October 30th, 2012 
AstroNerdBoy ヨルムンガンド Perfect Order episode 03 (15)
Jormungand: Perfect Order – 03
SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
As Koko and Jonah do their shopping, R pleads with Chief Black to stop the operation the Hex has to kill them, citing why he believes that Jonah is a self-imposed limiter that Koko has placed on herself. R races back to the hotel to gather weapons to help her while not blowing his cover. Chief Black sends the local Czech Meanwhile, Jonah senses they are in danger, but it is too late as some of Hex’s team has the pair surrounded. One member attempts to stab Jonah with a hypodermic needle, but gets killed by Jonah in the process. R arrives to provide support, which Hex had not anticipated, and R gets Black to try to call off Hex. She refuses to back off the mission since she feels that Black will not be able to control a monster like Koko.
Black anonymously notifies Koko’s team while R provides cover for Koko to drive the injured and poisoned Jonah to a hospital. R lets her know he was a spy and that he’ll quit her team when this is all over. Koko’s team starts taking out Hex’s snipers, frustrating Hex who realizes Black betrayed her. She faces off with R and kills him, but gets injured in the eye as a result. With only herself and two others left, Hex orders a retreat to Iraq while at the hospital, Koko learns that R has died. She calls HCLI HQ to order revenge on Hex as she recalls both Echo’s and R’s words to her. In Iraq, a B-52 bombs the cave where Hex and her two men were hiding, killing them. Meanwhile, Black pays Koko a visit at R’s grave, then learns of the death of his two arms. However, Black is convinced that in the end, Koko will dance on his strings.
Thoughts/Review:
This was a very good episode, which didn’t go the way I expected.
I had figured that Koko probably knew that R was a double agent, but it was clear to me in the gun fight when R told her that she didn’t have a clue. I thought she’d fall apart for a moment there, but she’s now experienced enough that she was able to roll with it. No doubt, she was aided in this by R’s fighting to protect her life as well as Jonah’s.
Regardless, I’m surprised that Koko takes her safety so carelessly. She obviously knew that Hex was after her, and there were recent assassination attempts on her life, so to only go into town with Jonah seems to be foolish. I’m surprised the team allowed it, considering how much they appear to love Koko.
R’s fight with Hex is one I assume was a close replay of the one Hex had with Echo, only this time, Hex got a clean head shot, or rather a clean eyeball shot. That’s pretty impressive shooting.
I suppose that if HCLI can launch a bunch of rockets into space, and deliver arms of all sorts to anyone, they could have a B-52 at their beck and call. Being a former Air Force person, it would not be possible for HCLI to own one. The more likely option would be that HCLI has contacts in the military, who simply paved the way for the Air Force to launch a strike against what they would be told were militants/terrorists/whatever. The Japanese would be taking massive liberties here if they are saying that HCLI has its own B-52, complete with trained crew and support staff. Owning an freighter ship is one thing. Owning a B-52 is not even possible since it is still an actively used aircraft for the U.S. Air Force.
Still, however Koko pulled it off, it reinforces the notion of her being a monster and how far she’ll go to remove problems against her. That’s the scary part.
Koko’s moment with Valmet was nice until they tossed in the breast fondling moment. I know the justification was that Koko was doing it for R, who apparently had a thing for Valmet, but it still seemed out of place to me. As an aside, is Valmet looking more masculine as time goes on? Its like she’s taking steroids. ^_^;
I wonder if Koko replaces R on the team. I would guess she would, but considering how Black got an agent on her team, any new person would likely be screened even tighter than before. Also, one wonders if Koko will suspect her other team members of being double agents, or if R’s actions showed her that despite it all, her team is more than willing to lay their lives down for her.
Black’s meeting with Koko was interesting. I think he’s losing it though. I think his obsession with Koko is why he imagined seeing Hex and R with him and having a conversation with him after he learned of Hex’s death. Plus, despite the fact that both of his “arms” were destroyed by Koko, he’s still determined to make her be a puppet on his strings.
I’m really looking forward to seeing how things progress from here. This has been a really good series so far.
Posted in 
Tags: 
I think Koko did fell apart for a moment when R told her he was a spy and wanted to leave after he kills Hex, she even almost begged him to stay. For me, this yet again shows how attached to her team she is.
As for B-52s – she launched more than a HUNDRED ROCKETS into space. You can’t build a rocket just like that. That’s a stretch! Why could she have a couple B-52s hidden somewhere? She has all kinds of guns, choppers, missiles, all kinds of other military hardware… so I’m not really surprised. And if she just pulled some strings in the military, the CIA shouldn’t be so surprised. They clearly didn’t think that US military or other legit military was involved.
As for Valmet – in the end she seemed to me like a giant.
With the proper technical know-how, anyone can build a rocket. The problem is getting folks with the know-how, but I’m assuming Dr. Miami is their know-how person.
