Thunderbolt 2 abandons the kinetic chaos of season one and instead watches a broken pilot come apart on solid ground, where there are no explosions to hide behind. The animation still moves like nothing else in mecha anime, but now it's documenting quiet deterioration instead of aerial warfare. What makes it work is that the slowness isn't a flaw, it's the point, watching Daryl sink into a role that demands he become someone he isn't, until the cost of survival outweighs survival itself. The pacing will lose people who came for the fights. Stay for the pilot who realizes, too late, that the war already won.
The One Year War is over, but the fighting isn't. Seven months on, what is left of the Principality of Zeon regroups as the Republic of Zeon and keeps up the fight. Daryl flew the Psycho Zaku in the final stretch of the war at the Thunderbolt Sector, the battle that wiped out the fleet of the Moore Brotherhood, and has since lost that machine. He goes down to Earth and takes an intelligence post to learn about the South Seas Alliance, a military faction inside the Earth Federation. Io, who once fought him, is picked to fly the prototype Atlas Gundam and sets out for Earth as well. Across four ONA episodes, this follow-up to the first Gundam Thunderbolt season delivers sci-fi mecha action.
