== *Thunderbolt Fantasy* shows the power of fully embracing your genre

One of the best shows that I watched this year
technically isn't anime. [[*Thunderbolt Fantasy*
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_Fantasy]] is a Taiwanese
high-fantasy [[wuxia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuxia]] puppet show
from a renowned Taiwanese puppet company; it slides into anime because
it's co-produced by some Japanese anime companies, written by [[Gen
Urobuchi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gen_Urobuchi]], has a soundtrack
by [[Hiroyuki Sawano https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroyuki_Sawano]],
and so on. Basically it's anime not because of looks but because of one
side of its lineage.

It would have been easy for *Thunderbolt Fantasy* to be pretty bad.
Wuxia is awfully close to the kind of action fantasy that anime gives
us in relative profusion (often from light novels), and those shows are
only rarely even moderately good. Sure, Pili International was not going
to do a bad job on the looks of the show (assuming that you can accept
puppets and special effects in general), but just as important as the
looks is the writing and Gen Urobuchi has written any number of stinkers
to go with his solid work. And high wuxia is itself an inherently absurd
and over the top genre, one that can easily fall into overblown camp.

But *Thunderbolt Fantasy* is good, in fact very good. Fundamentally
it's good in large part because everyone involved fully embraced its
genre. If they were going to do larger than life wuxia, they weren't
going to be half-hearted about it; they were going to go *big* and dive
in all the way. But fully embracing a genre isn't just about playing
whole-heartedly into its cliches and its nature. It's also about not
being lazy and about taking it seriously. There are absurdities that fit
and absurdities that don't and things that are just lazy, and you must
navigate through them all with care. Over all, you have to care and as
part of that caring, you must work hard and do good work. Lazy writing,
lazy planning, half-hearted gestures, taking the easy route, all of those
will show through and send a show like *Thunderbolt Fantasy* plummeting in
flames. Shows that are inherently absurd are balanced on a knife edge;
they cannot forget that they're absurd but they must also commit to doing
the absurdity with quality. That's what it means to embrace your genre.

(I won't go as far as to say that you have to love what you're doing,
but I'm sure that it doesn't hurt. I'm pretty sure that all of the
people involved in *Thunderbolt Fantasy* loved the whole idea,
especially on the Japanese side.)

Gen Urobuchi did not take the easy way out when he wrote *Thunderbolt
Fantasy*, and the results speak for themselves. Sure, there are crazy
things but they are wuxia-crazy so they fit (such as the character
who cuts his own head off so he can properly report his defeat to
his necromancer boss), the overall plot is well thought out, and it
has plenty of smart writing. The characters are all wuxia characters
but they're well drawn and you can believe in them, [[a couple of them
get character arcs ThunderboltFantasyCharacterArcs]], and the dialog
often sparkles. There are genuine surprises, real laughs, and an actual
understated romance that feels believable in a wuxia way.

(And there's also [[a spear-point ThunderboltFantasySpearpoint]],
but just managing a spear-point doesn't necessarily make a work good
by itself. All sorts of bad stories can manage one good moment where
everything comes together for once.)

Of course *Thunderbolt Fantasy* is not the only show to achieve
excellent results by embracing its genre whole-heartedly and truly
understanding itself. This year many people praise *Mayoiga* (which I
haven't watched as horror-ish stuff isn't my thing), and [[back in 2014
there was *Witch Craft Works* BestNIn2014]]. Probably there have been
others in genres that I don't pay as much attention to.

(Perhaps what *Witch Craft Works* did was slightly different, but I
think of it as basically the same thing. Sometimes earnest is the wrong
tone to take to make a work really shine, and sometimes it's exactly
what you need. In both cases you can't be lazy and take the easy way
out when putting the show together; you have to both care and commit
whole-heartedly to what you're doing. Like *Thunderbolt Fantasy*,
*Witch Craft Works* had smart writing with good characters and good
dialog, and fully leaned into its nature with heart.)

PS: If you want to get an idea if *Thunderbolt Fantasy* is your kind of
thing, you can do a lot worse than watching [[*Thunderbolt Fantasy*'s OP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X85DcsKHaUo]]. It's basically perfect
for the show and is a great distillation of the whole experience.
Certainly if you hate the OP and find it completely eye-rollingly
absurd and over the top, you're unlikely to like *Thunderbolt Fantasy*
itself.

(This is a [[12-days
https://perpetualmorning.wordpress.com/2016/12/11/i-hijacked-12-days-of-anime-sorry-12112016/]]
post.)