The birth of Naruto leads to a whole lot of destruction and chaos.
What They Say:
Minato is forced to use his Flying Raijin jutsu and leave his wife Kushina behind to save their newborn son, Naruto, from a masked assailant.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Ah, baby Naruto. There’s plenty to jokes to make as he’s born crying and screaming as most infants do, but the show has done a good job at this point to help out Minato and Kushina’s past that having this moment is a good thing considering the trouble and difficulty they went through to bring the birth to reality. While I admit that I’d like to get a bit more time with the pair of them when they were younger and in the academy, seeing them as new parents and in a good relationship is quite welcome since it paints the picture that even Naruto should be able to achieve this some day. Of course, the birth of Naruto was also a very troubled time as we see how just after the birth, a mystery man in a mask arrived and attempted to kill the Hokage’s new son.
Forcing Minato into the situation of dealing with the newborn son and securing him and dealing with his wife, who is incredibly weak and has had the Nine-Tails yanked out of her, it says a lot about him as he handles it as well as he does. Serious, not overly emotional, but feeling the motivation in him that you’d expect based on what he sees before him. The near yanki nature of him as he gets into the right mode to deal with what’s happened is spot on, though it’s a difficult series of events to watch unfold considering nobody else is aware of what’s going on and aren’t able to help. Minato ends up a bit too isolated because of all of this and it just feels off in that regard.
So when Nine-Tails does attack the village, it’s a great sequence as everyone is caught unawares. It’s big, intense and the animation for his attack at first is really well done as it has a great sense of style about it. Taking that with the combination of younger versions of the main cast of adults now gives it a good flow, especially as they realize just how big of a problem this is. While the personal side is lost in the fight for a bit because of the scale of what Nine-Tails does, it all goes back to those things from the very start of the Naruto property itself, showing how the unleashed beast nearly destroyed the village and the sacrifices that went into play in order to save them all from the Hokage and all the ninja that live in there. Getting the additional context of Minato’s mindset and position changes the view of it rather dramatically and even has you wanting to go back to the very beginning to see if it changes perceptions of it.
In Summary:
Naruto: Shippuden has a very strong episode here, which is expected and required at this stage of the story as it deals with the key momeny in the past that really defined things for the Village of the Hidden Leaf for so long. The exploration of Nine-Tails and the parents of Naruto is a huge piece of the puzzle at this point as Naruto works to conquer the creature himself in the present. Context is key and the writers and animators here have delivered a near pitch perfect episode that covers an area that needed to be treated just right. With his parents never really being dealt with in all that much detail, more abstract than anything else, these are wonderful episodes of flashback that helps to further define and build things for the foundation while being instrumental to the present and where the series is going. This is what the series needs more of in general, but when they do work with it, they knock it out of the park like this.
Grade: A
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.
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