Tsunade’s play for Naruto’s inclusion in the war gets examined in circumspect just a bit more.
What They Say:
The Raikage Ay and his team suffer critical injuries during an enemy attack. Unwilling to sacrifice any more of his men, Ay seeks medical help from Tsunade, who just happens to be in the area.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With the story focusing on the Raikage and others now going after the Cedar Village in an effort to find hidden jutsus, things have not gone well overall. We’ve seen one taken down by a nasty chakra bug that seemed like it was going to make his body explode and it’s raised tensions in general. For the Raikage, he’s intent on following through with things in order to make sure that the hidden jutsus are found and those that were hurt were avenged for what they did. Which leads him and a team of others into the woods where they get attacked by the Nokizaru Troops, a group of shinobi that prey on other shinobi. And nothing pisses off Raikage more than that.
With that as back story to the present, the idea of finding this hidden jutsus takes on all the more importance for the war effort. Interestingly, as we see with the shinobi who has the bug burst embedded in his chest, Tsunade discovers that the Raikage has the same level of chakra imprint within his body as well, making for a curious and very problematic situation since there has to be some research into why it happened to him as well and how chakra is used within the physical side of what it is that these shinobi do in order to perform incredible feats.
While the show focuses largely in the present, it does have some good nods to the past as we see how Raikage inquires as to why Tsunade is so afraid of blood. That’s a big problem for a medical ninja when it comes to surgeries and the like, but it’s Shizune who explains things to some degree along with a good smattering of actual flashbacks. The piece involving her distant past certainly makes sense, but so do the sequence showing how she had saved the younger Naruto some time ago. That moment continues to be one of the better ones of the series simply because it shows an intensity of Tsunade that we don’t always see and also explains why she bets so easily and strongly when it comes to Naruto.
In Summary:
With the second part of the kind of fillerish story here, we get a bit more reinforcement of the existing situation between Raikage and Tsunade. The two definitely were ready for a fight before she managed to sway him to her side and let Naruto do what he needs to do. There’s a bit of a laugh at the end of it when he realizes that he was essentially taken in by her, but it misses the point in how she knows who to really trust and that when she does, she’ll bank everything on that person when the chips are down. The background bits for Tsunade are welcome, but the episode was frustrating in the way it shifted when the story was taking place since there were often indiscernible ways of telling it as the whole method was just plain clunky in its execution.
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.
