Well, that ended quickly!
What They Say:
“Itachi’s Story – Light and Darkness: Truth”
Itachi confronts Sasuke, who for years bore the shame and anger that Itachi brought upon their clan. The truth behind Itachi’s story comes to light. Back on the battlefield of the Fourth Great Ninja War, Naruto and the others fight Madara, and just as he is declaring his victory, something unexpected occurs…
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Naruto: Shippuden has done fairly well with Itachi’s arc as it worked the material from the light novel. We had a few lead-in points from time to time to highlight what’s going on in the present day and using that as a narrative to get this tale told works well enough, particularly since it’s been so much more engaging than the crap that’s been shoveled our way for the past year. I’ve said before that the dream time arc is something that could have been a fantastic use to give minor characters their big episode before the series finishes out, but they instead went for the tried and true garbage, particularly the story in a book within a dream that just doubled down on how insulting it was.
So that made adapting the light novel story more interesting even if we did get the familiar angle to things for the most part, telling a tale we knew most of in the main story beats. As it finishes out here with Itachi’s move on Naruto and his encounter with Sasuke at that time, bringing the hate from young Sasuke to the surface easily, it reminds me again just how much I actually liked the Akatsuki material here and kind of wished we’d get an entire run of manga or anime focused on them from the start in chronological order. There’s a lot to like early on with this encounter, even with Jiraiya back after his inclusion in that last awful main arc, as it shows us the formative material once again but with just enough additional context here to raise it up a little more. Not much, to be honest, but enough.
The show shifts surprisingly quickly back to the present here, however, and it’s jarring after so long as I really expected the Itachi arc to take up the full episode. Providing closure for Sasuke through Itachi is well done here and you can see the way things shift for him ever so slightly, reinforcing his position but with a little bit more context so that he’s likely not as hard with others. This portion is more about getting things in place than actual action, though we do get some, and an interesting twist as Obito makes his play to take out Madara just as we get the nod about his mother, Kaguya, and new truths about the past. Everything starts shifting into a real end of the world mode here in an interesting way but damn if going so long without this storyline really does undercut the importance of it all. I’m not in favor of more filler but it really feels like they needed to get us back into the groove of this fight before really hitting it.
In Summary:
The Itachi arc comes to what feels like an abbreviated close with this episode as it dovetails into events in the present day. The narrative shift is hugely jarring, though I suspect most people will overlook it just to get back into the meat of the story and what it represents. It’s definitely interesting here but I’ll admit that mentally I was figuring the bulk of the episode would be Itachi and an endpiece shifting us back to the present, so I felt very disjointed throughout much of the show here. It’s definitely good to be back on track where there are changes that have meaning and impact at play, though where it’ll go at the moment isn’t quite certain (unless you’ve read the manga).
Grade: B+
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
