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[Narag]

Occasionally something comes along in the anime thread that we feel deserves a little more exposure so we’ll end up making a more focused OT in the OT for people who want to discuss a particular show without the extraneous stuff normally found within a community thread. This is one of those cases and I’m not even someone that likes making threads but Thunderbolt Fantasy left such a great impression on me that I figured it should be shared.

What is it?
Well, it’s not anime. It’s actually a puppet show using a form of puppetry called Potehi. It’s not stop-motion animation either, the puppetry is filmed and effects are added later to give the action some real intensity. I know this sounds a bit out there but bear with me as I let the PVs do the talking. They illustrate the concept far better than I could ever articulate.

• Thunderbolt Fantasy PV1
• Thunderbolt Fantasy PV2

The first episode is about a travelling swordsman becoming embroiled in a local conflict that he’s unable to escape. There’s an emphasis on action which carries the episode as one’s eager to see what kind of crazy fights are next. Urobuchi's a big wuxia nerd and the production company has been making this stuff for years in Taiwan so it should be in great hands.

Who’s making it?
Per Crunchyroll’s news post -
Gen Urobuchi is serving as scenario writer, screen writer, and supervisor for Thunderbolt Fantasy - Dōng lí jiàn yóujì ("Sword Travels from the East") a Japanese / Taiwan co-production in the form of a Wuxia fantasy puppet show. The staff announced includes:
Series composition, screen writing, and supervision: Gen Urobuchi (Nitroplus)
Puppetry, camerawork: Pili International Multimedia
Character design: Nitroplus
Modeling advisor: Good Smile Company Production: Thunderbolt Fantasy Project
Music: Hiroyuki Sawano

Kōsuke Toriumi as the voice of Lǐn Xuě Yā.

Junichi Suwabe as the voice of Shāng Bù Huàn.

Mai Nakahara as the voice of Dān Fēi.

And Tomokazu Seki as the voice of Miè Tiān Hái.

Where can I watch it?
Crunchyroll licensed it and itstarted airing yesterday for Premium members who will get a new episode every Friday at 12:00 EDT. Free members will get the show on a week delay. The pre-broadcast special episode 0 is available for everyone. It features some behind-the-scenes looks at how this type of show is made and some staff interviews.

• Episode 0
• Episode 1 - Code of Umbrellas
• Episode 2 – Attack of the Xuán Guǐ Zōng!
• Episode 3 – The Woman In Night Devil Forest
• Episode 4 - The Whereabouts of the Soul Echo Flute
• Episode 5 - The Sword Devil, Shā Wú Shēng
• Episode 6 – Seven Comrades
• Episode 7 - Demon Spine Mountains
• Episode 8 - The Enigmatic Gale
• Episode 9 – The Essence of a Sword
• Episode 10 - A Thief's Pride
• Episode 11 - A Proud Life
• ]Episode 12 - A Blade That Doesn't Cut
• Episode 13 - A New Duty

Not a member but want to check it out? I have a couple guest passes I need to get rid of so here you go. I assume they’ll go fast so don’t be disappointed if they don’t work late.

V6XTVNWKP7Q
UTC6YZ66ESW

But is it any good?
Well, don’t just take my word for it.

Thunderbolt Fantasy 01 - Good stuff. The lead characters are cool and the action is great. Sawano's music may be a bit overblown, particularly if you already don't like him.

EDIT: Also

Spoiler

the villain of the episode decapitating himself so his boss could use his severed head to retrieve his final memories was cool as hell

.

Thunderbolt Fantasy 1

Everything I wanted it to be. Sawano's perfect for this shit too and that comes from someone usually annoyed by his work. :lol I hope people give this a chance!

Thunderbolt Fantasy #1

Damn some good action here with these puppets. The puppets so nicely done too, especially with the two I saw personally at AX.

Thunderbolt Fantasy #1

YESSSSS. This was awesome.
Badass fights and Sawano is fucking perfect for this.

Thunderbolt Fantasy - 01

I love it [sound]

As my mind was trying to digest this previously unknown art form, I'm pretty sure I had a big dumb grin the entire episode

Woah, lots of interesting things today:
Thunderbolt Fantasy

Who knew that a show with puppets on this day and age could be so entertaining. Great action..

Thunderbolt Fantasy 1

Holy shitballs this is amazing

Thunderbolt Fantasy 1

This is total nonsense.

The best total nonsense.

Thunderbolt Fantasy 1

When anime has a puppet show

Meanwhile in America

I take back any doubt I had over this masterpiece. This might be anime of the forever. Only downside is the fucking Attack on Titan S2 soundtrack sneaking into the show.

Thunderbolt Fantasy 01

Holy crap the budget and sakuga are so high it looks real. Someone tell off topic.

