Tsunade’s halfway through the book. Let’s hope that’s not indicative.
What They Say:
Naruto joins up with the rest of his comrades, and together they overcome the puppet attack. The masked man witnesses this and is convinced there is a future for the young shinobi. He promises to release the kidnapped jonin and begins to explain the truth, and the situation behind his motives.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The prologue piece for this episode gives us a little time with Tsunade reading the story again and talking a touch about what’s going on in it. The scary part is that by looking at how far into the book she is you get that sense that we’re at that stage of the filler arc story itself. With fourteen anime-original episodes in a row now involving the dream state, and a good chunk of them this story in a book within the dream, it’s certainly bringing folks to certain positions. The more vocal side tend to be like me in just expressing frustration over it and wanting to get back to the main story that’s been completed in manga form while also wondering how much is just time wasting until the post-series can be setup. The other side are those that enjoy the tales of youth no matter how inconsequential they may be and seeing it as a chance to revisit characters as we once knew them – even if it’s an alternate timeline skewed within a dream.
With a lot of things going on in this episode in general, playing to the storyline that’s been utterly uninteresting so far, things are at least coming together a bit more as Naruto and everyone else is finally back together. There’s plenty of threat and promises made from those that have kidnapped numerous jonin so far and we get plenty of intensity from Naruto and the others in following through with what’s needed to get them back. It’s a boggling sequence when it hits in its own way simply because Naruto rushes off into the building to rescue Kakashi, Guy, and the others without a plan. Yes, he’s young, but he’s so utterly stupid here that you just want to smack him. I get that they want to just move on to the next plot point but it’s handled so poorly by Naruto that you really do wonder how he manages to survive into the future.
There’s a lot going on as it plays to some of the events in the main series and while some of it is mildly interesting, I still can’t get past the whole concept of how pointless the story is. Yes, lots of filler stories are pointless, but this one is even more so in what it’s trying to do in telling such a large and expansive story and presenting it as something within the book in a dream. Part of me hopes that this finds some way to be really useful when they get past this phase of the show, but experience has taught me otherwise when it comes to the Naruto property. And I just can’t see anything useful about this, even in terms of revisiting these characters when they were younger since it’s not anything that actually happened.
In Summary:
Awful show remains awful. Next week is more anime original work. Proceed with caution.
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.
