VIZ Media's volume 26, published on 15 September, is the second-to-last volume of the English edition. The Japanese serialisation ended in September 2025, and the final volume 27 followed on 19 December that year. In volume 26 the decisive battle between the Earth Federation and the Nanyang Alliance turns chaotic, and Anaheim Electronics, backed by a fleet of Big Zam mobile armours, declares itself a new nation called Titans.
The setting is Universal Century 0079, the same year as the original Mobile Suit Gundam. Side 3 has declared itself the Principality of Zeon and gone to war with the Earth Federation, and a year on the two sides are fighting for the Thunderbolt Sector, a stretch of space littered with the wreckage of destroyed colonies.
Two pilots enter that battlefield: Daryl Lorenz, a Zeon sniper, and Io Fleming, a Federation ace. VIZ's blurb for volume 1 says their rivalry can end only when one of them is destroyed. On the Federation side the fight is led by the Moore Brotherhood, out to retake its home colony; on the Zeon side it is an experimental sniper unit made up of soldiers who lost limbs in the war.
What separates the two men is not only their uniform. Io listens to jazz and Daryl to oldies. Naruyoshi Kikuchi, the jazz musician who scored the anime, felt the familiar songs the original author had in mind were too gentle for the fighting, so he kept Daryl's oldies and proposed free jazz, with its violent streak, for Io.
The anime began as four episodes streamed from December 2015. A theatrical cut with new footage, DECEMBER SKY, opened in Japan on 25 June 2016, directed and written by Kou Matsuo and produced by Sunrise. The follow-up, BANDIT FLOWER, moves the fight to earth eight months after the war, against the Nanyang Alliance.
Ohtagaki had been drawing the science-fiction series MOONLIGHT MILE in the same magazine since 2000. He paused it in 2011 to start Thunderbolt and picked up part three on pixiv in December 2021, ten years later. In Korea, Jaemijuui published volume 1 on 30 May 2014.
The Thunderbolt Gundam of the title only appeared in the final chapter in September 2025. The limited edition of volume 27, out on 19 December, came with a 96-page design book for it, HOW TO BUILD THUNDERBOLT GUNDAM.
