What They Say:
White Zetsu’s ability to mimic people’s appearances has wrought confusion and distrust within the Allied Shinobi Forces. Naruto arrives to assist, and using his sensory powers, he identifies all the disguised White Zetsu clones, changing the tide of the battle.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The battle continues to rage on as Naruto makes his way across the carnage, which allows him at times to step in and help things along to some degree. It’s not exactly a bad ploy, especially after having him off screen for so long, but it is pretty blatant in what it’s trying to do as it pads things out. His role has been varied so far as these kinds of stories have gone on, some he’s more involved in than others where he just shows up for a minute or two, but in the end it just paints a bad picture. Bad in that he’s got a hell of a long way to go and is just taking an age to get there. But such is the life of the filler material where we get some interesting episodes here and there but are largely treated to mind numbing stories.
With the fight going as it is, where there are no real clear gains or losses at the moment, we get some amusing side stories. The latest involves the way the White Zetsu can now mimic peoples appearances, which we haven’t seen much of done before, but it’s now causing a lot of problems as people don’t know who to fight or ways past it. There are a few that try, but it comes down to Naruto swooping in and using his hyper-abilities to figure it out, basically pointing the finger at anyone that doesn’t pass the sniff test from his senses. That keeps him a bit more involved as he goes at it with everyone else, and it also brings him into contact with a few more people he hasn’t interacted with for some time, such as Hina and Sakura. But it’s all just very cursory and simple for a lot of it as it’s all about the action.
And that pretty much makes up the majority of the episode as we see a lot of different actions taking place and a growing trend of everyone coming together for the larger fight. It is good to see so many of them back together in one place again and to have Naruto taking on a stronger leading role, one that he’s actually earned after all of this time. Though he’s been the young kid for a lot of the series and we’ve had a ton of flashbacks that just reinforce that childish side, he’s grown a lot and now we’re seeing him fighting alongside everyone else that has gone through a lot of different fights and previous wars over the years and there’s a certain kind of respect that comes from some of them, such as Guy, that works nicely to show that Naruto has most assuredly earned his place.
In Summary:
A lot of this episode just left me kind of bland because, while it does advance things a bit here and there, most of it is just more mindless fighting and running around in circles. There are advances made, slowly but surely, and it’s only the final moments that help to show that the series may finally start getting back on the right track. By bringing Madara back into play, it signals that these things are going to change as the field is going to be full of much bigger players and that requires a new game plan. After so many mind numbing episodes in general, you can taste the potential that’s here now that Madara’s arrived and have to hope that it’s really not just a tease.
Grade: C+
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
I hated the end of the episode for some reason, the way everyone figured out he’s the real madara just felt abit rushed