just undo it by the end of the three episodes. So, what's it matter? Like the idea is so interesting in my opinion, but it comes so late. It almost feels like the last three episodes are completely detached story from the rest. I personally felt like the ending was really rushed, even though its adaptation was technically perfect adaptation of the manga. I think that the issue wasn't with the anime.

[00:18:16]The biggest issue is that the story saved its best and biggest idea for the very end and then never paid it off.