ヨルムンガンド Perfect Order episode 10 (22)

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Koko’s team intercepts the Marine team that were transferring Leila to a different location. They don’t kill the Marines, but do tie them up before fleeing.  Seal Team 9 arrives very shortly afterward, freeing the Marines and pursuing Koko’s team, whom are being tracked by a Predator drone, with its camera feeds going to a command center, allowing CIA agent Torrey to direct the night battle. Seal Team 9 engages Koko’s team, injuring Lutz, who falls off a cliff with Jonah and into a mine field. Koko tells them to stay put from her hotel room, and she calls in her own UAV, which destroys the Predator. The Seals have their GPS jammed, so they switch to the Tactical Data Link. Koko has Minami use Jormungand to hack in and alter the Seal’s apparent position. Lutz and Jonah show up against Koko’s orders, causing the team to nearly get caught by the Seals, but since the battle has gotten too close to a Cuban military base due to Jormungand’s hack, the Seals are forced to retreat.

Back on the freighter, Valmet rags on Lutz for not obeying Koko’s orders. However, he has learned that no matter what, Koko will take care of her own. Jonah is cleaning himself before entering the giant, Japanese-style bath and is surprised when Koko emerges from the water. She playfully wrestles with him for disobeying her orders. Jonah asks how Koko did what she did, but she won’t say until they reach their destination. After asking Jonah if he still loved the world, he says he does, and his answer pleases Koko, who embraces him and kisses him on the lips. She promises to share the details of Jormungand and her plans once they dock.

In Washington, Black and Scarecrow meet, speculating on whether Koko has a quantum computer to hack their systems. Since there was no evidence for the hack, they joke that Koko may have been using magic. Back on the ship, Koko lays down the law for Leila since Minami needs her for the project. Once they arrive in South Africa, Koko tells her crew that her plan is to shut down the skies to humanity and impose world peace on everyone by separating people from war. Her squad will be the only military unit allowed as she’ll still need protecting. Leila thinks that Koko is trying to act like God, but Koko aims to be greater than God. Jonah wonders how many will die, and Koko gets a number of nearly 700,000 people currently in the air. Jonah cannot accept the death of so many innocent people and pulls a gun on a surprised Koko.

Thoughts/Review:

Well, this episode had a couple of surprises to be sure. That’s part of the fun of this series though. ^_^

I had expressed a concern on how the Seals would be treated in this episode since Koko’s team has always been shown to be better than any of the other paramilitary units out there, including government troops of some small countries. Thankfully, the Seals were shown to be the best and were it not for Koko having Minami hack their network, Koko’s team would likely have been either wiped out, captured, or both. So, Koko’s team were still shown to be good, but the Seals just better, as it should be.

While Koko has always been much more physically affectionate of Jonah, to the point that Valmet even gets a bit jealous at times, I was still surprised that she jumped into the Japanese bath with him. The anime was careful to keep Koko “covered”, but it was clear that she was starkers and Jonah would have had an unobstructed view. Further, she’s rubbing up against him, then going so far as to kiss him on the lips. I thought that Jonah blushed a bit, but it is hard to tell. I’m not sure how old he is, but I believe he’s prepubescent. Even still, such an act would have had some impact on the young lad. Even at age 10, although I may not have ultimately cared about the babes on the beach, I was aware of them at some level.

Now, as to Koko, there are two choices here. One – she’s insane. Two – she’s purposely baiting Jonah to see what he’d do.

Exploring option one, it is clear that Koko is somewhat loco (as the song states).  Her father throws her into the dangerous world of an arms merchant at a very young age. As such, she’s seen a lot of blood, violence, and death.  With the loss of Echo, she may have decided that the world needs to change, then the loss of R simply causes her to push things along at an even faster speed.

Of course, if Koko is serious, she’s setting herself up as a tyrant, and like most tyrants (Mao, Stalin, etc.), people must die for progress to move ahead, resulting in a supposed better world. However, she’d have to be insane to actually think that she could impose world peace. It can’t be done. Sure, she can make warfare a bit harder, but wars have been going on since the dawn of time. Further, modern technology has made warfare so that if a civilian gets scratched (at least, if the U.S. is involved), there’s massive outcries. Look at World War II; the Allies bombed the crap out of entire cities of Germany and Japan to beat the population into submission. To take it a step further, the U.S. nuked Japan twice, removing two cities, to force Japan to surrender or else. Since then, the U.S. has not had a military problem with either Japan or Germany.

Koko is basically forcing warfare back to World War II level technology, but it wouldn’t stop warfare. Assuming she used the HCLI satellite network to spy on everyone and used other tech to kill war makers, basically, all she’d do is unit the world to depose the tyrant, after which people would return to their own agendas. Her kind of imposed peace would never work.

That takes me to option two. She’s been testing Jonah all along in the series, including this episode.  As such, I tend to suspect that what is going on here is that Koko does indeed want to change the world, but wants to see what Jonah would be willing to do. It is no surprise to me that Jonah would reject Koko’s world of tyrant because he’d been a soldier for a tyrant and had seen what had become of one of his young friends as a result. Better to die while killing Mao, Stalin, or Hitler before they have a chance to start their reign of death.

Regardless, it should be interesting to see where everything goes from here. ^_^