Kidou Senshi Gundam Thunderbolt

In Universal Century 0079, forces of the Earth Federation and Principality of Zeon engage in a battle within the Thunderbolt Sector during the One Year War. This section of space—known for its constant strikes of electricity—proves to be a deadly battlefield, as Federation pilot Io Fleming leads a charge against Zeon's ace Daryl Lorenz and his squad of snipers. With the fighters on both sides proving to be formidable soldiers, neither side is willing to back down, fighting strategically amongst the remnants of colonies.

But when Io gets a hold of a prototype Gundam, Daryl will have to make a sacrifice in order to obtain enough power to crush his enemy and ensure that Zeon is victorious, or watch as his comrades are slaughtered by a single man.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Fleming, Io Main

Nakamura, Yuuichi Japanese

Lorenz, Daryl Main

Kimura, Ryouhei Japanese

Sexton, J. J. Supporting

Tsuchida, Hiroshi Japanese

Mitchum, Karla Supporting

Ohara, Sayaka Japanese

Peer, Claudia Supporting

Yukinari, Toa Japanese

Ness, Fisher Supporting

Graham Supporting

Sakuya, Shunsuke Japanese

Kaka, Cornelius Supporting

Hirakawa, Daisuke Japanese

Burroughs Supporting

Sasaki, Mutsumi Japanese

Ogata, Naohiro Producer

Matsuo, Kou Director, Script

Kimura, Eriko Sound Director

Yoshizawa, Toshikazu Episode Director

Reviews

Apr 22, 2016

Rikuson1

Recommended

Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt Review

Story (9/10) Great

The story for Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt is great even though it does not adapt the entire manga because that's still ongoing and unfortunately if we want to continue the story that's where you're going to have to go at least until season 2 comes out as far as this review. But as far as what little story they gave us it has capture the initial war story and atmosphere that the original Gundam set out to bring to the table. The presentation alone on every level definitely help more so than before because I did read the manga ... and about 9 of chapters were out before the anime aired and I didn't feel it was as great as the anime made it out to be. From an anime standpoint it is definitely presented far better than the manga which is a good thing because that's what every anime's goal should be is to be better than what it's adapting not because anime has movement, sound and color but because it's just something that as an adaption should be taken into consideration and Thunderbolt succeed at presenting the struggles of war far better than it's manga counter part and as a war/rival story in general which at the end of the day that's what we like to see in our Gundam, the struggles of war and a good rivalry between ace pilots.

Art and Animation (10/10) Masterpiece

The art and animation in Thunderbolt is not only unique but is straight up a masterpiece. It's constant switch from rough art style and clean/fluid animation is such a good combination that I hope more Gundam series in the future take this approach because it fit's the Gundam universe so perfectly. The CG on certain scenes didn't bother me enough to have any negative statements on it as I felt it was left to a minimum.


Sound (10/10) Masterpiece

The sound is straight up a masterpiece, not really too big of a fan of jazz especially the type that is played in this series but what really stood out to me and what usually does in Gundam series is the voice acting and sound effects on the weapons used in Gundam series as everything sound so crisp to my ears and the even though I'm not a fan of jazz it didn't bother me enough to complain about it either since that would be more on the subjective sides of things.


Characters (9/10) Great

The characters in Thunderbolt are great, not that many but granted this 4 episodes and the characters that we do focus on are extremely memorable and exciting to follow whether it's Daryl Lorenz or Io Fleming bother of them have a amazing chemistry as rivals and both of their backstories are great.


Enjoyment (10/10) Outstanding

My enjoyment for Thunderbolt for every second of these 4 episodes was outstanding. I was going to wait for the dub if the series ever got on because that's usually how I like to consume my Universal Century related Gundam series but seeing as we never got any confirmation of a dub even to now (update the dub did come out and it was awesome). I went ahead and watched it sub and I'm glad I did because none of my enjoyment was lost not watching it in Dub. The fight scenes and tension in this series and in every single episode made me craving for more.


Overall (9/10) Great
More Specifically (9.60/10) Great+

This is a great quick and short series that I can recommend to anyone even if you aren't a Gundam fan or even a fan of Mech series because not only do I feel it succeeds at being a great Gundam series and a great mech but also just a great anime because it even does stuff in the realm of Gundam that hasn't been done to this degree ever. I highly recommend this one and I might pick up where the manga left off because I wasn't really feeling the manga by the time I put it down for the anime but hopefully I feel different after watching these 4 episodes.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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May 9, 2016

Bors_137

Mixed Feelings

I understand the appeal of having gorgeous mecha blowing each other up in a well animated battle spectacle to the tune of snappy upbeat jazz, I really do. It’s just a shame that Gundam Thunderbolt couldn’t deliver much more than that. It’s definitely a good looking and sounding show, but its narrative and characters fall short in comparison. Not to say it can’t be enjoyable and entertaining, but your experience will greatly vary on what you look for in your gundam shows.

The main duo weren’t particularly bad, yet come off as very underwhelming. Not much effort on giving them personality outside of making sure they ... were polar opposites. Io Fleming is reckless, rebellious, and purely driven by his desire to feel alive in the battlefield. Daryl on the other hand is the calm, kind soul that fights to protect his comrades. After the motivations for hating each other are presented early on, these two contrasting individuals fight to preserve their ideals. This dynamic has been played out to death already, and the show doesn’t attempt much to try to change it up.

