Anime openers rarely have the guts to spend their first ten minutes on breakfast, toilet humor, and a little sister casually announcing she wants to marry her brother, but that’s exactly how Thunder 3 kicks off. Episode 1, “Small Three,” takes its time building an ordinary, slightly chaotic household before yanking everything sideways into a parallel dimension by the end credits. Here’s everything that happens in the premiere, plus my thoughts on whether this messy, horny, surprisingly tender opener actually works.
A Very Normal Morning Before Everything Goes Wrong
Thunder 3 Episode 1 open on a family of four, plus a dog, eating breakfast while astrology programming plays on the radio in the background. It’s a mundane scene, deliberately so. In the middle of the meal, Futaba, Pyontaro’s little sister, drops the episode’s first oddball line: she wants to marry her brother when she grows up. Nobody reacts like it’s a big deal, which tells you a lot about the show’s tone right out of the gate.
Things get more embarrassing for Pyontaro shortly after. He heads to the bathroom to look at some NSFW content, only for Futaba to barge in wanting to play, completely unbothered by boundaries. He brushes her off and heads to school with his friends, basically ignoring her on the way out. On the walk over, the group runs into a girl carrying a guitar who nicknames them “Small Three”, and the name sticks for the rest of the episode.
Their conversation on the way to school is a good snapshot of what these kids actually care about: Pyontaro’s father’s newest manga chapter, whether they might stumble across lingerie lying around somewhere, and the buzz about a new student joining their class. It’s juvenile, a little crude, and honestly kind of true to how young boys actually talk.
Valentine’s Day Snubs and a New Kid Named Tatsuomi
At school, it’s Valentine’s Day, and almost everyone in class walks away with chocolates and gifts, except for the Small Three, who get completely shut out. Their new classmate, Tatsuomi, uses this exact moment to introduce himself, and the reaction splits right down gender lines. The girls are instantly charmed. The boys, Pyontaro included, are immediately on guard.
By the time they get home, the sting of an empty-handed Valentine’s Day is still bothering them. But there’s a small, sweet beat waiting for Pyontaro: the second he walks through the door, a crying Futaba stops immediately, calmed just by his presence. Later that night, he picks up a manga from his father’s collection called “Thunder 3,” and finds himself wondering if it’ll ever get an anime adaptation. Yes, this is the show naming itself inside itself, and it’s a fun little wink if you catch it.
The Game, the CD, and the Doorway to Another World
The next school day, the group makes plans with their friend Doc to hang out and game later. At Doc’s place, Pyontaro comes across a CD that turns out to be more than just a disc: it’s a game, and according to what they find, it’s also a link to a parallel universe. Naturally, the Small Three borrow it, intending to play it on Pyon’s console at home.
On the walk back, they cross paths with the singing girl from earlier again, but this time she’s irritated and takes off before they can say much. Back home, Futaba’s already waiting, excited for her brother to arrive. Their mom steps out to run errands, leaving Futaba under Pyon’s watch, a small detail that ends up mattering a lot by the end of the episode.
While at home, a parcel shows up containing an NSFW CD, which the boys just shrug off and ignore in favor of firing up the game they borrowed from Doc. They’re floored by how good the graphics look. Right as Pyon leans in to inspect the game further, the doorbell interrupts everything. As the trio heads for the door, Futaba notices a dragonfly flying straight out of the game screen. Curious and delighted, she follows it and steps directly into the game world through the television.
Futaba Vanishes, and the Small Three Follow Her In
Inside the game, Futaba and her dog show up looking like manga characters, and everyone there is caught completely off guard by her arrival. A towering, green-skinned alien scans her, while enormous tanks hover somewhere up in the sky above. It’s a genuinely disorienting shift in visual language from the slice-of-life opening, and it works.
Back in the real world, Pyontaro realizes it’s gone quiet, too quiet, and goes to check on Futaba. She’s nowhere to be found. Leaves start drifting into the room from the game itself, and we cut to Futaba being grabbed by robotic creatures inside the parallel world. The robots read her as a threat and turn on her.
Hearing the commotion, the Small Three figure out they can physically enter the game world themselves, and they dive in after her. Pyontaro charges straight at one of the tanks, which opens fire on his friends in response. The creatures, apparently rattled by his aggression, throw him off the tank entirely. He slams into the ground hard but somehow walks away unhurt, left wondering why none of this feels real. As Pyontaro breaks down crying over losing his sister, one of his friends refuses to give up, insisting they can still save her.
The end credits tease what’s coming: Futaba and her dog watching the Small Three battle unknown forces inside the parallel world, alongside quick glimpses of a few new characters who haven’t been introduced yet.
The Episode Review: A Rough Start With Real Potential
I’ll be honest, the first episode of Thunder 3 threw me off a bit at the start. The pacing feels disjointed, jumping between crude teenage humor and a sudden sci-fi abduction plot without much of a bridge between the two. But I think that disjointedness is actually the point. This is a show that wants you to feel the whiplash of ordinary life getting hijacked by something completely outside its own logic.
Pyontaro and his friends operate with what I’d call a very narrow bandwidth of interests: women, sex, and video games, pretty much in that order. It’s not subtle, and it’s not meant to be. Futaba, on the other hand, is still working through basic speech development, unable to fully pronounce her Rs yet, which makes her simultaneously endearing and, according to her brother, exhausting to be around. But the moment she disappears, Pyontaro’s irritation collapses into genuine grief. That shift says something real about sibling dynamics, the way affection can hide underneath annoyance until it’s suddenly, painfully gone.
For a premiere, “Small Three” does its job. The setup is messy in places, but the parallel-world hook lands, and I’m genuinely curious to see where the Small Three go from here now that they’re stuck fighting to get Futaba back.
Next: Thunder 3 Episode 2
