Thunderbolt Fantasy S1E2: “Attack of the Xuán Guǐ Zōng!”

Next episode of Potter Puppet Pals!

The intro is a fairly typical anime intro, except the movements are all stiff and clumsy and the faces are expressionless corpse-dolls. Song is reasonably good, and the choreography WOULD be decent were it not for the limitations of the "performers." It ends with Shang and Lue's faces poised against each other, either in cooperation or opposition, it's hard to tell.

The episode proper begins with more non-diagetic narration, because why not I guess. In this case, she's telling a story illustrated by some old paintings about the "War of the Fading Dusk." Demons invaded the human world, and attempted to drive humanity to extinction. The humans were slowly pushed back, until they sought help from the "Xian immortals." These demigod-like entities helped the humans form an arsenal of magical weapons that allowed them to turn the tide against the invaders and ultimately drive them back across the cursed mountains to their own realm. These magical weapons have since been stored in special shrines and guarded by the Hu Yin Shi priests. The sword that Trollhair wants, obviously, is one of these anti-demon weapons.

This segues more naturally than I'd expected (happily) into some more organic exposition from Sister. The Hu Yin Shi are apparently divided into clans, each basing their societies around one of the temples in which a superweapon is stored.

Her people, Clan Dan, were the guardians of one sword whose powers were deemed particularly dangerous should it fall into the wrong hands. The Xuan Gui Zong have broken a centuries old taboo by pillaging one of the monasteries, and made history by successfully overrunning it. The benefits of having a souped up Final Fantasy villain as your leader, I guess. Lue says that the XGZ's troll-haired leader is supposed to be obsessed with magical weapons, but making such a brazen bid to take this one is reckless even for him.

The woman finally names herself as Dan Fei. I'm not sure if her name was said before at some point or not, these long Chinese names are hard for me. She claims to have been the least among the warriors of her monastery, and got away largely because she was the one least able to stand and fight. Lue doesn't volunteer his own name, claiming to just be a no-name peasant wanderer, but volunteers Shang's. What an asshole. Shang makes sure that Fei understands that he didn't do it because he likes her or anything, bakka. Anyway, the sword is still secure for now. Its blade is stuck in the stone altar in the temple, and cannot be removed unless the handle and crossguard are both reattached. Fei's brother had the handle, so Trollhair has that now, but Fei still has the crossguard, and every piece of the sword is useless without the other two.

When Lue asks Fei what she wants to do next, she says "avenge my brother and recover the handle." Shang rather insensitively - but quite logically - points out that if her brother was a better fighter than her, and he couldn't beat Trollhair, what makes her think she can? Better to just cut her losses and hide somewhere. She counters that if this troll-haired troublemaker is stealing magical superweapons, whatever he has planned is likely to be a lot of other people's problem rather than just hers, so she'll be able to find allies. Lue eagerly swears himself to her service. Shang does not, as much because of his dislike of Lue as anything else.

Fair point.

He leaves, hurrying off on whatever journey he was on before all this other stuff happened. Fei bashfully asks if Shang was upset by something she did, even though he just explicitly said it was something Lue did. I guess she's not very quick on the uptake. Lue assures her that she will be seeing Shang again, and next time he'll be in a much more receptive frame of mind.

So, Lue has all these precognitive powers that let him predict and manipulate events perfectly, but he still needs make Shang do his dirty work for some reason. There's a reason this particular take on the mysterious old mentor archetype usually annoys me.

Cut to the Tower of Torment beyond the Mountains of Malice, where Lord Trollhair is joined in his Office of Oppression by the lackeys he just called. He asks if they've had any leads on tracking their runaway Hu Yin Shi. No leads yet, per se, but they're still investigating that Shang guy who turned up alongside Lue in the necromancy intel they received yesterday. With the amount of search parties and highway guard they've flooded the area with, he should be found soon enough, and if Lue and Fei aren't with him at the time he can probably tell them where they went. Trollhair muses on his magic sword collection, still incomplete without the one whose handle he took the night before. What a shame it would be to let its blade remain unused in that obscure little temple.

Hmm. The show is doing a parallel between Trollhair's attempt on the sword and Shang's taking of the umbrella. I'm not sure that I buy this as a comparison, for quite a list of reasons.

Trollhair's minions fawn about how he's the bestest swordsman ever, and of course he deserves the bestest sword ever to go with it, until he tells them to cut the flattery and just get back to work. One of the lackeys has a brief inner monologue that seems to suggest that she's in love with Trollhair, though maybe I'm misinterpreting "how much of his favor will unlocking the sword earn?" and she really just wants to be named his successor or whatever.

I wonder. Is egotism really his main reason for breaking an ancient taboo and throwing all these resources at the sword? I suspect he's actually a disguised demon, and trying to steal the sword in order to cripple humanity's defenses for a second invasion. Or something along those lines, at least.

