Thunder 3 Volume 3 review
For those hoping that the third volume of Thunder 3 might return to focus on the adventures of the Small Three of cartoonish travellers arriving in a realistic looking world, you will be disappointed. However, there is still plenty of action to keep the reader entertained.
At the end of Volume 2, the Small Three of Pynotaro, Tsubame and Hiroshi witness a kamikaze attack on one of the alien spaceships by a Japanese pilot. Also with them is Segami, who’s decided to join an armed resistance group to take out the aliens called (unimaginatively) Rebellion. He makes this decision when he gets a phone call from his mother telling him that the aliens have destroyed her house and killed Segami’s father.
The Small Three end up meeting other members of Rebellion, but do not take part in their forthcoming attack, which sees the members having to wear special suits and arming themselves with advanced weaponry, as well as a special kind of drug made out of an alien liquid which gives them short-lasting bursts of extra power. Meanwhile, while all this is going on, Futaba finally is confronted with her alien captors but, like her fellow dimensional travellers, she is highly resistant to the violent attacks the aliens use against her.
Most of the interesting parts of this volume concern the start of the rebellion by, er, Rebellion (seriously, couldn’t you think of a better name than that?) in which we see the humans starting to fight back against the aliens. This includes a mixture of gun battles and martial arts being used in the skirmish.
This in turn leads to an intriguing point of discussion. As has been commented on already in previous reviews, part of the appeal of Thunder 3 is the mixture of art styles, with the chibi-like depiction of the Small Three and Futaba contrasting with the more realistic-looking world the series is set in. The artist most mentioned in comparison to Thunder 3’s creator Yuki Ikeda is Hiroya Oku of Gantz fame. Due to Thunder 3 being the only series credited to Ikeda, this has led to many readers to speculate that “Yuki Ikeda” is a pseudonym for Hiroya Oku.
It has to be said that the more you read the series, the more that you suspect that this may well be the case. This is hammered home even more when we come to the battle scenes and in particular when we see the members of Rebellion getting suited-up for combat. It is hard not to compare the armour being worn by the Rebellion members with the suits that are worn by the central figures in Gantz.
What confuses me is that if Yuki Ikeda is Hiroya Oku, why would he want to write under a false name? The art style is so clearly similar that it easy for many people to figure out the identity. The closest to an idea I can think of is British comedy legend Ronnie Barker, who as well as being a great actor was also a great writer, but he always wanted his material to be judged in its own right, rather than just be used because he wrote it. Thus, Barker always wrote under pseudonyms, the most famous being Gerald Wiley, when submitting material and got away with it. Is Oku writing under a fake name to demonstrate he can create something good without having to fall back on his previous acclaim? We won’t know until further information is revealed.
Once more, the production of the manga is well done, with translator Cat Anderson and editor Daniel Joseph displaying good effort. No letterer is credited still, which is once again a shame.
While I’m slightly disappointed by the lack of involvement from the Small Three once again in this third volume, it is still an improvement on the last edition, and hopefully the forces of this trio and Rebellion will combine soon in Volume 4.
Our review copy from Vertical was supplied by Turnaround Publisher Services.