There is nothing memorable about Daryl besides his limb loss, that’s all he is characterized by. While Io's much more entertaining, he's also a one dimensional jerk. Had there been better characterization, the show would have been more than gorgeous war misery porn. I found it hard to be invested in the cruel war being depicted when the characters are just there to be pitied. Show me more aspects about them, anything besides how much they rather be somewhere else. Towards the climax, the characters are conflicted with tough moral choices, which could had much more impact had they been fleshed out enough for me to care about them.

The aesthetics are by far its strong point. Space battles look detailed and the character designs are appealing. The setting of debris and ruins isn’t particularly great, though the constant light effects keep it from looking dull. The flashback song's a little too corny but it'll mostly come down to whether you’re into jazz/country folk even though they fit the scenes well for the most part.

Its main theme is the harshness of war. Crucial decisions must be carried through, and the people in charge have to live on with its consequences. It’s a fine concept; the problem is that it doesn’t do much with it. “Hey did you know war is sad? Well it is, let me show you, and tell you…constantly”.

There is some strategy behind the battle scenes, but it usually comes down to who has the bigger robot dick. If the Gundam is on screen, be ready to watch a lot of defenseless Zeon mobile suits act as target practice. Enjoying the over powered Psycho Zaku and Gundam face off is the main appeal of the show, since the narrative behind it all isn’t strong enough to warrant a watch. I would recommend this to any mecha fan who wants pretty robots beat the crap out of each other in what is probably the darkest addition of the franchise yet. Fans of the UC gundam storyline may also enjoy it for its setting, references and solid action scenes.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Sep 22, 2017

FrozenRoy

Not Recommended

Funny

I went into this show with some knowledge of Gundam, although I have not watched much, and with the idea of reviewing a short series for the night I watched it. Robots, dark stories, the combat of war...these are all things that interest me, so with a solid score, I dove into Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt.

The tone of the show's darkness definitely strikes right away, after a jazzy start of a space army getting ready and then going right into getting blown away. While Thunderbolt gets right to the point, in this regard I feel it suffers, giving little room to consider or process events ... and frequently moving too fast to really create an investment with the characters. Talking about the overall plot and narrative of Thunderbolt is hard because, honestly, it...doesn't have much of one, despite the dark atmosphere, the plot is very barebones: I know it is a four 18 minute episode anime, but I feel even something like Space Patrol Luluco (13 episodes of 7 minutes, 91 minutes of runtime compared to Thunderbolt's 72) had a stronger plot and Luluco's plot wasn't even anything special. The strongest theme is pretty obvious: War has a lot of hard descisions you have to make and that sucks. Any meaning or plot aside from that basically is "Federation vs. Zeon!", little to it.

The problem with this largely comes down to the characters, which are almost entirely exceedingly flat. The only one with any life in them is one of the main cvharacters, Daryl, who gets some level of characterization over his Paraplegia and flashbacks...but, in part due to the constant flow of interrupting nothingness, the fact that the flashbacks give little context or reason to interest us aside from the most obvious, and the lack of seeing Daryl doing things not related to it, it comes off as rather trite, and his reactions to the events of the story around him are mixed in interest. This is especially notable near the end when his rival, Io Fleming, makes a line that the show presents as dramatic and meaningful, with the exception that it is rather counter to his emotional reaction and the story beforehand, which basically makes it come across as trying to be deep but ending up cheap.

Pretty much everyone else in this show is flat. Io Fleming, the rival to Daryl, who is nothing you haven't seen before if you have seen a cursory amount of media in general, the guy who has thrills for battle with a cultural twist, in this case jazz music. Karla and Claudia have no impact on the story despite the amount of time devoted to Karla and she comes off as somewhat of a caricature of the common character archetype (non-fighter forced to fight/do combat research/etc) with her vanilla backstory and lack of scenes NOT relating to that. Claudia's character barely is expanded on and seems like she is supposed to serve as something to relate with Io, except their interactions pretty much mean nothing. Death in this series is hardly a spoiler when so many characters die, but Claudia's is noticeably disappointing as it is clearly meant to serve as an emotional/dramatic high point. I found myself unable to care. Nobody else is even worth mentioning, and there's lots of characters who exist as throwaways to show the "dark" setting: These characters usually get a handful of scenes where they show little or no traits outside of what is necessary for the story, making connection and thus caring about them beyond the cursory "oh, they died" extremely difficult.

I'm sure it can be argued that, as a short anime, I should expect characters to be more shallow and for them to get more time to grow as things go on. The problem with that here is that, frankly, I'm not given much of a reason to BE invested in these characters, with the majority being cannon fodder as well, and no plot to really hook onto or become interested in. If this was, say, the 4-episode start to an anime, I doubt I would be very interested in watching the rest of the show. It isn't a good anime as a standalone and it isn't an interesting start: Other Gundam series certainly have superior starts, let alone counting other depth naturally.

If there is one good thing in the series, it is the music, which not only sounds quite nice between both how it sounds and some good uses of merging of it with the show, and is pretty much the high point of the series, merging music with flashbacks, action and the bits in between. The animation generally looks nice, but fight choreography is rather disappointing, and the "Thunderbolt" of the title so far is useless aside from Deus Ex Machina at certain points in the series, although given how it is used I assume that it will actually mean something later in the series. Only the last fight is notable for much and it isn't honestly all that great in the context of Gundam, let alone all other anime and shows.

In conclusion, I would personally avoid Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt for all but diehard fans of Gundam, as it is not an especially good or deep representative of the series, nor is it especially interesting on its own. with trite and shallow characterization, little is left to the show except for action set pieces, which do not properly utilize the animation that it has. Plot is largely non-existant, although it at least manages to avoid major issues due to the lack of it, so unless you really like mixing in music into animation, it doesn't really have much to offer on a watch.

Reviewer’s Rating: 2

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