Thunder 3

Episode 5

I've come to the sad conclusion that Thunder 3's anime adaptation will never hold a candle to its source manga's unhinged intensity and entertaining juxtaposition of opposing tones and styles. Although this episode is a marginal improvement on last week's snoozefest, it's still moving far too slowly, and the animation quality is distractingly awful. Most egregious is the way this week's voluminous flashbacks are presented: with essentially still frames and the occasional jarring image jolt to approximate motion. I get that sometimes the restriction of movement in flashbacks can be a stylistic choice, but here it's a blatant effort to spare resources.

Although it's not as if the rest of the episode looks any better as a result. The longer we spend time around the hilariously poorly-rigged “real” human CG models, the more obvious it is to the audience how much this accursed production has cut every possible corner. The people walk stiffly as if their limbs are made of wooden Popsicle sticks, their expressions flat as cardboard.

With such hideous presentation, it's hard to become invested in the lives of these soulless puppets, even when they're trying desperately to escape the rigid confines of their existence in a failed attempt to emote in any way approaching realism. In another show, JSDF fighter pilot Yamashina's tragic backstory might have drawn a sympathetic audience's tears, but here the only excess lacrimation is his own. Spurred to enact a suicide attack on an alien ship due to the loss of his pregnant fiancee, he dogfights with some heat-seeking missiles before detonating his plane, and himself, in a collision that downs an entire alien ship.

Perhaps this will function as an inciting incident to trigger further rebellion amongst the occupied Japanese populace, but for human POV character Segami, he requires personal stakes before he starts to give even the slightest shit about what's happening around him. The subsequent random loss of his family home and father finally pushes him to even consider fighting back.

Segami is so frustratingly slow on the uptake that it's extremely hard to care for him as a protagonist. He bumps into the Small Three once more, but it takes him seemingly forever to realize that he really should introduce them to his new paramilitary friends. I did find the karate black belt Segami's flat reaction to the blonde yakuza guy's claim to have “never lost a street fight” understatedly hilarious, though.

With the prospect of the action heating up next time with the upcoming “Shibuya Mission,” perhaps Thunder 3 might get back to the bonkers action I so need for this show to provide. However, with the Small Three being advised to stay away by the commander for the next three days, it may merely be a dull “normal” human vs alien fight. Once again, all I want is for the funny little cartoon people to smash the evil aliens to pieces. Is that too much to ask for?

Rating: Thunder 3 is currently streaming on Netflix.