Naruto versus Naruto – Fight!
What They Say:
Naruto and the others encounter a thief who claims that he is Naruto Uzumaki of the Hidden Leaf. The real Naruto easily takes care of the imposter and hands him over to a ninja who was after the thief.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With what should only be a few more episodes worth of filler to go, Naruto Shippuden at least gets off the damn boat here and puts the group that’s protecting Naruto into the woods again. That keeps them moving in a different way than they have been and also, thank goodness, gets us past the whole Guy is puking gag that has been making us gag for the whole arc. Where this episode goes though does have its layer of amusement to it, but in the end it is another basic filler episode that in turn places less focus on Naruto and instead on new, pointless and empty characters.
Hurray for lazy writing.
With the group flitting through the forest, they end up coming across an oversized and powerful looking bandit who actually introduces himself as Naruto and intends to crush them. He’s even got the headband, in reverse, to prove it. That just strikes everyone as hilarious, except for Naruto of course who is thoroughly offended, and can’t believe his eyes. He’s able to take care of it all in short order and hand him off to someone that claims to be the authorities in the area, but it’s all part of a larger scam the two were playing there in order to build up their reputation. That capture in turn becomes something more problematic as they try to run the scam again and it forces them to ask for help from the real Naruto. There is an attempt to bring some real emotion and connection in between the newly introduced characters, but let’s be honest here. The chances of ever seeing them again outside of this episode or filler arc is pretty much zero. So it begs the question of, why care?
In Summary:
Make it stop. That’s all that I keep thinking. I will say that unlike some of the filler episodes we’ve had in this run and past runs, this one isn’t bad per se. it’s just pointless. And the Naruto franchise and other long running series tend to do this, some more than others. This one is another self contained piece that is simply there. It has its moments, but the knowledge that it’s all meaningless and empty undercuts it completely. It does have some cute moments, especially the first couple of minutes, but you can turn it off after that and be perfectly fine. And that’s actually a recommendation.
Grade: C
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
