The Official Gundam Thunderbolt Anime Thread Mk I

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excalibur2008
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Re: The Official Gundam Thunderbolt Anime Thread Mk I

Gelgoog Jager wrote:In fact, the novels probably have the best ending for U.C. so far: the EF ends up crippled and Zeon wins the war; Gihren seems to be the winner, but Kycillia kills him and then Char "accidentally" kills her, thus being the one left in charge of Side 3.
Doesn't Char drop Luna II on to Earth in those? How does doing something that kills god knows how many possibly a good thing.
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Gelgoog Jager
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Re: The Official Gundam Thunderbolt Anime Thread Mk I

excalibur2008 wrote:
Gelgoog Jager wrote:In fact, the novels probably have the best ending for U.C. so far: the EF ends up crippled and Zeon wins the war; Gihren seems to be the winner, but Kycillia kills him and then Char "accidentally" kills her, thus being the one left in charge of Side 3.
Doesn't Char drop Luna II on to Earth in those? How does doing something that kills god knows how many possibly a good thing.
I don't think we are talking about the same novels here: I'm talking of the ones where Amuro upgrades to the G-3, Char to his Rick Dom, Cuzco Al pilots the second Elmeth, etc. IIRC, it ends in a positive note with Char writing a letter to Sayla on how things are beginning to improve at Side 3.
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Deacon Blues
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Re: The Official Gundam Thunderbolt Anime Thread Mk I

The first 8 minutes worth of dub and sub have been posted to Gundaminfo again.

The dub script writer needs to be smacked for this. Inserting random jibberish that deviates from the original script as a pathetic attempt to match the lip flaps. Are we in 90s dub school again? I mean some of this completely changes the established tech around in some instances:

SUB: You are to eliminate the snipers that are hiding in our home of Side 4, Moore.
DUB: Eliminate the snipers hiding in our colony of Side 4 Moore.

NOTE: I guess they forgot that Side 4 Moore was a cluster of colonies and not just a single one. Plus I highly doubt that the colony they're hiding in is the specific one that was destroyed.

SUB: Oh, crap! They can see exactly where we are!
DUB: Dammit! They'll pick us off if we're out in the open!

NOTE: Pretty self explanatory here. Can't exactly hide either way since the snipers are clearly picking them off.

SUB: Now, who's gonna draw the short straw?
DUB: The only question is, which one of us is gonna be the bait?

NOTE: Eh, sort of stretching the original line here but Io meant who is the poor sap that is going to get whacked first rather than who is going to be a diversion.

SUB: Suit completely destroyed!
DUB: And the signal's completely disappeared from my sensors!

NOTE: Ignoring the fact that the suit exploded right next to the guy, clearly showing up on his camera, this just seems completely pointless to twist the line around.

SUB: Radio comms will never reach with the Minovsky particle density this high! Just focus on the enemy!
DUB: Minovsky particles are too dense! If we spread out we'll lose our comms! Just stay after the enemy!

NOTE: This one bothers me the most. The comms are lost, plain and simple. They're missing the point in the dub that trying to radio back to the Beehive is pointless.

SUB: The Minovsky particles are too dense!
DUB: Minovsky particles and the smoke screen are too dense!

NOTE: What smoke screen? There was no smoke screen deployed in this operation. Lol...
Dustman
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Re: The Official Gundam Thunderbolt Anime Thread Mk I

I've watched December Sky recently and I think I genuinely hate this adaptation.

While it did lead me to reading the manga, which I actually do quite enjoy on its own terms (i.e. not as part of Sunrise continuity), I think that the anime is an atonal mess that can only claim effectiveness based on shock value and high quality animation. I hoped that the Director's Cut would add something to alleviate my issues with the screenplay but the footage of A Baoa Qu has only exacerbated that and is entirely pointless due to its refusal to disclose the fates of certain characters. Because of this, there are no actual cliffhangers and the proper context to those visuals has got to be a complete enigma to anybody who has not already seen the same things portrayed in the manga.

