A genre often in close association with the kaiju genre is the mech genre, and indeed it’s common for a kaiju setting to have at least one titan hunting mech. Passion Republic Games felt the same when making Gigabash, and so they made Thundatross!
Thundatross is the tank of the roster, being super slow but hitting hard and most of his attacks have superarmor. He also has one move to close distance and a long range move. Skilled Thundatross players are the bane of my existence.
Design
Thundatross takes pretty heavy inspiration from mecha anime, so things like Getter Robo, Megazord, Big O and whatnot.
The primary reference is apparently Mazinger Z.
Unfortunately I can’t really find any concept art of Thundatross, just these snippets from their “behind the scenes” video.
As a personal aside, the only thing I really dislike about the design is the simple ball joints. Over six months of playing nothing but Armored Core 6 has spoiled me. But aside from that I’m a huge fan of Thundatross’s design.
Lore
Thundatross is the long term project of OtamaTEC, a megacorperation that began as a start up in 1991 by scientific genius and entrepreneur Dr. Otama Kazuo and later aided by Dr. Reiner (mentioned in Pipijuras’s overview) who eventually became second in command. The company was founded on the idea of the Gigatron Reactor I mentioned in Woolley’s overview, and their main goal is Giga Energy research and anti-kaiju defense, which resulted in many deals with the Global Titan Defense Initiative, primarily in Titan Containment Energy Barriers. The same barriers in the first level of Gorogong’s story! Despite this, a big source of the company’s income actually comes from the numerous high quality household electronics and computer parts they manufacture.
Their various findings on Giga Energy are covered in Thundatross’s profile documents, which also show that the project that created Thundatross is called the Tactical Reactor-Operated Security System.
Giga Energy can be free flowing; just hanging around in the air. But it can also come in a solid form, or at least be contained in a solid object: Giga Crystals. Giga Crystals are so densely packed with mass and energy that one that can fit in the palm of your hand can weigh up to 30 pounds and provide more energy than a full sized nuclear reactor. Giga Energy can also alter the atomic bonds and chemical structures of objects, and has very noticeable effects on organic life. A half eaten pear regrew some of its eaten parts and grew in size after a few hours of exposure to a Giga Crystal, but this seems to not be consistent as this doesn’t happen to any humans. It’s almost like Giga Energy is selective. It’s also hypothesized that the kaiju in Gigabash’s world use this process to transform into an S-class.
At some point during this time Dr. Otama Kazuo would get married to a woman named Megumi, and almost 2 decades after would have a kid: a boy named Yuuki. But by 2013 it seems like Megumi died somehow.
As Dr. Reiner helped with project T.R.O.S.S. things went along exceptionally well, and the mech outperformed initial expectations. Its system power output alone outperformed initial estimates by 543.85%, which just goes to show how powerful Giga Energy can be. However, as this project neared fruition, Kazuo began to grow worried. He was essentially creating a superweapon, and if someone were to use it for evil then the results could be disastrous. Another concern was Dr. Reiner, who was hellbent on destroying all kaiju and wanted to sell the blueprints to the GTDI even though they were too corrupt to use them responsibly.
Ultimately Kazuo installed an AI and security and identification system to the mech, and after troubling himself for years on how to find a pilot who could use Thundatross responsibly, he ultimately decided that he and any descendants should be the ones to pilot the machine, and so the mech will not start unless he or a descent is in the cockpit. He also had Yuuki name the mech Thundatross as a bit of family bonding. He really does try to be a good dad.
Dr. Otama Kazuo would never get to pilot Thundatross however. In the beginning of Thundatross’s story mode, which begins in the hell year of 2020, right after the completion of Thundatross, Rohanna would attack the Kimura district. The place of OtamaTEC HQ. Falling debris would fall onto Kazuo and paralyze him from the waist down, so Yuuki ended up taking the mantle. And for an entire year afterward this would actually go quite well! Yuuki is a good kid, if a bit impatient at times, so he was perfectly happy to lend a helping hand.
Without Kazuo to run the company, Dr. Reiner took charge, and he took advantage of this. He secretly constructed a second Thundatross and kept the second half of Pipijuras’s teleporter. When Yuuki retrieves Gorogong’s giant Giga Crystal that OtamaTEC commissioned the GTDI to retrieve with the help of Gigaman (who I’ll eventually cover), he hooks it up to the teleporter and opens up a portal to the hollow earth. He then gets into his “Unit 02” and goes through. However, Dr. Reiner wasn’t able to build his mech without Kazuo’s security system, so to get around this he basically kidnaps Yuuki’s dad and straps him into the cockpit.
The rest of the story mode is Yuuki and Gigaman finding a way into the hollow earth to find Reiner, stop him, and rescue Kazuo. They confront him at the Giga Core where he tells him that he plans to use both mechs to drain the Giga Core of its Giga Energy and starve all kaiju on the planet, which Gigaman points out would destabilize it and potentially blow up the planet. Dr. Reiner however, is so hellbent on kaiju elimination that he doesn’t care if he’d destroy the world, and to stop him Yuuki and Thundatross have to fight him in an epic climactic battle, with Gigaman giving Yuuki one last extra push to succeed and save his dad. The whole thing is very anime, it’s great.
Afterwards they kinda just leave Dr. Reiner in the wreck of his mech to starve to death in the hollow earth, which is kinda fucked up??
Also the devs confirmed that this story mode is the closest to a “canon” one.
In summary, Thundatross is an excellently executed anime mech with a cool story mode, and it’s a great addition to Gigabash. It also reveals many interesting things about Giga Energy.