Back in the forest, Lue has written up some letters to send to people of means who might be willing to assist them, and summons a bird to deliver them. Every other character can summon flying things of various sizes and descriptions, it seems. Fei seems impressed at Lue's bird powers, which is kind of weird considering that every named character in this show so far seems to know magic, but maybe aviomancy is a rarer talent than healing or sword beams.

He explains that his powers in this regard are really quite limited. The bird will take his messages to the nearest village, and the postmaster there will relay them to their recipients with messenger pigeons of his own. Lue's one really great power, he says, is to find his way through interactions with other people. He describes this as "finding the holes in the many-layered nets" of society and managing to get through to where he wants.

That does fit his displayed powerset pretty well, aside from that illusion spell he used on the Xuan Gui Zong officer and this other thing now with the bird. I suspect he's telling the truth about human-centric precognition being his most advanced kind of magic, even if he may also be underselling his other powers.

He's still a prick, but the toolset available to him would make it kind of hard not to be. Assuming he is telling the truth, of course.

Fei asks him why he's going to such lengths and taking such personal risks to help a stranger. Lue explains that he happens to have known Trollhair in the past, and that he knows letting him get his hands on this weapon would lead to the ruin of this land and likely others around it. The way he talks about their past interactions makes it sound like they may have been colleagues or partners-in-crime at one point. Also, Trollhair apparently had the nickname "Bones of Creation" at some point, which I'm guessing is less awkward in Mandarin and/or Japanese than it is in English. She then asks him why he didn't use that argument to convince Shang to keep helping them, and Lue says that he didn't need to, because events have already been arranged to ensure his cooperation. IE, he didn't need to bother convincing him, because he'd already shanghai'd him into helping by forcing him onto Trollhair's hitlist. What a prick.

Cut to Shang, who is just reaching a village and is glad to have a dry place to sleep tonight. However, as soon as he enters, the villagers (whose puppets all look deformed and inbred in a way that I think is less an intentional design choice and more down to less time and care being taken with the extras) all flee in terror. Even the baker who he tried to buy food from just cowers behind his table and tells Shang to take what he wants and leave. Shang leaves a coin on the table regardless, demonstrating that for all he talks about not caring about other people he really does have moral strength.

As he wanders on, eating his pastry and wondering if he's actually going to be able to stay at an inn tonight after all, he finds the probable answer to this mystery stapled up all over the wall.

He's marked for death by the Xuan Gui Zong, and any who aid or do business with him do so at their own peril.

I'm starting to wonder if the Xuan Gui Zong are the closest thing this region has to a "legitimate" government. No other authority seems to exist beyond the local village or town level, and they're able to issue demands with impunity that people in multiple towns will all acquiesce to in a heartbeat. So yeah. I'm thinking that this is either a land that Trollhair has de facto conquered, or its a backwater region of some bigger kingdom that doesn't consider this necromancer warlord to be worth the effort of dealing with just now. The question of how many other wizards as powerful as him there are in the setting is sort of an important one in assessing Trollhair's place in this world, so I'll have to hold that thought for now.

Unable to find lodgings, Shang just moves on past that village of terrified mutants and tries to make as much progress as he can toward the next before night falls. As he walks onward through the forest, an armed man creeps up and asks him if he's Shang. Shang replies that if he was, he wouldn't exactly be eager to share that information, given that he's a wanted man. The interloper is mildly amused by this answer.

50/50 on whether this guy is another marked enemy of Trollhair's looking to join forces for survival, or a bounty hunter working for him.

It turns out to be the former, as the archer warns Shang that there's a Xuan Gui Zong ambush up ahead, and that if he really is the guy they're after he had better be careful. Shang tells him that he's learned to be wary of eccentric people who know more than they let on laying in wait by the side of the road, but he still takes the warning to heart and turns back to take a detour around this next little wooded area. Unfortunately, the XGZ spot him regardless as he tries to bypass them, and he has a fight on his hand. This group is being led by that one lieutenant of Trollhair's who may or may not want his bone of creation in her well of genesis.

Once again, Shang does his best to de-escalate. First with plucky humor (telling the attackers to make the wanted posters more handsome next time), and then with earnest reasoning (he honestly doesn't know anything about where Fei and Lue went after that one meeting, and is not taking part in any scheme of theirs). Evil lieutenant lady's response to that is that this means they won't need to bother interrogating him before killing him.

She explains that he still killed that other officer, and thus still needs to die. Shang asks if the man who beheaded himself was a friend, family member, or perhaps lover of hers. She laughs dismissively at the question, and tells him that he was an obnoxious glory hound just barely competent enough to remain in their master's good graces, and that if he were somehow returned to life she'd kill him again herself for embarrassing their organization by dying so ignominiously.

Shang continues to be the best thing about this show with his next response.

Normal person logic in a world of wuxia/shonen conventions, with everyone else as confused by him as he is by them. It's kind of great.

