Thunder 3 is getting a second season in 2027. The anime’s staff announced the renewal on Thursday, one day after the first season’s finale, and Gantz creator Hiroya Oku — who wrote the manga under the pen name Yuki Ikeda — drew an illustration marking the news.
The first season aired on Fuji TV’s +Ultra block from July 8 (24:45 JST, effectively July 9 at 12:45 a.m.) and streamed worldwide exclusively on Netflix from the same day. It ran 12 episodes, with the finale airing on Wednesday.
The manga behind it
Oku launched Thunder 3 in Kodansha’s Monthly Shonen Magazine in May 2022. The series entered its climax in January 2025 and went on hiatus that March due to Oku’s health, before returning in February 2026 and ending on June 5. Kodansha published the 10th compiled volume on August 17, and Kodansha USA is releasing the series in English, with volume 8 out on February 10.
On September 24, Oku confirmed on social media that he had created Thunder 3 under the Yuki Ikeda pen name, saying the alias preserved a first-chapter surprise that the Hiroya Oku name would have spoiled. We covered that reveal in our report on why Oku hid his name on Thunder 3. He has also said he plans to retire after finishing his current manga, Kanrekihime (The Sweet Sixty Princess).
Oku is best known for Gantz, which ran from 2000 to 2013 and spawned a television anime, a CG film, two Japanese live-action films, and spinoff manga, alongside Inuyashiki and GIGANT. Thunder 3 is a different register for him — a lighter, kid-led parallel-world adventure — which is part of why the pen-name reveal landed as a surprise.
What it’s about
Kodansha USA describes the story: three ordinary schoolboys come into possession of a DVD said to open a gateway to a parallel universe. When their backs are turned, Pyontaro’s little sister Futaba passes through and is kidnapped by the aliens that have overrun that version of Earth. Discovering that their cartoonish bodies make them supermen in the hyper-realistic parallel world, the boys set out to rescue her.
Why it matters
Thunder 3 was one of the more unusual shonen adaptations of the summer: a finished, 10-volume manga given a single, tightly paced 12-episode season on Netflix worldwide, with the finale landing on the same week the second season was confirmed. That kind of immediate renewal usually points to strong completion rates, and it means the anime can keep moving through the parallel-world material while the source is still fresh.
The open questions are the ones the staff did not address: whether the same team returns, whether the second season keeps its Netflix-exclusive rollout, and which part of 2027 it targets. For context on the creator, our earlier report on Hiroya Oku’s pen-name reveal explains why a Gantz author’s name was kept off the cover.
Sources: Anime News Network, citing Fuji TV’s YouTube channel and Comic Natalie
Featured image: Key visual for the Thunder 3 anime, which has been renewed for a second season, via MyAnimeList.
