By Keitaro Takahashi
Viz, 192 pp.
Rating: M (Mature Readers)

In an unnamed Eastern European country, the child soldier known as Jonah finds himself hired on by the eccentric Koko Hekmatyar as the newest member of H&C Logistics Inc., an arms dealer group. The taciturn and somber Jonah quickly finds himself caught up in the high-flying world of international arms smuggling, despite the fact that he loathes guns and weapons of all kinds.

Wow, what to say about Jormungand? Well, for one thing the characters are fairly bland and forgettable. With the exception of Koko, the woman running H&C Logistics who is generally loud and acts a bit flaky at times, and Jonah, I couldn’t really tell you the names of anyone else in the group or what they actually do. No, wait, there was a woman named Valmet who’s missing an eye and is really good with knives. I think that’s the extent of her personality at this point. I’d like to tell you what the overarching plot of the series is, or even what the point of it is, but right now there doesn’t seem to be either.

As it is, the first volume consists of three tales of Koko’s group doing business in the previously mentioned unnamed Eastern European country and I found it to be a rather frustrating read. You’ve got child soldiers, international arms merchants and more, but at no point does the book really say anything about any of these. They’re just there, used as a backdrop for some bland action scenes and for Koko to act all kooky. A quick example of this comes during the final story in the book. A rogue faction of the unnamed Eastern European country’s military is engaged in battle with the Russians over control of a pipeline. This provides ample opportunity to bring up Russia’s grip on natural resources in the area and to mention how they’ve shut off entire countries in the past so they could squeeze more money from them, but of course the story doesn’t do this at all. Instead, it focuses on introducing some rivals for the group and features a random knife fight between Valmet and some other woman.

Takahashi’s artwork varies between okay and horribly cluttered. There’s a certain rough sketchiness to the artwork which is something I’m usually fond of, but here it just feels messy and unfinished. Many of the older male characters look alike with only the hair making it possible to tell them apart, but even then there’s some problems as the hair on several of them isn’t that different. I found the action sequences to be stiff and awkward-looking; the sketchy artwork doesn’t help matters at all and just makes it even more difficult to make out what is going on.

All in all, I came away from the book feeling like it was a wasted opportunity. It’s handling some very relevant and important issues, but it doesn’t do anything with them but use it as flavor. Jonah’s time as a child soldier is pretty much glossed over and he comes off like any other moody young protagonist in manga-dom. Perhaps future volumes will change all this, maybe it’ll become a surprisingly relevant manga series dealing with social and political implication of child soldiers, mercenaries, war profiteers and more, but based on this first volume that seems very, very unlikely.

Volume one of Jormungand is available now.

Review copy provided by the publisher.