Killer Bee makes his debut, but not until Orochimaru cosplays.
What They Say:
Lee’s team gets to play the ogres for the annual Setsubun festival, but Orochimaru schemes to ruin the fun. When they hear the Raikage is being targeted by criminals Lee and his friends have to team up with Killer Bee to protect the Hidden Cloud!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The more we see of him, the more Orochimaru reminds me of the various villains behind a lot of the Scooy-Doo mysteries from years past. He’s got some good ideas, amusing execution and is easily caught out with what he’s doing. Yet unlike those creepy old guys that were often behind the mysteries, Orochimaru is adorable. And that proves to be his saving grace as you really want to see what he’s up to, how he reacts to it and the way that Kabuto often has to deal with the fallout from it. The pairing of the two works well, though I still think when Kabuto stands alone, he doesn’t come across as well.
The plan this time around is certainly amusing as Orochimaru rigs the Setsubun game that determines who will be the oni so that Lee and his team will do it, complete with tiger strip bikinis. The goal is to get them to be tuckered out from running away from everyone and then taking them down a lot more easily. Especially since the mask he made for Lee is designed not to come off. With the trio being hunted down by people in the village and Orochimaru coming up with his own plan to try and trick and beat them, it just gets comically stupid in a great way. Orochimaru’s costume reminded me of Tigger from Winnie the Pooh combined with Hobbes from Calvin & Hobbes. With lots of silliness in general, and some nude scenes involving Lee, it’s just all over the place yet made me laugh regularly.
With the second half, the show shifts gears completely and rings in someone that I can’t recall seeing in the series before, thankfully, with Killer Bee making his rap debut. And naturally Guy and Lee are completely on board with his style. The main focus is that the team is there to help the Raikage, who is being targeted, and they’re to work with Killer bee. With a few adults in the mix here, if you can consider Bee to be one of them, we also get a few from Hidden Cloud in general and it’s just good, silly fun, especially since Bee does a transformation which just makes his form look even more comical. It’s simple and doesn’t really work the main plot, but it’s just fun to watch how everyone interacts and the overdone nature of the characters, which is kind of scary when it comes to Bee.
In Summary:
While the show can certainly be uneven at times, and it doesn’t quite have the level of fun it did at the very start when it was fresh and new, this was certainly a fun episode to watch. The bean throwing aspect of the first half was certainly amusing with the costumes involved and only made all the more fun when Orochimaru debuted his special costume to lure the gang into a trap. On the other half, we get Killer Bee and Hidden Cloud brought in so that means a decent level of rapping going on and the introduction of several characters from that village, including having Bee do a transformation sequence that was just adorable, making you want him in that form as a plushie. This show continues to expand into other aspects of the main franchise and it definitely works and helps to make it all the more fun.
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.
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