Thunder 3 Episode 1 Recap: Was Pyontaro Able To Rescue Futaba?

“Konosuba” and “Sword Art Online” made Isekai narratives a groundbreaking success in mainstream media, following which nth number of copycat projects have been produced which severely lack any ingenuity to stand out on their own. Fortunately, that is not the case with Yuki Ikeda’s “Thunder 3”, which uses differences in visual styles to highlight the different realms where the narrative takes place. Part of the visuals appear inspired from mangaka Hiroya Oku’s classic dystopian sci-fi series, “Gantz”, but doesn’t share a similar dark theme, at least not from the get go.

Spoilers Ahead

Pyontaro and Small Three

The prime world visual of “Thunder 3” is inspired from chibi-style lighthearted children’s fiction, as seen in “Astro Boy” or “Doraemon” anime. The narrative focuses on Pyontaro Tezuka, a middle school teenager whose father is a struggling mangaka, and in a funny meta twist, he is the author of “Thunder 3”. The Tezuka household is just like another average middle class Japanese family, consisting of Pyontaro, his little sister Futaba, their parents and their family dog. The overall family dynamics is quite reminiscent of the Nohara family in “Shinchan”. Futaba is very affectionate towards her brother, who finds her clinginess annoying. 

Overall Pyontaro is a pretty unremarkable bloke, at least that’s what seems from the first episode where he spends a good amount of time searching lewd stuff on the net, like average hormonal teenage boys do. As the saying goes, birds of same feather flock together, and Pyontaro, two friends, Tsubame,  obsessed with female lingerie, and Hiroshi, an otaku, perfectly exemplify this. The trio, denoted as Small Three, do not belong to the social circle of their school either, as  shown in the way they get jealous of new transfer student, Tatsuomi, who instantly becomes popular among the girls. The trio are not well liked either, as seen in the way a neighborhood girl, an aspiring singer, constantly tries to avoid their presence whenever they cross paths. 

How Does Futaba Venture to Another Realm?

Pyontaro and co. share a good rapport with their class teacher, Doc, who is more of an elder brother to them, and one of their favorite pastimes is to play videogames at his place. On one occasion, while hanging out at Doc’s apartment, they come across a CD which Doc jokingly mentions can open a pathway to a parallel universe. Doc doesn’t have a TS5 console, which can run the CD, and Pyontaro decides to borrow it as he can test it  on his TS5. As the trio head towards Pyontaro’s home, his mother entrusts Pyontaro to take care of Futaba and their dog in her absence. 

Pyontaro plays the CD on his TS5 and at once everyone present in the room gets awestruck upon seeing the extremely lifelike, photorealistic quality of the video feed that starts playing on the giant tv screen. The video remains fixated on a picturesque frame of a park, and on one occasion, Pyontaro and his buddies leave the room to fetch a parcel from the delivery agent. In his absence, Futaba notices a dragonfly has entered through the screen, and hovering across their room, it returns to where it came from. In her curiosity, the kid pokes her head through the screen, and within moments, she decides to venture on the other side. The dog follows suit, and both of them start to loiter around the picturesque setting. 

However, this hyper realistic world is quite different to the cartoon world Futaba belongs to, and this new realm looks like 3DCG animated as seen in sci-fi classics like “Blame” and “Gantz”. Residents of this realm see Futaba as a character who has straight up arrived from the pages of manga or from an anime scene, just like live action “Sonic” movies show the titular hedgehog as. Futaba gets nervous as the confused, strange looking people start taking pictures of her and in midst of them, a tall reptilian humanoid alien, scans Futaba to report her to higher authority. The higher authority in question, alien sentries hovering in the skies in their giant spaceships, remotely scan Futaba upon being unable to identify her as a known creature. As they find her energy reading exceeding a whopping five hundred billion gyros, they get alarmed and consider her as a major threat. The alien sentries launch literal missiles on Futaba and her dog, while she starts helplessly crying for her brother. 

Was Pyontaro Able to Rescue Futaba?

In the meantime, after spending some time gazing over the latest issue of their favourite manga jump magazine, Pyontaro and his friends realize Futaba and the family dog are nowhere to be seen. Pyontaro starts looking for her and finds out TS5 is still running the mysterious CD, and the TV screen has turned into a portal to another realm. The devastating impact of the missiles raze the surrounding area to the ground, but Futaba remains completely unscathed. Taking Hiroshi and Tsubame with him, Pyontaro steps into the other side after hearing the impact of the explosion, and the trio start searching for Futaba. The aliens abduct Futaba right in front of Pyontaro and his friends, and take her away, 

A helpless Pyontaro freezes in utter shock and agony for a while, until the realization dawns upon him that his sister, who loves him more than anything, is being taken away by strange looking aliens. As tears gush from his eyes, Pyontaro unknowingly unlocks a energy surge within himself while chasing after the spaceship. The aliens launch missiles on the dog, Hiroshi and Tsubame, all of whom turn out to be  unscathed as well. Pyontaro is shocked to find that he can leap great lengths to reach the spaceship almost thousands of feets up. However, the aliens manage to shake him off of the spaceship, and while falling from such a great height, Pyontaro accepts the fact that he is going to die – the worst regret that remains with him is the fact that he is to be blamed for Futaba’s predicament and that he wasn’t able to save his sister. 

To Pyontaro’s utter surprise, he finds out he is alive even after falling to the ground, and the impact has created a massive crater. Hiroshi and Tsubame find out that not only are they invulnerable, they are extremely powerful in this realm as well as they crush hard rocks with no effort at all. Pyontaro breaks down in grief, when Hiroshi comforts him that they might still be able to rescue his sister. He has realized that in this realm, they are bestowed with godly strength, and are superheroes of some sort who have arrived straight from fiction. While in reality, their lives are nondescript and miserable, here they have the chance to make a difference by using their power for good, the first step of which is going to be rescuing Futaba. There are myriads of questions regarding both these realms, such as why the physics differs, whether time passes similarly in both the realms. Hopefully upcoming episodes will answer these questions, while showcasing the highs and lows of this unexpected turn to heroism of the friends trio. 

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