Double the episode, double the flashback, double the frustration.
What They Say:
The Ino-Shika-Cho trio is ordered by Shikaku to take down the reanimated Asuma. Remembering Asuma’s final words, Shikamaru and Ino are determined to stop their former teacher.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With Naruto: Shippuden having been doing things that obviously don’t work well recently, there’s been some hope placed on this double episode airing to get things back on track. After a skip week and then spending some time with an utterly pointless flashback episode, the war has felt pretty secondary lately even as we get little known supporting characters taking on bigger roles. Often this can work in giving someone who is much loved but gets little time a chance to shine, but it’s focused on such small characters from quite some time ago that it’s mostly been the die-hard fans that even recognize who some of them hare. Add that in with most of what we’ve seen being the white skinned cannon fodder on the enemy side and it’s lacked any real intensity or excitement to make what should be a standout series of events interesting.
Sadly, even though we get some good time with more well known characters like Choji and Ino as they take the fight out strong against the resurrected members from their past, we also get a lot of flashbacks to when they were all teacher/student and comrades in arms. Others are brought in as well for a time but a good chunk of the two episodes, what feels like probably half of the total run time overall, is given over to this kind of flashback. They’re useful in the sense that it hepls remind us about the connections, gives it a chance to be reanimated if necessary, and highlights the connections in a clearer way for those that may not remember everything or missed episodes along the way. But it also just slows things down heavily in the end and that gets to be a real burn at times.
While this material constitutes its fair share of time, we also get a lot of time spent with the core group that’s at the center of things here with Choji, Ino and Shikamaru. But in the end, it’s really all about Choji as he struggle sin the fight for a variety of reasons. He’s often been cast as one of the least liked characters and an arc like this won’t help him since he’s not keeping up, struggling to fight as a team and just having problems getting things done against their opponent. There are problems in his past that are touched upon as to why he’s having such a problem and we even get a little bit of time with his father in the mix.
In Summary:
While the two part story has some decent moments when it comes to the action as the primary trio get their fight underway, it pales compared to what the show spends most of its time doing. Flashbacks. There are useful moments here that instruct why Choji is acting as he does, but you know what? There are 500 episodes prior to this in the franchise. It’s been covered there before in different forms. And if it hasn’t been made as clear as this, then the writers have failed. While I was thoroughly engaged in much of the arc with Pain and its build up to action, Nrauto: Shippuden has dropped the ball – nay, it’s thrown the ball hard – and is just doing what it can to stretch it out to its breaking point. It’s working with the source material it has, but the adaptation and execution of it is simply not working and it’s reaffirming my belief that there is a whole generation of writers out there that no longer understand who to write engaging action series without these kinds of slowdowns. None of this material belonged here as it should have been covered long before the fight.
Grade: C-
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.