I think I said this once before but I truly hope that this has been nothing more than an exercise to promote the manga and we'll never have to see a continuation in animated form. I can not possibly imagine the second arc being any more decent than this under the further writing and direction of Kou Matsuo. What we have looks pretty and has an amazing OST but please lets just see something else get a turn at adaptation after this, like the original Crossbone Gundam.
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Amion
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Re: The Official Gundam Thunderbolt Anime Thread Mk I

Crossbone will forever be placed in the nearest Garbage bin because the powers that be know we want it. What is so odd is that it seems popular or at least gets cameos frequently, but never gets special treatment.

As for Thunderbolt, I'm guessing that it is, sadly, official as per the animation rule. We cannot escape it. Well, we can, since officiality is not as officially binding as officialism is officially in the US or other places. But this line of reasoning has been walked down far too many times...

I'm just glad I never watched more than episode 2. Who knows, perhaps the Origin will see full adaption glory and thus overshadow this side story with the scale of its release. :P
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Dustman
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Re: The Official Gundam Thunderbolt Anime Thread Mk I

Yeah, I actually don't think Crossbone's ever going to have an anime (or at least not until Dust is over?) due to how much exposure the kits have already had. Was just throwing an agreeable alternative out there. Perhaps Gundam Sentinel has a better chance? It's honestly so light on characterization that the net-to-movie format may even be perfect for it. All they'd need to make it perfect no matter the result is music by Shigeaki Saegusa, even if it's just stock BGM from Zeta/ZZ!

Haha, but really though. I'm not the type to dwell on these things. What we got out of this project isn't to my liking but it's currently not so vital that I can't just put it off to the side like MS IGLOO or G-Saviour. I'd like it to stop but that's primarily a concern for how much they can get out of it due to the limitations of its format, rather than feeling like the story itself is poison to the official setting.

If I may indulge wild speculation, I actually suspect that this series may have been a way of compensating for The Origin having only the minimal number of models they could release from II and III (this also seems to be why we have the MSD sub-line). But, of course... the next episode's not going to have that problem! Char's Zaku-I alone is a guaranteed hit! So who knows, we'll just have to wait and see what happens next. Personally, I'd prefer if Studio 1 were to come off this and got to work on those G-Reco movies. I'd hate for this thing to swallow up time and effort that could be going into that instead so maybe that's a more pertinent concern for me to worry about.
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tHeWasTeDYouTh
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Re: The Official Gundam Thunderbolt Anime Thread Mk I

I just saw Gundam Thunderbolt with the added scenes. This show is amazing!!!! and the music is so good(only bad thing is that one certain words the engrish comes out)
best track Gundam Thunderbolt OST 13 - Oh God. I`m Alone / Nakazawa Nobuyoshi
This short gundam series have given me hope in Gundam after Age and Reconguista almost ruined the series for me
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Brave Fencer Kirby
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Re: The Official Gundam Thunderbolt Anime Thread Mk I

I watched the first two episodes when they were up on Youtube and they didn't particularly impress me. I just recently watched the December Sky version and I have to admit, it wasn't as bad as I expected it to be.

The main problem is that they tried to be relentlessly grimdark without giving us any real reason to care. They slaughter entire teams of Federation mooks not once, but twice -- and there's no emotional impact either way, because they're just random mooks. The Zeon characters that get killed off at least have names and a bare minimum of characterization (except the one whose death gets the most attention. Whoops). Overall, when it's clear from the beginning that a whole group of characters exists solely to die, it's hard to care about them, and Thunderbolt does nothing to counter that.

I will say that the animation quality was good. Not quite up to Unicorn's standards, but it had more style, so I think I actually liked it better overall. The action scenes leaved something to be desired, though; everyone who wasn't either Io or Daryl just stood around so someone else could kill them, and the Io vs Daryl fights didn't do a very good job of matching the on-screen action with the mandates of the plot. Random lightning bolts radically altered a fight not once, but twice, (there was also some random flying debris that saved Daryl from a kill shot at one point) which could be written off as "yeah, that's why it's the Thunderbolt Sector" if it had ever had an effect beyond those two times. Instead of making it seem like an interesting battlefield, it just came off as ass-pulls so the writers could get the result they wanted from the fight. Io also seemed to lose to Daryl twice (well, the first was arguably a draw) simply because the plot said so -- as in, his mecha was still capable of fighting and he had no reason to stop, but he concedes defeat anyway. This was an especially annoying way to end the climactic final battle.

