What They Say:
The fighting rages between Naruto, who stands at the vanguard of the Allied Shinobi Forces, and the team of Madara and Obito.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With an extensive amount of background material brought into the light that was serving more towards Sasuke’s story than anything else, the series gave us a lot to chew on as it showed the formation of the village. And it delved into the first Hokage and his relationship to the clans, the incidents that put a lot of this on track and provided the biggest thing to really understand with this whole series. So much of it is based on anger and issues from generations prior and how that can trap those down the line in awful, terrible circumstances that can be incredibly difficult to break free from. If at all. And with that knowledge, seeing Naruto trying to do that now as he’s out in the battlefield and pushing against Madara and Obito, you know that even as far as he’s likely to get, there will be this issue under the surface for many years to come.
While Naruto has fought with others on his side before, he now has so many going in with him, and protecting them with his aura cloak, that it has a very different feeling even if he’s doing things in a kind of simple way. There’s a rallying to all of this, something that Obito tries to push against and find a weakness in as he engages with him, and it’s good to see once again that after all the youthful years of being an outsider, everyone has finally realized that Naruto is truly one of them. But while events are moving in a pretty good way here with Naruto at the helm, it all takes a pretty dangerous turn as Madara realizes that some of the energy floating about in all of this is Hashirama’s presence. And that sets him off in a huge way, engaging Ten-Tails to begin the cataclysm that will wipe the surface clean. The scale of events has been big for awhile, but now it’s taking on an even more intense feeling.
Events take a bit of a quiet recovery mode here with the battle being fought and with that happening, we get a few side stories surfacing a bit that are decent but at the same time feels like the narrative is thrown off a bit. Going back to more stories from the past with a younger Kakashi and Rin out in the field on a mission is something that, while I’m sure is connecting to the story in the present well enough, once again sucks all the energy out of the events in the present. When we get that parallel as Kakashi attacks Obito and puts the same kind of hole through him, it makes sense but at the same time just drags out too much. There’s a lot of good story to deal with here in the series with Kakashi, Rin and Obito and the path that their lives took, but the execution continues to be pretty poor for the most part.
In Summary:
Events are continuing to ramp up as we get more of the big fights lined up here, especially now that we have closed out part of Sasuke’s story with all that background covered here. We do get some decent stuff with Madara and Ten-Tails and seeing Naruto having everyone getting his back and providing the support he needs which works well to reinforce some of the themes of the show since its first episode. But we also get what should be a good moment between Obito and Kakashi and instead of just making a sharp reference to the past, it’s drawn out too far and then spends too much time talking rather than doing. This series could and should have so many more big and epic moments but it tends to navel gaze far too often instead.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
