Jormungand - Episode 6

The trouble with spending time at sea in the region of Africa is those pesky and seemingly ever-present pirates.  Then again, when you come across Koko Hekmatyar suddenly piracy on the high seas doesn't seem so appealing any more.

When Koko and company come across a band of rather well-armed pirates, Koko has little time for going easy on them, and thus this week's episode of Jormungand begins with her crew decimating their hapless opponents with a blend of skill and raw firepower.  Even a child soldier much like Jonah is given short shrift by Koko, although he does at least get to escape with his life and a buoy to help him swim to short for his troubles.

With that little distraction out of the way, we reach Africa just in time for a weaponry expo attended, naturally, by a number of arms dealers.  There is, however, another reason for Koko's visit - it seems that she wants to catch up with esteemed scientist and robotics expert Doctor Amada Miami.  The trouble is, Miami is a little bit... easily distracted.  More specifically, she's quite literally crazy (a shock for this series, I know) about butterflies, and even a meeting with Koko isn't enough to distract her from a butterfly catching session up in the snowy mountains.  It seems that Ms. Hekmatyar isn't the only one interested in Miami, as a Chinese dealer named Chang and his beautiful yet deadly assistant also have their own "to do" list - a list which not only involves Miami, but also revenge against Koko's brother Kaspar in any way possible.  As if that wasn't enough to deal with, as the bullets being to fly Valmer is distracted by a blast from her own past...

White Fox might absolutely suck at delivering action scenes within this series, yet despite this it still works when push comes to shove - Koko's troops' handling of pirates at the start of this episode was fantastic to watch, and the action towards the end of the episode worked well too.  In the middle of all this, things are a little bit messy and poorly mapped out, only coming together towards the end of the episode. This is most certainly not helped by the fact that literally everyone in this show is utterly batshit crazy - something which was fun to start with, especially in the case of Koko who has to be crazy to do her work, but it's now getting old very fast indeed.  I'll hold any full judgement of this particular story arc until we get a better feel of where we're heading (although it already seems clear in some ways), and I'm still kind of enjoying it, but there are also increasingly areas where it falls significantly short of what we might like it to be.