The dream continues.
What They Say:
Tenten falls under the Infinite Tsukuyomi and wakes up in the Hidden Leaf Village. When Lee and Guy Sensei appear, Tenten is relieved to see that she is not alone. But her joy is short-lived, as both men act oddly and are dressed stylishly—just where has she been transported to?
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With the Tsukuyomi event having thrown us to Tenten the last time around, this installment brings us the second part of her adventure within the dream world. What’s been mildly interesting at best is that she knows things are wrong and is doing her best to figure it all out and how to deal with it. Most of the time, we get characters that are just blissfully unaware until something major happens and then they fight their way out of it. Here, Tenten got the clue pretty early on and worked hard to figure it out while dealing with the weirdness of her friends and the situation they’re in. It is, admittedly, small differences with what she’s actually seeing with them. But they’re noticeable enough overall when taken in full and for someone as sharp as her she put it all together quite fast.
So seeing her trying to figure out how to undo the high level jutsu is pretty good as she works it in a methodical way. Which in some ways makes sense while in other ways you think she’s going to need to do some really out of the box thinking to get out of this and push back against Madara. Tenten’s journey is one that takes her to a few different places in an effort to figure it out and when you put yourself in the mindset that this is all in her mind, she’s definitely trying to help herself in creative ways. But she also jails herself along the way, which is likely part of the jutsu as well in that it does what it can to protect itself against those that are trying to break it. The show does have some cute moments, even if they frustrate me because this is such a time waster overall, such as Lee and Neiji doing their best to encourage her while she’s being held prisoner. It’s inspirational in a sense for her, giving her hope that she can figure this all out in the end because she has such good friends even in this form.
As it goes on, it naturally takes its own twists and turns working its own particular logic. I can’t exactly hold it to the usual bounds of logic since it is a dream state so it gets a bit of a pass there in how it unfolds. But the main problem is that it’s all fairly boring overall. There’s a lot of things going on as Tenten tries to figure all of this out and it just gets weird as Naruto essentially breaks her out as he doesn’t believe she belongs here due to the way she’s talking about wanting to go home. The back half ends up focusing more on the action side of things and we get some tailed beast material as well. But with it being a dream world it all kind of just feels surreal, fleeting and of course quite temporary. It’s hard to invest in the events here, especially with Tenten just watching on for most of it, and how out of character so many of them act. So when she does finally act, it’s not a surprise as it is its own weird version of wish fulfillment in a sense for her.
In Summary:
Three episodes of dream world material and I am utterly bored with it and what it represents. As a concept, it’s one that can work well, but within the framework of how this series works it comes across as little more than a time waster, even if it is in the manga (which I don’t know if it is or not). After so much filler and material that doesn’t accomplish anything, the end run of this property is proving to be incredibly frustrating across the board, even when it does things right.
Grade: C-
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.
