The focus turns to a younger Tenten as she does her best to be more like Tsunade.
What They Say:
Tenten is helping out Lee’s training to enhance his Eight Inner Gates.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Looking back at some of the pasts of the characters isn’t a bad thing, though you have to wonder just how much of those pasts have been mined so far. With so much time spent on Naruto’s past in so many of the filler episodes, others get caught up in it as well. There’s been a lot of focus at times on the very young Naruto, but this episode just goes back a few years and doesn’t involve Naruto at all. Which isn’t a bad thing to do of course. This one goes back to the group working under Guy for training and more specifically on Tenten and Lee. With Tenten idolizing Tsunade so much at this point, it’s all about her wanting to better herself so she can become like her some day.
Which has a great little montage sequence where after Guy tells her to emulate her more, she goes off and tries to drink and gamble. And she of course gets booted out of both places by telling her she’s both too young and not busty enough to be Tsunade. That’s not the bulk of the episode though, but it was the one moment that actually made me smile and laugh a little. Because much of the first half of the episode just focuses on the various martial arts training and how goofy Lee is at this point, which is before he changed his appearance to be more like Guy. Tenten wants to help him out as he struggles but she’s facing her own struggles as well. It’s a decent little episode that focuses on the simple struggles that the supporting cast have had, but that’s about the extent of it. A little time for Tenten isn’t a bad thing either.
In Summary:
Compared to other flashback style episodes that we’ve gotten over the last couple of months, this is one that worked fairly well for me even though it’s rather light with real meat to it. The characters involved aren’t overacting for the most part (Lee is Lee, it’s not overacting, it’s who he is) and the focus is mostly on Tenten with some guidance from Guy about what to do to become who she wants to be. It’s a pleasant episode and certainly not offensive like some others have been to our intelligence or ability to handle the fillers, but it’s also not a top rate piece. More of these would be preferred though, especially in comparison to the Naruto Nautical misadventures.
Grade: B-
Readers Rating: [ratings]
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.
News: Filler go on until at least the end of 2011, but it will focus Sai, Guy, Kiba and other characters