Jormungand (manga)

Plot

The series follows Koko Hekmatyar, a young arms dealer who sells weapons under HCLI, an international shipping corporation and illegal smuggling operation. As one of the company's unofficial weapon dealers, she sells weapons in a variety of countries while avoiding both local and international authorities. Traveling with her is a team of bodyguards, mostly composed of former soldiers. The newest addition to her crew is Jonah, an inexpressive and deadly child soldier who hates arms dealers.

Manga

The manga is published in North America by VIZ Media. In Japan, Jormungand is officially published by Shogakukan. In Taiwan, it is licensed and published by Taiwan Tohan.

Anime

An anime animated by White Fox and produced by Geneon was announced on the 10th volume of the manga. The anime began airing on April 10, 2012 on Tokyo MX, Television Kanagawa, TV Aichi and KBS and on later dates on Sun TV, BS11 and AT-X. The show will also be seen online in Showtime, NicoNico, Bandai Channel and GyaO. A second season of the series, Jormungand: Perfect Order, was also announced and slated to be released in October 2012, which began broadcasting on Japanese TV on October 9, 2012. The two seasons aired on Japanese TV at 12:30 AM.

The first release of Jormungand on DVD and Blu-ray was on June 27, 2012 with the first two episodes, "Gun Metal, Calico Road" and "Pulsar" included. Subsequent releases followed with two episodes each on both Blu-rays and DVDs on July 25, August 29 and September 26 of 2012. The Perfect Order DVD/Blu-rays was first released in Japan on December 21, 2012.

Showgate handles licensing aspect of Jormungand outside Japan. A sneak preview of the anime was held on March 31 to April 1, 2012 at the Anime Contents Expo at the Makuhari Messe in Chiba.

Music

Both the opening and ending themes were produced by I've Sound. The opening song is "Borderland" by Mami Kawada, and the ending theme is "Ambivalentidea" by Nagi Yanagi. "Borderland" was released as a single on May 30, 2012, while "Ambivalentidea" was released as a single on June 6, 2012. Both songs were released as singles by the record label Geneon Universal Entertainment. For the second season, the opening is "Under / Shaft" by Maon Kurosaki, while the ending is "Laterality" (ラテラリティ) by Nagi Yanagi.

Drama CD

A 6-part Drama CD had been released prior to the anime, based on the Orchestra story arc. Of all the voice actors involved in the CD, only Unsho Ishizuka reprised his role as Lehm while the voice actors for everyone else involved in the drama were replaced.

Radio Show

A radio show dedicated to Jormungand has been made public with Shizuka Ito and Mutsumi Tamura as the hosts.

Reception

Scott Green, writing for Ain't It Cool News, summed up the series as being enjoyable, but underachieving. Matthew Warner feels that the story in the fourth volume is more focused on the business of trading weapons, describing it as a nice change of pace for the story, but Warner was disappointed that the violence and "dark, twisted plot points" of earlier volumes in the series were not present. Erica Friedman, organiser of Yuricon, noted the yuri potential of Valmet, but declared the manga to be "just a dumb manga that I really like". Karen Maeda enjoyed the action shown in the sixth volume, regarding the panels as being easy to follow, and hoped that Jormungand would be produced as an anime.

Anime News Network's review of Jormungand points out the "challenging ideas about war, peace, and world affairs—and throws in some whiz-bang military action for good measure."

In Japan, the manga's 9th Volume sold 41,712 copies in a week for a total of 42,337 in the 27th place out of 30. Jormungand's 11th Volume was in 10th place and had sold 70,593 copies. It later placed itself in the 20th place out of 30, selling 34,697 copies weekly for a total of 105,290.