“It’s like she was born to be an evil merchant.” -Minami Amada

Summary: All eyes are on HCLI as Koko and Dr. Minami continue with their top secret plan (now called Jormungand) and Kaspar presents the “Hekmatyar-Global Grid”, a system that uses the satellites recently launched to greatly improve the logistics of their clients. But is that the true purpose behind Koko’s satellites?

Impressions: It’s hard writing about this episode, because I know it’s setting up events and getting us ready for the final arch, but it’s also very dry and a little confusing without much of a context to put all these dropped hints into. It’s like I know all this stuff will be important later, and I should be excited about it but I’m just not. They throw us a couple of bones with some cute Jonah moments, but I’d say about 85% of the episode is people waiting around to see what happens. And that’s what we’re doing too. And it’s maybe just a little bit boring. Once the season wraps-up, and you can sit down and just marathon this show, I’m sure it’ll be great as a nice little resting spot but when you’re watching it week to week…it’s a different story. But I think that just might be me? Anyway, let’s move on to what actually happened this episode.

Jonah’s face is perfection.

With Koko and Dr. Minami opening a toy robot factory as a joint venture together as well as their increasingly shadowy meetings about their new plan, “Jormungand”, the tensions continues to rise all over the world as everyone from Bookman down to Amalia Trohovsk tries to decide what to do when these two ladies finally reveal what they’ve been plotting. Koko is spot on when she says that people might want or not want whatever it is that they’re up too, but regardless of how they feel, they won’t put a stop to them. I’d liken it to watching a train wreck; you just can’t look away. It’s the same for everyone watching Koko; they’re so busy being fascinated by what she’s doing that they can’t even think to put a stop to it (if they wanted to.) Whatever “Jormungand” ends up being, it’s got to be huge to draw so many observers and just as many different reactions.

CCAT’s Curry contemplates leaving the business of being a weapons dealer, as the shifting nature of war has almost rendered people like him obsolete. What he says about modern warfare rings especially true in times like these, with unmanned drone strikes and the uncertain morality behind many conflicts today making war a totally different animal than it was just 70 years ago. Curry believes that Koko’s plan will mark the end of yet another era, and so, he’ll get out before things get really hard for him. Amalia Trohovsk, on the other hand, would rather join HCLI instead of quitting. She’s sure that whatever happens, it’d be best to be on Koko’s side than opposed to her. Bookman is content to sit behind his desk, gathering information using Scarecrow and Schokolade, while wondering what Koko will do in silence. Although, certain things he says also makes it appear that he would like to hitch his wagon to HCLI’s star.

While everyone’s waiting around, trying to decide what to do, Kaspar is unveiling the “Hekmatyar-Global Grid” (or “Hek-GG” for short) somewhere in the Philippines at an arms conference.A big obstacle faced when you’re at war (I assume since I’m no expert) is getting your stuff from Point A to Point B in order to keep your solider’s supplied with things like food, water, and ammo. Hek-GG aims to help their clients by providing a giant network of satellites to support those of your regular old GPS as well as a bunch of container ships which running together will make getting all your stuff around a whole lot easier. It also helps keep those supply lines open if you can see them and any threats to them 24/7. What it basically boils down to, as far as I got, was that HCLI would basically do all the heavy lifting for you, all you have to do is pay them and bring the conflict and manpower.

Don’t we all?

With a system like that, it’s easy to see why a smaller arms dealer like Curry would want to get out of the business, since it practically eliminates the need for people to buy weapons from one person, pay another for transport, and having to worry about everything beside. Why not just go to one company that will do everything for you, and for a decent price (according to Kaspar)? While everyone else is (for the most part) glued to the screen, Jonah notices that for such a big announcement Koko isn’t interested in it in the slightest. He’s very introspective this episode, noting (like R before him) that even though he’s around Koko all the time, he still doesn’t know who she really is.

I’m really interested to see what Koko’s true plan is, since I’m pretty sure that Hek-GG is more of a smokescreen than anything else. It also seems like Hinoki (Tojo’s mentor from a couple of episodes ago) and the CIA have some kind of surprise ace up their sleeves. Things are starting to head into the final stretch as Jormungand only has 4 more episodes to go. While this episode probably could have done a better job building the suspense (or maybe I’ve been spoiled by other shows coughSSYcough), I’m sure that the pay out will be great in the end regardless.

Final Thought: How great is it that it’s two women that are going to revolutionize the world? Especially since war, the military, and all the “Fate of the World blah blah blah” kinda stuff has historically, and continues to be, a realm that is very much run by males? Yeah…it’s pretty fucking great when you think about it.