What They Say:
Naruto arrives to help a team of Allied Shinobi Forces led by Karui, who are struggling against a reanimated samurai. Naruto recognizes the samurai as Tatewaki, a man he met during a past mission.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
As the side stories continue, Naruto: Shippuden brings us into contact with an older character that hasn’t been seen before named Tatewaki. Which makes sense, considering he was dead and never introduced in the main series and now he’s been reanimated by Kabuto and is under his control. It’s something that’s naturally difficult for him to deal with as he doesn’t want to be using his abilities to fight people, and coming across Naruto only reinforces that because of the connection they have in the past. Which means… you guessed it – a flashback! Taking us back to the time when Naruto was much younger and far more wide-eyed than we’re used to now, we get him in his classic outfit as Tsunade is setting him and a group of young shinobi on an A-rank mission that must be done. The difference between the two Naruto’s continues to be pretty blunt, so there’s at least some consistency there and some fun in going back to his younger self for a bit.
This mission has him and the other trio that he’s joined up with going off to deal with a young lord issue in a smaller nearby nation where there’s growing tensions arising. With the way small nations can change from time to time in how they interact with others, and the kind of power that can be introduced through some particularly cunning citizen that may be there, can make them unpredictable to be sure. But it also doesn’t help that the Akatsuki are working behind the scenes, something that we saw regularly over the years, in how they can destabilize things, either through financial means or through outright war methods. Sometimes they use both in order to achieve their goals, which is what some of the missions are this time in the past as we see a group of them gathering that will collide with what Naruto and the others are dealing with.
Where the show starts to lose me more though is when we get back to Naruto’s mindset at this age, which is essentially childish, and he and Choji end up participating in a food eating competition under the watch of the lord of the small nation. Food is always a big part of the show at times but it’s also an area that just leaves me cold after so many of the filler episodes of the first series. Here, we do get to see the young lord, Shu, and come to see how Tatewaki was involved in the past as he tries to train Shu a bit only to deal with a student that’s not really adept at these things. While Naruto and his group get their message to Shu while in the midst of this particular nation that they’re visiting, we also get the ongoing “food fight” that Naruto and Choji are taking part in, which draws things out in a rather dull way.
In Summary:
With the way the show brings in characters that Naruto – or someone else – has a deep connection with in the past and then spends an episode or arc exploring that connection, it’s a practice that’s been used repeatedly over the years and it’s one that drives me to distraction. The focus here brings us into contact with Tatewaki as Naruto is on his journey in the present to end the war, but it also slings us hard into a back story arc that goes on for too long just in the first episode alone, primarily because it’s bringing me back in contact with the Naruto that I haven’t liked in years. Not that the current Naruto, running around on fire, has been all that interesting for a good while either. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this arc so far, but by going so far to the past and using food as a main feature of the episode, there’s not a lot here that has me even slightly interested.
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.
