Jormungand: Perfect Order Blu-Ray/DVD Review

Jonah is still under the employ of Koko Hekmatayar as she continues her business in the arms trade. Still making deals and dodging bullets, Koko and her bodyguards continuing traversing through Europe and soon find themselves under the radar of the CIA’s infamous “BookMan”. Koko and her group soon finds themselves faced with new and old enemies looking to take their eccentric leader’s head, while also dealing with a traitor among them. As Koko draws closer and closer to revealing her final plan, Jonah starts questioning what his place on the team is and whether or not he will continue to follow Koko.

The second season of Jormungand picks up right where the last one left off, with the revelation of a traitor in Koko’s group who works for her new advesary, BookMan (voiced by Mark Stoddard). For obvious reasons I won’t spoil who the traitor is, but trust me it’s not as important who the traitor is as how their death sets things in motion.

While the show as a whole tells itself from Jonah’s POV, this season focuses more on Koko and her psyche. In the first season Koko is shown as very random and animated, but there was always this underlying sinister nature to her. “Perfect Order” pushes that nature to the forefront as Koko grows more ambitious and erratic throughout the show. Although this really comes as no surprise as one of the questions of Jormungand was not “Will Koko become a monster?” but rather “When will Koko become a monster?”.

As for the new enemies aiming for our ragtag group we have the aforementioned “BookMan” AKA George Black. A high ranking official in the CIA’s European affiars, he is smart, cunning, and has many agents under his disposal that he uses to initiate a plan of his creation called “Operation Undershaft” and Koko is the defining piece of his puzzle. While most of the puppets BookMan strings along are one note characters, he does have two agents that he uses to great effect: that being the traitor and Hex.

Hex (voiced by Jamie Marchi) is a hardcore patriotic mercenary with a huge vendetta against Koko. Hex is just erratic as Koko, if not more so and uses whatever methods within her disposal to achieve her goals, including defying BookMan. She isn’t in the show for long, but she does make a bit of an impact as her actions both push Koko closer to the edge, as well as causing her to come face to face with BookMan.

Hex

Just like last season we get some more insight on the back stories of our characters. Wilee, Mao, R, Lehm, and even Koko all get their share of exploration this season and it does make for some pretty good television.

“Perfect Order” as a whole is more methodical than it’s predecessor, and this is where it stands up and then falls on its face. While the flashbacks to Koko’s past and BookMan’s ever complicated present machinations are both thrilling and intense at times, it fails by trying to make Jormungand more than it is, which is a fast paced action romp. This results in some of the more supposedly harrowing scenes being disjointed or coming out of nowhere with little to no satisfying build-up. Although it does still retain some of its comedy and fun in some places.

Case in point, Koko’s “master plan”. Throughout the series there is this unsettling mood over Koko that only intensifies after she is crosses path with Hex again. Koko and the just as eccentric Dr. Minami Amada AKA Dr. Miami (voiced by Gwendolyn Lau)  have been plotting together for some time, and it all has to do with satellites that are being launched into space. While the mystery of the plan keeps you intrigued, the payoff is more than a little underwhelming.

I won’t spoil her plan, but let’s just say it has more than a few holes in it (most of which are pointed out by Kasper). It can also be a bit frustrating a times when no one on the team questions Koko on the matter save Jonah, and to a lesser extent Lutz. Its as if logic left the building and everyone decided to betray their characters.

Speaking of Jonah, he certainly has a lot of growing up to do this season and for the most part it is handled well, especially near the end of the season where he actually LEAVES Koko’s group and joins Kasper (voiced by Eric Vale). He doesn’t like the direction Koko is taking and he sees just how far she is willing to go to achieve her goals.

As far as audio goes, it’s the same as the first season. Anastasia Munoz, Micah Solusod and the rest of the main cast play their parts pretty well, albeit if they are bit flat at times; but watching either track is servicable. Jamie Marchi does a good job as Hex and Mark Stoddard puts on a great performance as BookMan.

As for extras, standard trailers, textless openings and endings, and episode commentaries. Also just like the first season, there is another live action extra in the set with ADR Director Christopher Bevins and the voice of BookMan Mark Stoddard.

“Perfect Order” isn’t a perfect sequel to Jormungand, but it is still an enjoyable watch. The action is still fast, the charcters are still fun, and while the ending is a bit disappointng it does leave itself open to viewer interpretation. Asking us the question: “Did Koko did the right thing?”