The upcoming anime series for Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt has had its production and cast information revealed through the official Gundam channel and it’s definitely shaping up to be an interesting work. The series is going to be a four-part digital run with individual episode purchases and rentals. Set to debut on December 25th, 2015, it’ll be a four-episode series overall. The project has Kou Matsuo directing it and working on the scripts with it naturally being animated at Sunrise. Hirotoshi Takaya is on board with the character designs for it.
The cast includes:
- Yūichi Nakamura as Io Fleming
- Ryohei Kimura as Daryl Lorentz
- Toa Yukinari as Claudia Palh
- Sayaka Ohara as Kara Mitchum
- Daisuke Hirakawa as Cornelius Caca
- Shunsuke Sakuya as Graham
- Mutsumi Sasaki as Burroughs
- Hiroshi Tsuchida as J.J. Sexton
Details regarding the digital distribution for rental/ownership are limited to the Japanese side right now and not all that much about it beyond the 250 yen rental period and the 500 yen purchase price per episode. It’s expected that there will be some overseas availability considering how the other works are being promoted, but nothing has been said at all about it.
The book, which began in 2012 in Big Comic Superior from Yasuo Ohtagaki, is a side story for the UC timeline set in 0079. It’s aimed at an older audience with more of a science fiction/military design than the traditional action-oriented materials of the last decade or so.
Plot concept: Federation troops and Zeon forces carry out a fierce battle in the Thunderbolt Sector in what was once Side 4 “Mua”. The Thunderbolt Sector is a shoal zone composed of the debris of destroyed space colonies, named for the electrical discharges from the metal debris. MS pilot Io Flemming is among the Federation soldiers who are dispatched to the area, where Zeon sniper Daryl Lorenz awaits them on the battlefield.