The bits at the end depicting A Baoa Qu (which I assume were the parts added for the December Sky version) were a mixed bag. It was interesting to see Daryl struggling to operate a standard cockpit with his prosthetics, but that was largely a sideshow with the primary focus of that section being on the Zeongs. Then there was the brief post-credits bit of Io having apparently escaped Zeon captivity? It was a fair assumption that he (and the other Federation POWs) were going to be expatriated after A Baoa Qu anyway, so I'm not sure what purpose that scene served. Except for letting us know that Daryl survived the war, the extra footage at the end seemed kind of pointless.

On the positive side, the latter half of Thunderbolt did a decent job of exploring the characterization of both Io and Daryl set up by the first half, which I didn't expect but worked pretty well. Io is shown to be more than just a rampaging war-drunk psycho like Yazan or Ali, and Daryl is shown to be more conflicted than the "I fight for my friends and my homeland" rah-rah Zeon diehard he initially comes off as. The bit with the Federation crew boarding the Zeon ship was largely well done -- it was a good display of two groups of desperate people pushed to extremes they never would have normally considered. The scene with Cornelius on the engineering deck was particularly good, in its rather cruel way. That scene manages to portray what the deaths of dozens of interchangeable mooks didn't -- that war is a dirty, horrible business, not because anyone wants it to be, but because everyone wants to be the one that survives.

Overall, while I'm not sure I'd say it was good, it was better than I expected it to be, at least. Which may say more about my expectations than it does about Thunderbolt, but there you have it.
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tHeWasTeDYouTh
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Re: The Official Gundam Thunderbolt Anime Thread Mk I

Brave Fencer Kirby wrote:I watched the first two episodes when they were up on Youtube and they didn't particularly impress me. I just recently watched the December Sky version and I have to admit, it wasn't as bad as I expected it to be.

The main problem is that they tried to be relentlessly grimdark without giving us any real reason to care. They slaughter entire teams of Federation mooks not once, but twice -- and there's no emotional impact either way, because they're just random mooks. The Zeon characters that get killed off at least have names and a bare minimum of characterization (except the one whose death gets the most attention. Whoops). Overall, when it's clear from the beginning that a whole group of characters exists solely to die, it's hard to care about them, and Thunderbolt does nothing to counter that.

I will say that the animation quality was good. Not quite up to Unicorn's standards, but it had more style, so I think I actually liked it better overall. The action scenes leaved something to be desired, though; everyone who wasn't either Io or Daryl just stood around so someone else could kill them, and the Io vs Daryl fights didn't do a very good job of matching the on-screen action with the mandates of the plot. Random lightning bolts radically altered a fight not once, but twice, (there was also some random flying debris that saved Daryl from a kill shot at one point) which could be written off as "yeah, that's why it's the Thunderbolt Sector" if it had ever had an effect beyond those two times. Instead of making it seem like an interesting battlefield, it just came off as ass-pulls so the writers could get the result they wanted from the fight. Io also seemed to lose to Daryl twice (well, the first was arguably a draw) simply because the plot said so -- as in, his mecha was still capable of fighting and he had no reason to stop, but he concedes defeat anyway. This was an especially annoying way to end the climactic final battle.

The bits at the end depicting A Baoa Qu (which I assume were the parts added for the December Sky version) were a mixed bag. It was interesting to see Daryl struggling to operate a standard cockpit with his prosthetics, but that was largely a sideshow with the primary focus of that section being on the Zeongs. Then there was the brief post-credits bit of Io having apparently escaped Zeon captivity? It was a fair assumption that he (and the other Federation POWs) were going to be expatriated after A Baoa Qu anyway, so I'm not sure what purpose that scene served. Except for letting us know that Daryl survived the war, the extra footage at the end seemed kind of pointless.

