When Guy is put in charge, the village will never be the same.
What They Say:
When Tsunade leaves on a diplomatic mission to a neighboring village, she leaves the only shinobi who wasn’t busy in charge – Guy. Team Guy is assigned to go on patrol with Shikamaru’s team, and the genius ninja hopes to pick the lease troublesome route.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With some rather good fun in the previous episode that had Orochimaru, or Orochy as he wanted to be called, trying to find a more normal and peaceful life, events here shift in a different direction. With the ability to change things up easily and with no real impact, there’s definitely some fun to be had in moving the characters around outside of their normal environment. Such as setting Guy up as the new Hokage while Tsunade and some of the ladies are off on a “mission” of their own for awhile. And it’s also convenient that most of the other senior members are gone as well as they certainly wouldn’t either want the job or want to be around while Guy is on the job.
Calling himself the Guykage, he’s taken heavily to the role and even had Yamato drawn into it by having him change all the head carvings on the mountain to look like him. Of course, things are going to be more complicated than Guykage thought they would be and it just spirals from there as he ends up getting personally involved in so many different small aspects of life in the village. Even changing all the uniforms of the shinobi to match his, which is actually quite amusing. Naturally, the more that Guykage gets involved, the more contention comes into play and it ends up with a bit of a revolt among many of the shinobi. At least until they realize that the things Guykage did actually works for them, at least maybe as a placebo, and they’re all super intense. Which is comically scary.
With the second half, things shift gears as is the norm to having Team Guy meet up with Shikamaru’s team for a mission that requires a decent journey. Of course, each team has their own preferred way of getting there, so there’s some natural conflict from that alone, never mind overemphasizing Shikamaru’s personality quirks. While they think they’re on the safest path overall, they end up meeting a lot of friends and others along the way for short gag moments, from sheering sheep to seeing Naruto and his group. It has some small smiles here and there, but nothing that really motivates all that much. While there is a larger point to what’s going on, it’s the kind of thing that’s done weakly and without strong humor to make it engaging to watch. It’s not bad, but it’s certainly weak.
In Summary:
Rock Lee and His Ninja Pals has a strong first half that lets us see Guy at his best when he takes over as the Hokage and institutes all sorts of policies that drives everyone nuts while Tsunade is away. The changes are amusing and implemented quickly which makes for some head spinning moments to be sure. The show does some good stuff here and just has fun with it. The same can’t quite be said for the second half, though it is working a particular angle as the two teams are on a mission and we know Shikamaru must have a bigger plan in mind considering his nature. The humor is alright at best here with some cute moments but that pretty much sums it up more than anything else as little is really memorable.
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.