This was fuckin' awesome. I'm so into this, even with the Sawano which is somewhat hilarious. The sound effects are extremely goofy, I can't tell if that is on purpose or not. The dude cutting his own head off was some amazing bullshit.

Thunderbolt Fantasy episode 1

I think the only thing I didn't like was the CG for the skeleton dragon things. Those reminded me way too much of Godzilla (2000). But other than that, It was shockingly entertaining. Everything else had really good looking effects, the fights were super energetic, and the puppetry was handled super well.

Anime might just be saved by puppets and fantastic fighting effects.

Thunderbolt Fantasy 1

That was good, so entertaining and over the top.

Thunderbolt Fantasy

I'm glad I lived long enough to see this.

Thunderbolt 1
I had no idea what to expect, but damm that was good. The sword play was some dope shit. If like all of the fights are going to be like that I'm going to be so happy.

Thunderbolt Fantasy - 01

Is this some kind of meme show? This better be go-

Oh my god.

 

[Aaronrules380]

I am glad that this is a thing. Was very pleasantly surprised by this

 

[Narag]

And for a bit more insight, haly did some work for the rest of us:

Why I'm doing this? Here, have a Thunderbolt Glossary.

I don't speak Chinese natively and I felt the harsh, withering gaze of my ancestors as I looked up the hanzi and tried to put together my own interpretations of the vocabulary. One thing you should know about wuxia, and medieval China in general, is the variety of names every person has. You have the given name, which everyone is familiar with, but also a style name, which is a mark of adulthood. Sometimes it's given by the parents, or the teacher/sifu/sensei, sometimes it's self chosen. Liu Bei's style name was Xuangde. The official page calls it "street name" in Japanese but I don't think that's very epic. I've included a literal translation and a poetic one, using all my knowledge of mono no aware. I err on the side of hanzi but I looked up the definitions in kanji as well to get a sense of what Butch and gang were going for when the Chinese didn't make sense. I don't know of any idioms that I might've passed over by doing it like this, although I caught one in Mie Tian Hai's name.

Given Name: 凜雪鴉 (Lǐn Xuě Y&#257 -

Spoiler

Austere Snow Crow

Style Name: 掠風竊塵 (Lüè Fēng Qiè Chén) -

Spoiler

Sweeping Wind Secret Dust OR Wind Skimming over the Secret Earth

Pseudonym: 鬼鳥 (Guǐ Niǎo) -

Spoiler

Ghost Bird

Given Name: 殤不患 (Shāng Bù Huàn) -

Spoiler

Early Death Do Not Suffer OR Do Not Suffer an Early Death

Style Name: 刃無鋒 (Rèn Wú Fēng) -

Spoiler

Bladeedge Without Point OR Tipless Blade

Given Name: 丹翡 (Dān Fěi) -

Spoiler

Cinnabar Kingfisher OR Rust-colored Kingfisher

Given Name: 丹衡 (Dān Héng) -

Spoiler

Cinnabar Weight (as in measurement) OR Rust-colored Scale

Given Name: 蔑天骸 (Miè Tiān Hái) -

Spoiler

Belittle Sky Bones OR Ignore the Bones of Heaven

Style Name: 森羅枯骨 (Sēn Luó Kū G&#468 -

Spoiler

Joined Together Dried Bones OR Endless Chain of Withered Bones

Given Name: 殘凶 (Cán Xiōng) -

Spoiler

Leftover Disaster OR Evil that Remains

Keywords:
窮暮之戰 (qióng mù zhī zhàn) -

Spoiler

Poor Sunset's Battle OR The War of the Last Destitute Days (Apocalypse? End of the World?)

神誨魔械 (shén huì mó xiè) -

Spoiler

God Instruct Magic Machine OR Machine that Teaches Evil Magic

護印師 (hù yìn sh&#299 -

Spoiler

Protect Engrave Teacher OR Protectors of the Teacher's Seal

丹輝劍訣・飛霞行月 (dān huī jiàn jué・fēi xiá háng yuè) -

Spoiler

Cinnabar Radiance Sword Secret・Fly Red Clouds Journey Moon OR Secret of the Rust-colored Radiant Sword・Fly through Haze to Journey to the Moon

丹輝劍訣・流陽凌日 (dān huī jiàn jué・liú yáng líng rì) - Cinnabar Radiance Sword Secret・

Spoiler

Flow (as with water) Sunlight Approach Sun OR Secret of the Rust-colored Radiant Sword・Flow through Sunlight to Surpass the Sun

玄鬼宗 (xuán guǐ zōng) -

Spoiler

Black Devil Sect (see: Black Turtle)

Sources:
http://www.thunderboltfantasy.com/
https://www.mdbg.net
http://tangorin.com/
my ass

Feel free to add anything to this to help educate the rest of us about something this cool.

