Verdict:
I have a problem with the purebred Japanese anime involving any kind of action or horror and Jormungand is one of the better examples to illustrate what I mean. There is a number of different hitches in the writing for such shows, which make the script feel like it was done by a 10-year-old boy.
Besides the giant boobs, the signs are countless: the dialogue contains bits of unnecessary exposition; characters speak words designed to make themselves seem cool, but it comes off as extremely lame instead (though definitely something that would sound cool to an 10-year-old); characters are given attributes that a 10-year-old thinks make them cool, like white hair; and the general logic of the storytelling is flawed. Essentially, real people do not talk like that and do not act like that. They boy is trying to replicate what he saw in his favourite Hollywood action movies, to the best of his abilities, but with very awkward results.
Jormungand is an action anime about a team of strongly contrasting characters adventuring and overcoming different dangers together, all in the business of selling guns. The story concentrates on the child soldier in the group – Jonah. This premise sounds fun, but the writing is exactly as described earlier.
Just as an example: at one point our anti-heroes are up against an armed group that barricaded itself in a house, but then the whole area is surrounded by a group of enemy soldiers. So our protagonists decide to disarm themselves and tell the ambushing soldiers that there is a smaller more vulnerable team hiding inside the house, so that the soldiers attack those people instead. Ok, but why are you disarming yourself? Now you are standing in the open with no guns, while the people inside the house are armed and in cover. Nothing about this scene makes sense, but the 10-year-old who wrote it probably thought that he had come up with something smart. This kind of broken logic can be seen throughout the whole show and permiates the dialogue.
What is good about Jormungand is pretty much everything else, especially the sound effects and the animation. The gunfire and explosion effects are excellent. The animation is smooth. The world is colourful. Jormungand is a modern anime combining hand-drawn animation with computer assistance. The staging and the editing are clear. The sound effects are crispy and the guns sound different depending on whether they are close or far away.
The style scales are tipped away from the more extreme Japanese style of animation and towards the more Westernized realistic style, which makes the show more palatable for the Western audience. Add a few crazy characters, then add a few hints of straight shota and yuri to the mix and you got yourself an interesting anime.
The music is a mix of everything, including rock and jazz, but dominated by an electronic component. Frankly, the soundtrack is a bit disjointed, like they couldn’t pick a style. It’s like you’re watching a show, but you have your own Spotify playlist set to random playing in the background.
The 2nd season is more coherent than the first, but overall, this show is brought down by its immature tone. Its flashy action made me consider just turning off the subtitles and pretending that the characters are saying something smart.