“You Better…”
What They Say:
Recalling the time when he shared Naruto’s desire to become Hokage, Obito opens up to Naruto about his dreams.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Naruto: Shippuden continues to mine material that should have been explored previously instead of inserting a metric tonne of flashback material into the supposed climax of the series and its main storyline that has dominated for just a few hundred episodes or so. We got more of Obito’s backstory the last time around and the continued attempts to force him into being a sympathetic character simply aren’t working since the investment just doesn’t come across as worth it after so long and so many slow twists and turns. The only redeeming aspects of it for me has been to see more of Kakashi’s past but even there what we end up getting is a cool and aloof character that in turn doesn’t have much new revealed about him of note. It’s essentially a carrying forward of what we already knew.
So what dominates this episode? More flashback time with Obito as we see him being drawn into things with the Akatsuki and how it times up to when Ten-Tails went nuts and all the other events of the day from years past. It’s yet another sequence of seeing so many familiar things, sometimes with minor little variations of presentation, but essentially more repetition wrapped up in a new package. The first half has plenty of things we’ve seen before and while there are some great dramatic moments here, they’re left hollow because we’ve seen it all before and it’s done in such a montage style that you realize it’s all just padding things out because even in this episode they don’t have enough material to draw the whole thing out with easily enough.
While we get some glimpses in the present along the way in the other time-space that the characters in with the group supporting Obito as they can, mostly we just get lots of flashback here. And damn if it isn’t all just plain boring at this point after years of flashback.
In Summary:
With so much focusing on the past to try and rehabilitate Obito to some degree, the series spends another time-wasting episode here. I can imagine that there are those that will get more out of it if you’re still invested in the show, but Obito has been a problematic character for some time and the structure of the series and its reveals simply leaves me disinterested. Inertia continues as I want to see it to the end and to see the way things do resolve, having not read the manga, but it’s a slog to get there.
Grade: D
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
