Putting Christmas lights on that dead horse.
What They Say:
Team Jiraiya, Shikamaru, and his Leaf teammates are lured into a mysterious village during their battle. A couple children from the village get caught in the crossfire and fall into a cave-in. Yahiko’s team rushes to the rescue, but Shikamaru doesn’t budge. Meanwhile, Naruto and Neji’s teams rendezvous, but a mysterious voice addresses them out of nowhere!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
It’s not often that I feel stupid for watching something. Naruto: Shippuden causes this to happen a couple of times a year when it delves into these kinds of episodes. It’s one thing to kind of grind through it with a DVD set or something, but the weekly torture just makes it all the more regular and problematic. With a few episodes now already dealing with the story in the book within the dream, we get another push here. The problem with it, beyond the obvious, is that it’s shifting among so many characters so that you don’t really have anything to latch onto in particular. Especially if you’ve really outgrown these “younger” characters and their antics here. There’s certainly a difference between present day Naruto and his younger self and this is evident even in a dream timeline where his parents lived and raised him.
This episode pretty much floats by for most of it where we get the various fights that are going on and seeing the Team doing what it can to figure it all out, but it also dabbles into the dream world a bit with the vision that the team sees, even though they don’t understand it. It makes for an interesting moment or two as Naruto and Neji leap fully into it in order to save those that are in it, but again, it’s a problem of interpretation. What we’re watching is a story being read in a book inside of a forced dream by Madara and his Tsukiyomi. Why, why, am I supposed to take any of this seriously or with any importance to the main story? Because even if they do tie it into it in some way, it’s just going to be incredibly forced and problematic. Well, if you’re looking for logic in the Naruto series…
In Summary:
When the sea monster showed up towards the end, I thought it was a shark at first and completely symbolic of how the show jumps said shark in these awful episodes. It’s not a shark but the idea is the same. After sitting through the episode I keep coming back to the simple fact that there’s really very, very, very little to truly be said about it. While there’s a hint of something, the logic of it simply doesn’t make sense and I’m left wondering why because of the core context of this particular ongoing filler arc. But there I go again, looking for logic in the Naruto series – and the anime original episodes at that.
Grade: D
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.
Truthfully this filler we’re getting is ridiculously unnecessary and just there for them to make more money. A few of the first episodes were pretty decent, but this “arc” we’re in now is just outrageous to the point where I’m not even watching it.
There are times where I get why they do the filler arcs, others are obvious padding moments. This one is just insulting though. As you said, the first couple weren’t horrible and the potential for some fun is there. but the whole story within a book within a dream just takes it to a whole other level, especially since you know it’s utterly pointless.
Exactly, the fact we’re getting a filler arc inside a dream world that has no effect on the story whatsoever just screams desperation to keep a series that ended in the manga a year ago going as long as possible.