On the positive side, the latter half of Thunderbolt did a decent job of exploring the characterization of both Io and Daryl set up by the first half, which I didn't expect but worked pretty well. Io is shown to be more than just a rampaging war-drunk psycho like Yazan or Ali, and Daryl is shown to be more conflicted than the "I fight for my friends and my homeland" rah-rah Zeon diehard he initially comes off as. The bit with the Federation crew boarding the Zeon ship was largely well done -- it was a good display of two groups of desperate people pushed to extremes they never would have normally considered. The scene with Cornelius on the engineering deck was particularly good, in its rather cruel way. That scene manages to portray what the deaths of dozens of interchangeable mooks didn't -- that war is a dirty, horrible business, not because anyone wants it to be, but because everyone wants to be the one that survives.

Overall, while I'm not sure I'd say it was good, it was better than I expected it to be, at least. Which may say more about my expectations than it does about Thunderbolt, but there you have it.
I don't know man the Gundam shows that have come out have been pretty bad so this is gold compared to them. Let us remember that some people said we would never EVER get grizzled old men MS pilots and we sort of got that in Thunderbolt with none of that "understanding" that always seems to show up in Gundam. It is not a perfect show but the animation is top notch and I love just hitting the pause button and admiring how everything looks(Gundam Unicorn has some REAL DERP animation shots from time to time)
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Brave Fencer Kirby
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Re: The Official Gundam Thunderbolt Anime Thread Mk I

Eh, Thunderbolt is middle of the road compared to other recent Gundam stuff. Better than Unicorn and G-Reco (neither of which I liked basically at all), but not as good as IBO or Build Fighters (both of which were fantastic).

As far as the "understanding" stuff, Thunderbolt has the same take on that as most Gundam: understanding is nice, but it's not enough to stop people from fighting. (Gundam 00, especially the movie, being a rather annoying exception to this trend.) The scene where Cornelius makes an impassioned, desperate plea to the basic humanity of the Zeon crewmen, only to have the entire situation rendered moot immediately thereafter, was a great illustration of that.

I wouldn't call anyone in Thunderbolt "old men", either. They're not teenagers, like most main Gundam protagonists, but both Io and Daryl seem to be in their early 20s, which is pretty standard for an OVA (compare Shiro or Kou, for instance).
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sdwoodchuck
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Re: The Official Gundam Thunderbolt Anime Thread Mk I

Finally got around to watching this yesterday. Absolutely hated it. Possibly my least favorite piece of Gundam so far (though I haven't seen G-Savior). It tries so god-damned hard to be "dark," but dark storytelling lives or dies by its characters, and Thunderbolt doesn't have any. Oh, it has cardboard cutouts it wants you to think are characters, but it never earns the audience's engagement, and never even attempts to. The most it does is use manipulative little emotional hooks to try and con you into it. "Oh look, he remembers having feet, isn't that sad? Now you're invested in this character, right?" "Uh oh, a woman is crying! Care about this guy's death, because she cares about it a lot, see?" "Well this guy is kind of a jerk, but he used to live here and his dad died, so he's dealing with a lot, okay?" That's it.

If you don't fall for the cheap illusion, the story winds up just being two groups of people shooting at each other and shouting a lot. The plot is paper thin, the conflict is paper thin, and the notion of moral ambiguity only plays into it so far as to say that nobody is likable, nobody has any ethical drive at all, and so why should I care who lives or dies? With zero emotional investment in the characters, the plot, or the conflict, I don't care who comes out on top. I don't care how the rivalry plays out. It's just a giant ugly mess.

Compare that to War in the Pocket, for example. War in the Pocket is just as dark, though in obviously different ways, but look at everything it did right. It has real characters! Those characters are not only likable; they also grow and develop over the course of the six episodes. It has a plot that is engaging and features a conflict that creates real stakes and real tension. Its brand of moral ambiguity actually involves complex interactions of competing ethics escalating to a fever pitch.

