#FEATURE: Gen Urobuchi's Puppet Masterpiece Returns This Spring!
“#FEATURE: Gen Urobuchi's Puppet Masterpiece Returns This Spring!”
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Why It Works. Have you heard the news? Just in time to brighten December’s end, we’ve learned that Thunderbolt Fantasy will be returning for its triumphant third season and offering more fantastical adventures all throughout this spring. That season comes on the back of two prior seasons and a tie-in movie, and if you haven’t gotten on the Thunderbolt train yet, you might be wondering why a work of Taiwanese puppet theater has become such an enduring anime-adjacent franchise. Well wonder no more, as with its third season on the rise, this seems like the perfect time to extoll the franchise’s many virtues. Let’s dive into the finer points of Thunderbolt Fantasy!
First of all, though Taiwanese puppet theater might be unfamiliar to many of you, Thunderbolt Fantasy’s writer is a familiar name: Gen Urobuchi. Urobuchi has established a strong reputation over the last decade or so, providing the stories for famous and famously dark productions like Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Fate/Zero. Personally, I think Urobuchi finds something valuable in all that trauma — that his interrogations of human nature are reflections on not just cynicism, but of the difficult search for hope in the darkness. Ultimately, that’s what stories like Magica Madoka, Gargantia, or Psycho-Pass are all about, and he certainly carries that philosophical restlessness over into Thunderbolt Fantasy where characters frequently reflect on the nature of justice or the purpose of their lives.
But while Urobuchi’s shows are famously bleak, they’re also consistently well-written, and in Thunderbolt Fantasy, Urobuchi gets to apply his formidable talents for theme, narrative, and dialogue to a much lighter production. And as it turns out, Urobuchi is equally skilled at writing fun stories and showing the other side of his typically serious reputation.
The results are not just charming, but also frequently hilarious. Thunderbolt Fantasy’s cast is broad and endearing, headlined by a reluctant hero who claims he’s too old to give a damn, but perpetually finds himself being manipulated by his ally-slash-nemesis, a roguish pipe-smoking wizard. In the first season, the two of them recruit a team of genuine villains to go attack Demon Spine Mountain, whose ranks include such luminaries as the Screaming Phoenix Killer, who basically spends the whole season angrily vowing to slay everyone.
These over-the-top titles might imply the show is farcical in its tone, and it certainly leans into the silliness inherent in epic fantasy — but that’s not to say it’s some kind of parody of action-adventure fiction. Instead — though it possesses the energy and easy humor of a story that’s not taking itself that seriously — the characters are actually rich and dynamic enough to genuinely care about. And with airtight dramatic structure and plentiful witty dialogue, Thunderbolt Fantasy ultimately serves as another strong affirmation of Urobuchi’s narrative talents.
Thunderbolt Fantasy would be well worth recommending if it were just “the lighthearted Urobuchi adventure.” But through Pili International Media’s intricate puppeteering, the show becomes both funnier and more visually impressive than you’d ever expect. First off, I can't deny there's an inherent sense of funny anticlimax in seeing a character announce a convoluted attack name, resulting in a doll getting flung across a field and into some trees that explode. The show leans into its visual comedy — in Season 2, one battle sets a roaring dragon against a man wailing on his magic guitar.
That said, Thunderbolt Fantasy’s dolls and sets are genuinely beautiful, intricate creations, and the “character acting” of the puppeteers is convincing enough to create a sense of clear personality in their movements. Thunderbolt Fantasy is a feast of detailed sets and designs, and when the major fights arrive, they demonstrate feats of physical engineering reminiscent of classic kaiju films with marvelously detailed puppets and high-quality CG effects combining to wonderful effect.
All of this is elevated into absurd, operatic theater by Hiroyuki Sawano, whose melodramatic scoring has never felt more appropriate. All in all, Thunderbolt Fantasy is an incredibly satisfying production, both funny and propulsive on a moment-to-moment level, and also deeply rewarding on a character and thematic level, with a remarkable visual style to boot. If you’re feeling at all adventurous in your viewing, I’d highly recommend checking it out before Season 3 arrives!
Nick Creamer has been writing about cartoons for too many years now and is always ready to cry about Madoka. You can find more of his work at his blog Wrong Every Time, or follow him on Twitter.
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