Jormungand: Perfect Order - Episode 6

In the midst of Hino and his Japanese Special Research group's two-pronged attack on both Koko and Kasper in Japan and Jakarta respectively, it seems like there are more potentially deadly times ahead for HCLI's finest.  But isn't fighting off these forces in Jakarta proving to be a little too easy for Kasper's own troops?

This question is little more than a niggle as Koko prepares to meet at the arranged location in a shopping arcade restaurant with Hino - a meeting which unsurprisingly proves to be a trap.  With Tojo facing off against some of his former colleagues and just about managing to come out on top, things are looking more than a little hairy as the remaining forces set about Koko and company's armoured car in an undersea tunnel while Tojo and Jonah seek to catch up to add their own firepower to the mix - not that it's particularly required when you have a helicopter and three heavily armed personnel just waiting to ambush the remaining SR forces as soon as they leave the tunnel.

Tojo's injured shoulder and a messed up car aside, this skirmish also seemed to be suspiciously easy for Koko's troops, much to the confusion as Tojo himself.  This feeling of confusion is only further complicated as Hino fails to put in an appearance at all himself, instead effectively announcing that he's running away with the rest of his squad permanently out of commission.  In a rather enigmatic and somewhat unclear finale, it seems that Hino's goals when it came to tackling HCLI were very different to what Tojo assumed them to be, and indeed the entire life of this man who he believed he had pegged perfectly has proved to be little more than a carefully created hall of smoke and mirrors.

Quite frankly, I'm not sure what to make of this episode as a way of closing out the arc - I appreciate what it was trying to do with Hinoto's character and his motives, but the whole thing was made sufficiently indistinct to feel a little unsatisfactory ultimately as a way to polish off the story.  The episode also suffered from another of those terribly clumsy moments of action that White Fox have served up on a few occasions within Jormungand, a terribly realised scene of two men standing on open ground shooting one another front point-blank range - a clumsy and horrible affair that let down what was otherwise a far better crafted bout of high-octane action.  As a result, this was nowhere near Jormungand at its best - it felt a little disjointed and unsure of itself, but it still had its moments and enough of a smart streak to show glimpses of what it can really do when it puts its mind to it.