 

[Sibersk Esto]

This was legitimately awesome

 

[jonjonaug]

Please watch "episode 0" as well before watching the first episode, it's a mini-doc of sorts that aired before the premiere of the first episode in Japan. It goes into detail on how the series came about and also how it was filmed. You can skip the episode 1 preview at the end of it since the actual episode 1 is already out.

EDIT: And yes, this was awesome as heck. I was expecting this because Urobuchi at his worst still produces "good" work, and he's been extremely enthusiastic about this on twitter and in interviews. It's his first completely original work since he started writing screenplays instead of novels and visual novels. All of his anime and tokusatsu work was contracted with varying degrees of freedom allowed to him.

 

[TUSR]

good good

 

[OniBarubary]

This show is legit as fuck.

I mean, I'm an Urobutcher fan but still, I was not expecting the quality of the puppets, the choreography of the fights and the effects to look so good.

This surpassed all my expectations.

 

[Firehead]

I love that this is this.

Thank you again, Narag.

 

[Cornbread78]

Fighting puppets huh? Well dammit, why the hell not; I'm in it for the entertainment!

 

[MetroidPrimeRib]

This show owns. Sawano + Urobotcher + Puppets = Greatness???

 

[jonjonaug]

To give a little more detail on the involved parties:

Gen Urobuchi is a writer who got his start working on visual novels in 2000, writing titles such as Phantom of Inferno and Saya no Uta. In recent years his name has become very popular among anime fans with critically and commercially successful works such as Madoka Magica, Fate/Zero, Expelled From Paradise, and Psycho-Pass. He also served as the head writer for the recent tokusatsu show Kamen Rider Gaim, which featured a large departure from the monster of the week style plots the franchise is famous for, instead focusing on an intricate plot that moved at a breakneck pace from week to week. Basically he's one of the very few writers involved in the anime industry who's name is worth knowing. He's won multiple awards from both fan-driven and critic-driven outlets for his screenplays (Madoka winning basically every award it could qualify for in 2011 and Psycho-Pass earning a few as well). Thunderbolt Fantasy is the first project he's worked on that isn't a novel or visual novel where he's credited as the original creator and has complete creative freedom.

Nitroplus is a company founded in the year 2000 that started out publishing visual novels, but has since expanded in various directions. In addition to their own original work including various visual novels, Super Sonico, and Tokuen Ranbu, they've also worked with various other companies on various other projects including anime, manga, tokusatsu, visual novels, light novels, and so on. The Science Adventure series (Chaos;Head, Steins;Gate, etc.) was developed by 5pb in conjunction with Nitroplus, for example. Their artists have contributed to various other works such as Space Dandy, Valvrave the Liberator, Muv Luv, and others. Their writers have also contributed to other projects in addition to their own works. In addition to Urobuchi writing the scripts, designers from Nitroplus provided the initial deigns for the characters in the show that were later adapted into puppet form.

Goodsmile Company is a company that produces various anime goods, but is mostly known for their work producing posable figures. They'll be producing merchandise based on the show and apparently helped with some of the design elements.

Pili International Multimedia is a Taiwanese company that produces puppet shows using hollow puppets and a mixture of CGI techniques and traditional filming. They have their own pretty basic English website, I recommend taking a look. You can also find examples of their work pretty easily on Youtube, if you want to know what to expect for this series.

 

[Haly]

 

[Alric]

So I went into this blind thinking I was just about to watch another random anime from this season. First 10-15 seconds I was thinking "man, I can't believe there is a weird CG anime". Then it dawned it was puppetry and I couldn't stop watching. It was like meshing Anime with The Dark Crystal.

 

[sprsk]

This is the hypest shit.

 

[Moaradin]

This looks pretty awesome

 

[Mokoi]

I watched this on a whim, and was thinking lmao puppets some team America shit. However, dam I was completely surprised how good this ended up being. There was action going on in the very beginning, and was blown away at how cool the shit looked with puppets. The special effects are great especially when the dirt blows at explosions. Totally didn’t expect puppets to blow up like that. It was an action packed episode, and dam the sword fights are really cool. I’m so glad this was made.

 

[Regulus Tera]

Took me by surprise, enjoyed that a whole lot. Shame about the score.

 

[zoku88]

I liked this. Reminded me of wuxia mixed with some Japanese aesthetics.

 

[NaDannMaGoGo]

That's some slick production I've gotta say.

But fuck me if it isn't deserving some proper, unique OST over this generic Sawano rehash. That guy is working like clockwork but surely also sounds like that.

 

[jonjonaug]

That's some slick production I've gotta say.

But fuck me if it isn't deserving some proper, unique OST over this generic Sawano rehash. That guy is working like clockwork but surely also sounds like that.

