Tales of the past can be useful and this look at a young Bee is definitely important.
What They Say:
Motoi warns Naruto that he is not yet ready to enter training to control the Tailed Beast. Undaunted, Naruto asks Motoi to tell him more about Killer Bee.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Naruto’s arrival to where Killer Bee is taking what he considers a vacation has lead him to now trying to understand more about his own Tailed Beast. Discovering that Bee has been able to master his own through a curious bit of training applied on this very island has him wanting to get that information out of him, but as we’ve seen it’s something that Bee doesn’t even want to discuss for a variety of reasons. As can be easily imagined, it’s something that each of those like Naruto have to learn and master on their own. But there are hints of ways to do it, which has Naruto trying to understand the training method himself by going out and about to the island where he knows Bee did a lot of his training, particularly at the Waterfall of Truth.
What this episode becomes is a bit of an infodump in a way as it has Bee’s trusted aid, Motoi, revealing things about Bee’s past. Because of how Bee and Naruto get along and their connection as Jinchuriki’s, he reveals some of what happened years ago when the Eight Tailed beast was attempted to be sealed and captured by the Raikage of the time. Having the beast out and about definitely makes for an interesting view of it since it’s so massive and the ninjas of the village do their best to take it down. Unlike Naruto’s, which tends to be rather fiery, this one has the whole massive bull thing going on with the face, horns and the heavy physical nature of it. While we’ve seen how Naruto’s was dealt with, there’s something really interesting about how they go about it here and sealed him in the urn at that time.
With the story focusing on the past and a young Motoi who has his first real meeting with Bee at that time when he was young as well, it works in good fashion to show the dark and angry Motoi who has lost his father dealing with a young man who was and still is living life in his own way. With the village aligned against him in so many ways, he still kept to his own way and that impacted Motoi in a lot of ways even as Bee was ostracized but kept on smiling for the most part. It’s a good bit of history for us on Bee but it also works well to show that Naruto wasn’t alone in the kind of life he had growing up since he was on the outside as well. Where Naruto worked hard to be a bother and try to make friends through agitation, Bee just went about life in his own way and left it at that until people came around when the stakes changed.
In Summary:
Naruto does some decent history material here by giving us a look at the situation Bee found himself in as a child, back when the Eight Tails was sealed but before his own mastery of it. It’s an important tale for Naruto to understand since it is a slightly skewed reflection of his own childhood and the adversity that he faced. The episode is light on action overall but the sealing material at the start is pretty good and there’s a bit of fun action at the end that you kind of just have to laugh about. The core of it though with Motoi telling his tale and expressing his difficulties and the way he came around to truly respecting Bee is well done and helps to flesh him out as well as Bee, which will be important going forward.
Grade: B
Readers Rating: [ratings]
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.
