Would you let Lee handle the narration for, well, anything?
What They Say:
When Orochimaru’s poison leaves Guy-sensei completely bald, it’s up to Lee and the gang to find him the right wig. Our beloved narrator comes down with a bad cold, and much to Tenten and Neji’s chagrin, Lee’s his temporary replacement.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
While the series focuses heavily on Lee and his friends, it does know how to manage that delicate balance with some of the elder characters as well. Orochimaru tends to play a fair amount of time in the series overall but we also get some of the village elders making their appearances too. And these do tend to be fun since during the main series run, they’re often kept to being a bit more serious on some level, even if they’re comical. They must be afforded some level of respect in order to be the teachers an leaders that they are, even with the quirks that they have.
One of the harder ones to take seriously yet needs to be is that of Guy. With Lee looking up to him so much that he models his entire life after him, down to his appearance, it’s definitely amusing when things occur that causes Guy to lose the hair on top of his head. The bald pate is pretty amusing and that has the gang trying to come up with various wigs and other ideas to try and bring some balance to it. Amusingly, they try to come up with ways to fix this beyond the basic wig and it involves “giving life” to the hair that fell out, something that Guy takes to heart in a big way. The new wig and guy become partners of sorts and it’s just surreal and silly comedy as he names it Cuticle and works with it in the way he does his own attacks.Of course, such a relationship can’t really last long and we get some good, silly soap opera material out of it.
With the second half, it goes in a whole other direction as, while out training, the gang realizes that the narrator is coming down with a cold. In order to give him a break, Lee takes over the narration and inserts himself into every part of the show at this point, making life hell for Tenten and Neiji right from the get go. The show runs through some fun gags as it deals with multiple characters as Lee keeps trying to insert himself everyone. The average citizen hasn’t a clue what’s going on but their wide-eyed stares into the sky are positively hilarious. Lee puts them all through their paces in the end, really messing with them through his worldview, but naturally he gets his comeuppance at the end which is just priceless.
In Summary:
Rock Lee and his Ninja Pals has a pretty decent episode here as it works the two main stories. The initial one with Guy losing his hair has some potential, but it falters midway through before coming back better in the final part as it turns into a strange soap opera that made me laugh. The second half was a lot more fun as we see the narrator go on vacation and how Lee uses that to his strange little advantage to try and get everyone to either train or be on the same page as him with how he views the world. All parts of this worked quite well as it went through a lot of characters before all coming back, quite naturally, on Lee and he gets the grief he richly deserved. It’s a bit out of character in a way but the whole thing definitely makes me smile.
Grade: B
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.
