Thunder 3 is a new sci-fi adventure series on Netflix that has the potential to both turn heads with its unique premise and put viewers off with its heavy use of CGI animation. Based on Yuki Ikeda’s 2022-2026 manga of the same name, Thunder 3 falls into the “isekai” anime subgenre that sees its characters transported or reborn into an unfamiliar world. As a result, we see our main characters get transported from their peaceful, cartoonish, slice-of-life story into a wild new world featuring aliens and a completely different art style. Keep reading for a full scoop (obligatory SPOILER WARNING here) on this Unend-produced title.
THUNDER 3: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: Somewhere in Japan, a family of four and their little dog contentedly eat breakfast together in their kitchen while the day’s horoscopes play out on the TV. It’s supposed to be an especially unlucky day for Virgos (again).
The Gist: Our protagonist is Pyontaro Tezuka (Abby Trott), an incredibly average middle school-aged boy who lives with his middling manga artist father (Andrew Kishino), stay-at-home mother (Kelly Ohanian), and affectionate baby sister Futaba (Risa Mei). Together, along with their pet pooch, they’re an unremarkable family just going about their daily lives. Pyontaro is consistently annoyed by Futaba’s overwhelming adoration of him and looks forward to opportunities to escape through searching “boobs” on the internet or by hanging out with his best friends, Hiroshi Ochanomizu (Ryan Bartley) and Tsubame Azuma (Brenna Larsen).
Hiroshi is bespectacled, cheerful, and optimistic, while Tsubame’s defining trait seems to be an obsession with ladies’ undergarments. Known as the “Small 3,” Pyontaro, Hiroshi, and Tsubame generally fly under the radar at school. On Valentine’s Day, none of them receives chocolate, but they at least find validation and fun in their young teacher, Doc (Damien Haas), who sometimes brings video games for them to play after classes in an on-campus clubroom. On this fateful day, Doc lends the Small 3 an expensive new game that he claims can connect to a parallel universe. The trio then takes the disc back to Pyontaro’s house, where his mom makes him watch Futaba while she’s out running errands.
When they put the disc into Pyontaro’s TS5 console, the boys, Futaba, and even the Tezuka family dog are dazzled by the hyper-realistic scenery onscreen. The doorbell pulls the Small 3 away from the TV and out of the room, but Futaba stays staring at the screen long enough to see a stunning dragonfly somehow come through the TV and into her home. Futaba and her dog then follow the dragonfly through the screen into the TV’s vivid world with its different art style. Everyone who sees Futaba notices that she is an anime character, and they surround her until an alien-looking figure detects Futaba as a threat, leading to her being shot with missiles (she’s okay, relax) and captured.
By the time Pyontaro realizes that Futaba is gone, it’s too late, as the Small 3 enter the TV world to find the little girl in an alien spacecraft. But all hope is not lost, as the trio seems to have abilities in this world that could ultimately help them take on extraterrestrial threats and rescue Futaba before it’s too late.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? In terms of the overall vibe, Thunder 3 is like taking the cutsey characters from slice-of-life comedies Teasing Master Takagi-san and Nichijou, and then putting them in the intense, graphic world of sci-fi psychological horror Gantz.
Our Take: Thunder 3 is, in a word, unique. The pilot’s first nine or ten minutes play out like a simple, school-life comedy seemingly meant for younger audiences. But if the somewhat clunky CGI, crude pubescent boy moments, and Futaba’s cringeworthy calls of “Big bwudder!” aren’t enough to turn you off, then by that tenth minute, you’re in for quite the bait and switch. From those points to the very first trailer that Netflix released for the series, Thunder 3 purposefully misdirects viewers to hit them with the surprise of this alien-ruled parallel universe, and it certainly packs a punch.
Even so, I do have some mixed feelings about the series. On the one hand, the premise is truly interesting as different genres clash and art styles merge to create an original, layered story and aesthetic. But on the other hand, the CGI can be fairly off-putting and cheap-looking, which sometimes detracts from the show’s overall impact and quality. I think that some of the medium mixing moments are genuinely very cool, like when Futaba traverses the detailed, almost photo-realistic scenery of this other world, and Futaba looks like a walking comic book panel in a way that’s reminiscent of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
It feels like for every positive point (solid voice acting performance, impressive bits of hand-drawn animation, some clever satire), there are negatives to temper it (having Futaba talk in an exaggerated babyish manner, the sometimes unsophisticated CGI, corny jokes). With this in mind, I think that Thunder 3 has potential as a niche hit for the people who are open-minded towards the animation and intrigued by the isekai, genre-bending tale, but that it likely won’t hit for hand-drawn anime purists or mainstream audiences who only watch anime casually (if at all).
Performance Worth Watching: Pyontaro Tezuka (Abby Trott) is very much a middle school boy in a way you can’t help but find endearing. Sure, he’s kind of breast-obsessed and can be rude to his younger sister, but he’s also clearly trying to work through the big feelings of young adulthood. At the end of the day, you can tell he’s just a kid who loves his family, appreciates his friends, and wants to feel like a winner, and there’s something likable in that for a protagonist.
Sex And Skin: There are doodles (and censored internet searches) of boobs and multiple mentions of women’s underwear, but nothing overtly explicit beyond that in the first episode.
Parting Shot: The Small 3 go from despondent to hopeful, looking up at the alien spaceship-filled sky as Hiroshi declares that maybe in this world, they can save Futaba.
Sleeper Star: For me, the scene stealer was consistently the Tezuka family dog. I love that it’s in the other world, surviving missile strikes with the Small 3, and I hope that it gets to play an active role in this rescue mission.
Most Pilot-y Line: While looking through his father’s manga entitled Thunder 3 (how meta!), Pyontaro asks: “Hey, Dad, do you think they’ll turn this into an anime series? What’s the story even about? You could have written something more like Demon Flayer.”
Our Call: Thunder 3 isn’t a show for everyone. That being said, any anime viewer who loves an isekai sci-fi adventure, a unique premise, an old school anime vibe, and doesn’t mind iffy CGI should give it a chance and STREAM IT. The people who get it or love the original manga will be into it, and everyone else is safe to SKIP.
Maddy Casale is a Chicago-based writer and comedian who covers everything from animated series to Hallmark movies. Follow her on Duolingo @MCasale.