It's one thing when a show tries to be engaging and fails. It's a whole 'nother tier of crap when they don't even try. Thunderbolt doesn't even try. It's not only bad, it never makes an attempt to rise above being bad.
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Deathzealot
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Re: The Official Gundam Thunderbolt Anime Thread Mk I

At least it had great mobile suits and ships right? :D
sdwoodchuck
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Re: The Official Gundam Thunderbolt Anime Thread Mk I

For sure; I think the tech design is mostly great.
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Brave Fencer Kirby
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Re: The Official Gundam Thunderbolt Anime Thread Mk I

I felt about like that for the first half or so, but I thought the second half did a great job of humanizing the characters. Io at first just comes off as a raging psychopath a la Yazan or Ali, and Daryl seems like a standard "I will protect my friends!!" shonen protagonist, but things go deeper than that. Io is actually a decent guy deep down, he's just been seriously messed up by everything that's happened to him, while Daryl is almost the opposite -- he has, in most ways, given up, and now he's just going through the motions because that's the path of least resistance.
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sdwoodchuck
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Re: The Official Gundam Thunderbolt Anime Thread Mk I

First half is worse than second half for sure, but the second half doesn't even come close to redeeming it. The characters still aren't characters; they just get their three seconds of token humanizing to con an audience into thinking they are. There have been a fair few less than stellar Gundam series, but I think Thunderbolt is the first time I've ever actually felt like the pandering got to the point of being actually insulting.
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Deathzealot
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Re: The Official Gundam Thunderbolt Anime Thread Mk I

Well, Well, Well. Looks like we are getting a second season for Thunderbolt. The only good thing about that is seeing some of the cool stuff from manga like the new Pegasus Class and other stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5H4IWM ... Nw&index=1
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Iris Scope
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Re: The Official Gundam Thunderbolt Anime Thread Mk I

Does this mean I have to watch December Sky in order to fully grasp season 2? I ask because last we saw in season 1, Io and the Feddies were taken prisoner by the victorious Zekes and only in the movie version do we see their escape from captivity.

I'm all in favor of a new season but for some reason *laziness from what I gather*, I don't really feel like watching the movie.
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Re: The Official Gundam Thunderbolt Anime Thread Mk I

Iris Scope wrote: Wed Mar 15, 2017 10:22 am Does this mean I have to watch December Sky in order to fully grasp season 2? I ask because last we saw in season 1, Io and the Feddies were taken prisoner by the victorious Zekes and only in the movie version do we see their escape from captivity.

I'm all in favor of a new season but for some reason *laziness from what I gather*, I don't really feel like watching the movie.
The movie adds nothing but a shot of Io beaten up and naked storming the cell where the others are held. There's no need to watch the movie to prepare for season 2.
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zetatype
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Re: The Official Gundam Thunderbolt Anime Thread Mk I

And so we now return to Gundam Thunderbolt.

Surprisingly episode 5 is actually 4 minutes longer than than the average thunderbolt episode episode (19 minutes if ignore the ending credits) though there's two minutes of reused footage from December sky but with sound effects this time. So I wonder if the rest of thunderbolt's episodes will be the standard 15 min.

In terms of characters and story there isn't much to talk about. So far I'm liking Bianca the most out of the new characters. We get a brief introduction to what I assume is religious cult I've been hearing about. It was certainly...odd.

Action wise the show is as good as ever. I liked dogfighting between the dopps and core fighters. Aerial combat is something you don't see too often. Surprisingly I was thought the Atlas debut was meh. Taking out a reentry craft isn't exactly all that exciting.
dienrachen
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Re: The Official Gundam Thunderbolt Anime Thread Mk I

A small scene made me love this new ep, actually. The part where the monks collect debris and cremate the human remains.

It really gives a much-needed focus to what happened after A Baoa Qu, and the damage OYW really wrought.
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