What They Say:
Shikamaru, Neji, Choji, and Kiba succeed in defeating the Sound Ninja Four. But the enemy uses the Underworld Transfer Jutsu to trap the Leaf shinobi’s souls inside a barrier.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
After things picked up for a bit, they slowed down a bit more in the previous episode as it shifted to a quieter side story of the grand war that’s supposedly underway. Bringing in some of the supporting cast such as Shikamaru, Neji, Choji, and Kiba, we got to see them fight against the Sound Ninja Four over the course of the episode. The fighting itself was decent, though mostly predictable, as everyone did their best and worked hard to go against such troublesome opponents. But it had that whole simple side story feeling to it where you knew that it wasn’t going to do anything radical with these characters. But at its end, it pushed things a bit more with them being taken out by a partciular jutsu that was used which has emptied them of chakra, almost making them seem dead.
With the four, separated in the real world into two groups and being treated differently but with the same intent of pouring new chakra into them, there’s a good sense of danger about them as everyone works towards saving them. This gives us a nice view from the outside as most of the episode ends up focusing on the inside, where the four are now recovering from being transferred here and now have to go against the bad guys in there. With it being a seal of sorts, there’s only so much they can do, but it’s amusing that while they’re all in there, so is a certain dog. While they’re trapped in such a place they’re still able to use their various abilities and have access to some amount of chakra, though they mostly are just concerned whether they can use any at all at first rather than checking what their actual level and reserves are.
The action for the episode is fairly restrained overall as it involves lots of moments where they’re regrouping and going through dialogue exchanges as they try to figure out how to deal with the reanimated opponents that they’re facing in this otherdimensional area. When the show does hit the action, it’s pretty decent but isn’t exceptional, rather it just gets the job done and moves towards things in a predictable way as they unearth the secrets to defeating the bad guys. Providing a few nods to what’s going on in the outside world, it’s a reminder of the larger scale of things but also the personal level as well. It’s not terribly exciting but it at least tries to pretend that it’s a part of the bigger picture here and all that it entails, even if the simple Naruto time is just that. Simple.
In Summary:
Naruto: Shippuden has hit the yawn inducing phase of the storyline once again as he’s a peripheral character at best once again while others are the focus of events. And not game changing events or anything significant either, but rather just one-off fights with various reanimated ninjas that come from past episodes that are barely memorable, if at all. The show does some decent bits of action here and I like the approach used with how those outside the seal are going with different ways of achieving the same thing in trying to save the four. But mostly you could skip this episode and not miss a beat, which is pretty much the most damning problem there is about it.
Grade: B-
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.
