Killer Bee’s past comes back to give him a swift literal kick in the rear.
What They Say:
Kabuto reanimates Fukai to attack Killer Bee and Motoi. Fukai warns Killer Bee to escape before being taken over by Kabuto. To everyone’s surprise, Fukai releases Eight Tails’ chakra and enters Tailed Beast State.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
As the war rages on and as Kabuto reanimates more and more obscure people or those that never existed before, it’s shifted between a varying number of Hidden Leaf characters and a few others along the way. The latest one to get some screen time going up against the White Zetsu and a new enemy in particular is that of Killer Bee, who has just been joined by Motoi on orders from the Raikage in order to provide some assistance. And Killer Bee is the type that will always gladly hang around with others, whether he needs the assist or not. Motoi is one tha he gets along well with though and doesn’t take it as an insult that his father sent someone since they are in the middle of a war and people getting picked off individually is obviously a reality.
What Killer Bee gets to go up against is the former Juchinriki for the Eight Tails, which surprises both him and Motoi but also the Eight-Tails himself when he sees Fukai reanimated and ready for battle. This brings us a touch of background on what happened when Fukai lost his life and the things that surrounded that incident, much of which even Eight-Tails doesn’t seem to remember. The back story for Fukai is obviously thrown in a lot here and we get some decent bits just in the prologue sequence about how he and the Raikage struggled over the knowledge that Killer bee would be the one to take on the role after he dies and the kind of things that happen to those that do, the kind of outcast nature that they generally end up with.
The show has some good if kind of weird things to do in the present with how Fukai is still connected to Eight-Tails in a way and has some of his chakra, allowing for the two beasts to go at it in a kind of weird dance/battle. That makes for some decent bits as it goes on, but as is usual in these kinds of episodes, the majority of it takes place in the past where we see how Killer Bee and Fukai were years ago when he was much younger. The two obviously have a bond and it’s well played, showing the understanding that Fukai has of Killer Bee in general and what’s coming up in his life when it comes to Eight-Tails. It’s a decent bit of back story and thankfully Killer Bee doesn’t come across as badly here as he can, though there are moments where I’ll admit to wanting to smack him and his rapping.
In Summary:
Obviously there’s a whole lot of people griping about the endless filler, myself included, but we’ve had two weeks of at least decent episodes here. This one wins out more so simply because it doesn’t include any young Naruto material, which always drives me bonkers. Focusing on Killer Bee isn’t a bad thing overall, though I can take him only in small doses, and even that focus is more along the edges as it works with his father and Fukai more, giving us some insights into how that clan worked and what it was working through prior to Killer Bee taking on the Eight-Tails himself. Fukai doesn’t have an expansive personality here, past or present, but the show does some decent fill in the gap material that doesn’t work to overfill areas we’ve already seen endless filler material for.
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.