Comparing the soundtrack of Thunderbolt Fantasy so far to Urobuchi's other wuxia work, Kikokugai, is pretty disheartening.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fb-0wldFwA4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Abvd553-_Z4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YP-2PwmX7rA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx52EOHt280

 

[Nyanmaruz]

Wait so is this show also getting an anime too or is it just going to be a puppet show?

 

[jonjonaug]

Wait so is this show also getting an anime too or is it just going to be a puppet show?

Puppet show only, no anime. That's sort of the point.

 

[Turin Turambar]

Took me by surprise, enjoyed that a whole lot. Shame about the score.

Bah, the score is totally hammy/epic... which is perfect for wuxia, as it's also totally hammy/epic.

 

[shaowebb]

Wait...THE Madoka Magicka guy did this? The same guy who did Kamen Rider Gaim?

Holy shit I'm sold. Dude took magical girls, and a Kamen Rider show themed on dancing and fruit themed samurai and somehow made BOTH into incredibly dark and twisted stories. Its like this guy creates insanely dark and deep stories then tries to find the oddest package to wrap them in just to show that you can tell a good story in spite of any aesthetic trapping.

If the dude who did Gaim and Madoka says they can make something incredible with puppets I believe it.

 

[Qvoth]

Japanese written wuxia?
That definitely sounds interesting to me
Will check this out

 

[Moral Panic]

10/10.

Amazing from minute 0.

Looks and animates better than Berserk.

Honorary AOTY.

 

[striferser]

Thunderbolt fantasy 1
Way cooler than my expectation. the puppet choreography was awesome, and Sawano music fit right in with how every cast ham their every dialogue. My only complaint was seriously bad cg everytime a monster appear. Other than that, it' a solid show.

 

[Kieli]

these damn chinese cartoons are evolving...

 

[thefatness16]

This was better than I expected. I'm in

 

[clay_ghost]

Holy there is a Taiwan 臺灣話 version . My grand mother will be please if she was still alive as she is Hokkien and 臺灣話 is similar . Now not sure which one i should watch .

 

[qcf x2]

I just finished the first episode. It was amazing. Same writer as Madoka and Fate Zero? Now it all makes sense.

 

[Brawly Likes to Brawl]

Thunderbolt Fantasy 01

This was quite the pleasant little surprise! And just what I needed to cheer myself up after all the exhausting news this week in America.

I am one-hundred percent down for watching this. Great action, great dialogue, and intriguing characters. I hope Lǐn Xuě Yā will be part the main group, even if he doesn't do anything besides lay back and throw shade at villains during battles.

 

[Shard]

Anybody else remember this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kz-YPD-yE50

 

[yanipheonu]

Gen Urobouchi?

What are the odds this ends in tragedy?! Lol

 

[Aki-at]

Wasn't even my radar.

Now every week is going to seem like a drag whilst I wait for some more sweet sweet puppet sword fighting action.

 

[Admiral Woofington]

Gen Urobouchi?

What are the odds this ends in tragedy?! Lol

At least it'll be funny puppet tragedy

 

[Haly]

When I saw Shāng Bù Huàn go past those dudes with his umbrella I knew he was going to do the umbrella thing, and he did the umbrella thing, and it was awesome.

 

[Narag]

No one has claimed the second guest pass in the OP if somebody out there is still curious about the show.

 

[darkside31337]

I watched this last night. Its stunning in every way. The concept, the execution. Butch is the best. Even Sawano was somehow good for this.

Also the first time in my life where I wished I was as badass as a puppet.

 

[Ascheroth]

When I saw Shāng Bù Huàn go past those dudes with his umbrella I knew he was going to do the umbrella thing, and he did the umbrella thing, and it was awesome.

I had the biggest grin on my face during that scene.

 

[Sibersk Esto]

Some of the deaths in episode 1 were just nuts.

 

[Ragnorok64]

Urobuchi is doing this? I wonder what the partway through gut-punch of a a story twist will be. Honestly they could just play this completely straight on the strength of the concept and execution alone.

They really seem to be taking advantage of this not being animated to give the characters some crazy elaborate costumes. If you don't have to redraw mad retails every panel or frame why not?

 

[phoenix296]

Legit amazing.

 

[Mature]

It's really good. Please watch.

 

[Jex]

The first episode is amazing.

 

[Go_Ly_Dow]

As I just said in the anime thread. Cancel all anime. This is the real deal.

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

Whooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooa

This is the best puppetry since this guy:

Also: TA:WP was the greatest comedy of the last decade and that fight scene is about 5% of why.

 

[Kieli]

Heh, watched the episode 3 times now. Looking forward to the next one!

 

[Ragnorok64]

I wonder how puppet decapitation and dismemberment would get rated on Toonami.

 

[Grexeno]

I wonder how puppet decapitation and dismemberment would get rated on Toonami.

As cool as this is, after the legendary debacle that was Wulin Warriors, this type of show doesn't have a chance in hell of a Toonami appearance.