The problem with B-52’s is that these are a weapon platform exclusive to the U.S. Air Force. As best as I can tell, we’ve not sold any of them to any other nation. Indeed, when a B-52 is retired, they are flown to a special graveyard for them. The military can account for 100% of them. They aren’t something that can just be built by any other nation or company.
The other weapons that Koko sells (at least that I’ve seen so far) are things that could be purchased on the black market. Small arms, RPGs, and the like are often sold to other countries, and from there can make it to the black market.
>As for Valmet – in the end she seemed to me like a giant.
Yeah, a manly giant with a woman’s face. ^_^;
Still, launching a hundred rockets by a private organization is a lot more unrealistic than secretly owning a B-52. For B-52 you can steal the blueprints and more or less build it yourself (assuming you’ve already build a rocket (or a hundred) in no time, B-52 shouldn’t be that hard), or stole some parts from the graveyard, or pay to few people to relocate a B-52 and fix some documents, or some other shit like that.
The bottom-line is: if you have the resources to build and launch more than a 100 rockets with com sats into space for just a few years (I doubt to be longer), you clearly can find a way to “buy” a rare toy or two.
Just for starters, lets assume that to launch a regular rocket would be about $20 million (for unmanned rocket that is). 100 x $20 is 2 billion. Add to that all the facilities, staff and such (you need to build a few dozen rockets at the same time, because they’re not build for a day or two) and the price for a single rocket could actually jump to about $100-200. So, in the end the price would be $10-20 billion at least. And since some rockets blow up from time to time, lots of malfunctions etc, I’d say the price paid by HCLI would be minimum $30 billions. I’m pretty sure, if HCLI can spend that much money and still run their organization, a B-52 should be that much of problem, especially considering how many ties to various military and governments they have.
P.S. And another reason is that this is manga/anime where common sense is not really that important.
*lol* I see what you are saying, but here’s the deal. Companies send up rockets with payloads into orbit all the time. So while it may not be probable that a company would launch 100 rockets, it is still possible.
As to the B-52, only the United States and Russia have long-range, strategic bombers. No other nations have them, and the cost to get one today would be $75M, coming from Boeing. You are correct that if HCLI can afford to launch multiple rockets (even if using refurbished Soviet ICBMs), though could afford to buy a B-52.
However, coming from the Air Force, I can assure you that it is quite, quite impossible to buy one in any form. This is partially due to the fact that B-52’s are nuclear delivery platforms. When the US destroyed a few hundred of them in the 90’s (by cutting them into giant pieces), it had to be verified by the Russians, then the planes were then turned into scrap metal from what I understand.
As I see it, HCLI just got the US Air Force to launch a sortie.
>And another reason is that this is manga/anime where common sense is not really that important.
Maybe. It was more of an observation on my part though. ^_^
Companies don’t launch rockets – they just rent space on them. There are even University-build satellites orbiting Earth (usually small ones – I don’t know if any larger exist).
So here’s how some Universities launch their sats: they call every Space Agency they could find and ask them if they could launch their sat which has these and these parameters, mass, dimensions, etc. If the agency agrees, it says something like “OK, we have free space and the rocket is already paid, so how much you can pay us?”. Then the University says how much they’re willing or can pay, then the usual answer is “OK, we’ll launch it” and the sat is launched. And that’s the basic story of the launch.
I presume the companies use similar methods for small satellites or rent a rocket as a whole. But they RENT – not build! The rockets are build by Space Agencies such as NASA and ESA, not by one company, who just wants to launch a comm sat. And even the task of building the sat is usually given to someone else with the right expertise and equipment as it is not a trivial task at all.
Building a rocket is at a completely different level than building a plane, even if it is military. It’s a lot harder. After all space is a lot nastier environment than the low-altitudes of the Earth’s atmosphere.
P.S. I think the bottom-line of this argument is that both building and launching 100 rockets and sats and owning a B-52 are impossible and very far stretched.
>Companies don’t launch rockets…
SpaceX does. ^_~ They’ve launched quite a few of their own rockets w/ payloads, and currently have light and medium-lift rockets. Next year, they are supposed to have a heavy-lift rocket as well as a new launch site. This new rocket supposedly will get payloads to the moon.
There are quite a number of private companies in the rocket business. SpaceX is the most successful of the lot, and are way in front of their competition, most of which are in the research or development stage for rocket technology.
http://www.spacex.com/
Still, the rocket/B-52 thing is a minor thing. The show is quite good so far.
OK, you got me with SpaceX. Totally forgot about them. But I didn’t know they launched whole rockets. Just read somewhere about the private owned Dragon which delivered payload to the International Space Station and that’s all.
Yeah, they do the whole thing. NASA has contracted them to do work for NASA. I really thought that other companies had made more advances, but alas, no.