Sometimes there’s a show that so campy and fun that you just can’t help but enjoy watching it, and then sometimes there’s a show that completely takes you by surprise by how unique it is. Thunderbolt Fantasy offers both of these in a neat package and further showcases the richness of animation as a medium too. As a guy who always support diversity in animation, the show like this is all I could ask for. The fact that Thunderbolt Fantasy got made in the first place is nothing but astonishing, but for me the most fascinating fact is how on earth this show falls into anime radar in a first place, because this is surely not an anime show (I suspect it’s all because of Gen Urobuchi here). Damn, it is not even technically ANIMATION to begin with. Theoretically speaking, animation requires photographing successive drawings or positions of models to create an illusion of movement, whereas puppetry usually recorded live so there’s an actual movement in puppetry. Here’s an example to illustrate the difference: to make 1-minute of a stop motion animation, it could take hours even days for a shot-to-shot sequence, since there’s usually 15-24 frames per second and you can do the math. But for 1-minute of puppetry it would take just that- a minute of actual filming.
Now let’s get to the actual episode. This second episode offers a much slower pace than the first, with the main storyline here concerns our main character Shang Bu Huan chit-chatting with the helpless girl Dan Fei, and the mysterious Lin Xue Ya, he then gets ambushed by the bad Xuan Gui Zong clan, and escaped with the help of the brothers Juan Can Yun (kind of show-off comedic relief guy) and Shou Yun Xiao (the one-eye archer. Look, I’m trying to familiar myself with those names here). So far this is a very standard wuxia affair, with the plot so far ticks all the boxes of many wuxia’s conventions. The villains of this show so far are sadly bland and over the top. But what the show succeeds is how it still maintains the sense of exciting, the staffs clearly had fun while they were making this and we can feel it too, from the way each of character has their own mannerism, the practical effect (the feeling that you can sense the weight of blood dripping and body exploding (no sh!t) is refreshing), to the utterly ridiculous dialogue; all in the service of making this show as unique and entertainment as ever. This is, after all, a very different medium so I really treasure the experience that I can only find in puppetry. My only complaint from the technique itself is how the camera tends to keep too close to the characters. There are very few long shots in these first 2 episodes, mainly medium shots and lots of close up. That is understandable since the staff has to create all the models, set decorations by themselves; but sometimes the lack of establish shots confuse the hell out of me.
On last note, I have watched many wuxia shows before, but all of them are 30 plus episodes based on already established franchise materials, so I’m eager to see how Gen Urobuchi pull this off: an original wuxia that condensed into 12 episodes. Although Gen Urobuchi is not my favorite writer, I have to tip my hat off to him on this series. Without him, Thunderbolt Fantasy couldn’t exist. Without him, the Taiwanese puppetry will always be a mystery outside of its homeland. Damn, I haven’t even heard of them before this show. That fact alone is already something worth celebrating.
~SuperMario~
