Thunderbolt Fantasy Is Pure Anime Puppet Pleasure
I have a confession to make — I’m old. In fact I’m old enough to remember watching the now classic puppet sci-fi adventure series Thunderbirds when it first aired here in the U.S. in 1968. That show, created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson in the U.K. in 1964, influenced everything from Ultraman in Japan to the hilarious and often disturbing parody Team America: World Police.
But it doesn’t hold up for me as an adult, and I didn’t think I would ever find that kind of animation show worth watching at my age. The new series Thunderbolt Fantasy has proven me wrong.
The credit to this lays squarely at the feet of original concept creator Gen Urobuchi, who is also writing the scripts and serving as chief supervisor. Urobuchi is the creator of some of my favorite anime shows of the past few years, including Aldnoah.Zero, Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet and Madoka Magica. He is also creator of shows I didn’t get into quite so much but which have solid respect among others, like Blassreiter, Fate/Zero and Psycho-Pass.
The story, character designs and costume designs are all based on Chinese high fantasy, and if I didn’t know that Urobuchi was involved, or his Japanese character designers, I would assume the whole thing was done in Taiwan, where the puppet animation is crafted. Unlike the puppets in Thunderbirds, which were marionettes (prompting the Andersons to invent the awful term “Supermarionation” for their animation style), Thunderbolt Fantasy uses hand puppets. And in keeping with Asian tradition, the faces are mostly immobile porcelain masks, although the eyes do shut on occasion. No mouth movement however.
That said, the action is as dynamic as a Chinese heroic age film saga, and there is enough fake blood and gore to satisfy the average anime fan. But the real joy here is the writing. The interplay between the itinerant swordsman Shō Fu Kan and the mysterious mystic Lin Setsu A is particularly fun. The novelty of watching a puppet animation show again after nearly 50 years may very well wear off, but as long as the writing stays solid, I’ll stick with Thunderbolt Fantasy.