Sadly, she explains that this isn't a matter of personal vengeance, but of organizational reputation. The Xuan Gui Zong have a lot invested in their appearance of untouchability. This reputation makes it a lot easier for them to get things done around the land, and letting someone get away with killing a prominent officer of theirs could compromise this. Well, that's more logical of an answer than I was expecting from her, so she's a little sharper than that last guy if nothing else. Shang makes his last ditch attempt to convince her to let him go by telling her that if this policy was Trollhair's idea (she confirms that it was), then he's a pretty pitiful master to serve, sending underlings to die to protect his own reputation. If Trollhair thinks he needs to save face by killing Shang, he should come over here and challenge him to a duel himself. If he won't do that, then she and her men should abandon him, because he's not worth their loyalty.

Damn. That's really pretty convincing. Not just for this situation, but in any case where you're facing soldiers being sent to risk their lives for something stupid that doesn't directly benefit them. Unfortunately, she's insulted by his assertion that confronting him here is "risking her life," and makes to demonstrate that she is not the one who will be dying today.

Shang reluctantly draws his sword. The bad guys surround him and start closing in. Then another Final Fantasy character comes shooting out of the woods and babbles about how awesome and dangerous he is while swinging his spear around like a lunatic.

I'm going to call him Gilgamesh until they repeat his name long enough for it to stick in my memory, because of the obvious.

Both parties stare at the newcomer in confusion. He expresses disbelief that none of them have heard of him, but no, this time it isn't just Shang's foreignness to blame, the bad guys don't know who this is either. He declares that he's here to defend Shang from the Xuan Gui Zong, even though he has no idea who Shang is or why they're after him.

I'm guessing this guy is a wandering adventurer type who had a few successes, let them get to his head, and then decided to go undermine the closest evil overlord because why not. Probably saw the wanted posters and decided to go team up with the enemy of the enemy, perhaps not considering the possibility that Shang might be even worse than they are.

Captain Badguy just scoffs and tells her men that if this newcomer wants to fight them too, then sure, why not. Before the fight can begin though, one of her soldiers is killed by an arrow. Some distance away through the woods, the guy who warned Shang earlier is sniping away.

What follows is an extremely dumb "fight" scene where the bad guys stand around going "NANI?????" without even attempting to take cover or fall back, even long after they've determined what general direction the arrows are coming from, as more and more of them get shot down. Shang just kinda stands there unsure of what to do, while Gilgamesh warns him not to move or he'll get in his older brother's line of fire.

Good to know the enemies are so little of a threat that there's no need to take them seriously.

Finally, the dumb evil lady spots the archer way across the woods, and expresses disbelief that someone could land shots from that distance. Yeah, you'd need magic or something to do that, how inexplicable. She and her surviving pair of minions then turn into flying blobs of color and shoot through the air to get closer to him. A mundane ability, compared to long ranged archery. Archer brother sees the incoming color sparks as "meteor walking," and seems moderately impressed by it. When they reach him, the dumb bad guy lady recognizes him as the "Sharp-Eyed Impaler." I guess he's actually got a reputation for himself, much moreso than his spear-wielding younger brother.

He anticlimactically beats them all without breaking a sweat, with the boss lady only surviving because he overestimated her and thought she'd have been able to stand back up after being kicked over in time for an arrow he's shot into the sky to land on her in a given spot. Yeah, he's that kind of arrow bullshit. She ineffectually vows revenge and teleports away.

Unlike the last Xuan Gui Zong officer, she never even seemed like she could potentially be a serious thread. She spent more time emptily blustering than using her weapons.

Spearbro and Shang come back to Archerbro, and Shang thanks him for the help. I kind of get the feeling that Shang would have won even without the brothers' interference, given the baddies' abysmal performance, but no reason not to be polite. Archerbro responds by shooting an arrow right toward Shang's chest.

Probably a test or something. End episode.


This one was sort of the opposite of the first. Strong start, when it was all dialogue and worldbuilding, but then things got boring in the second half when it became more action focused. Not only because of the puppets showing their limitations, but also because of some serious plotting and storytelling issues. The main antagonist force (including the woman who seems to be the BBEG's right hand) being a complete non-threat to the heroes is one problem. Another is having them dispatched by a new character I have no investment in while Shang stands around doing literally nothing.

There also seems to not be much rhyme or reason to what characters find impressive or unimpressive. Summoning a messenger bird or placing an arrow from a few hundred feet away are made out to be incredibly rare, almost unbelievable, powers, even for someone who serves the necromancer dark lord in his tower full of bone dragons. Flight, energy blasts, and healing are not. Maybe there actually is a logic to what types of magic are considered commonplace and which ones aren't, but if so it hasn't presented itself.

So, good start, but by midway through the archer battle I was just kind of waiting for the scene to be over, and it kept going on until the end of the episode. Overall, my assessment of Thunderbolt Fantasy is still just "okay."