What They Say: Madara has transformed into the Jinchuriki of the Ten Tails and appears before Kakashi. Kakashi and the others combine their...
What They Say:
Madara has transformed into the Jinchuriki of the Ten Tails and appears before Kakashi. Kakashi and the others combine their powers to attack, but they are no match for Madara.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Getting Naruto: Shippuden back on track the last time around was important, and a surprise, as many thought we’d go through at least another month’s worth of anime original material. Bringing us back into the present, things are still in a dire way for the Allied Shinobi Forces, and pretty bad off for Naruto himself since he’s had his chakra and Nine-Tails energy drained from him, leaving him out of it for pretty much the whole episode. We finally get back to Naruto and he’s unconscious. It figures, right? Still, just getting a lay of the land kind of approach for that episode helped to reconnect fans with what was going on after spending so much time going back a few years with the second chunin exam.
Naturally, we’re still not going to go high hog on the action just yet for the series, as there’s still some setup to go and things to be dealt with as it’s drawn out. Some of the bits talking about the way the Zetsu/Obito aspect is going is interesting, and we get some decent things in the first half about the status of things, with things being cleared up a bit about it all, and the reinforced focus on Obito and what his real path is after all is said and done. With him having played at being Madara for so long, seeing the truth of it revealed a bit further is pretty welcome. It’s a solid display moment to be sure as well as he’s drawn in and we see some of the power players on the Allied side try to make a move to stop it from happening. While it’s not filled with power, it has some of the strongest members trying to stop the reconnect from going on, only to fail – and hard.
Of course, just as things start to get more and more serious, the show does what it does best – flashback material. This takes us back to the younger Obito days when he and Kakashi were together and you had Obito doing his best to compete against him while being a part of the village. There’s some nice moments here that shows the good side of Obito, which is the main point of it. It’s an effort to further humanize him, and remind us of these parts of him after spending so much time away from the arc, in order to sympathize with him in the present as he makes new choices about what to do amid all the chaos going on. It is fun with some of these childhood moments because of the way they design the characters – it’s almost like adult heads put on kids bodies in some cases, to make the point – but overall it comes together well in expanding the character just a bit more.
In Summary:
Events are moving forward bit by bit, and just being in what mainline continuity again is helpful, even if in some ways we’re still slogging our way through the story itself. I can’t say I’m thrilled to get more flashback material here in this episode, but it’s not a surprise considering things going on with Obito and the potential twist and turn of the character as events unfold here. There are some decent moments in both the past and present for this episode, and an ominous sense about a lot of what’s going on in the present, but the show has to do more to really re-engage its audience overall, at least among the more casual viewers who are waiting for something significant to happen.
Naruto: Shippuden Episode 424 Anime Video & Review
Madara has transformed into the Jinchuriki of the Ten Tails and appears before Kakashi. Kakashi and the others combine their powers to attack, but they are no match for Madara.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Getting Naruto: Shippuden back on track the last time around was important, and a surprise, as many thought we’d go through at least another month’s worth of anime original material. Bringing us back into the present, things are still in a dire way for the Allied Shinobi Forces, and pretty bad off for Naruto himself since he’s had his chakra and Nine-Tails energy drained from him, leaving him out of it for pretty much the whole episode. We finally get back to Naruto and he’s unconscious. It figures, right? Still, just getting a lay of the land kind of approach for that episode helped to reconnect fans with what was going on after spending so much time going back a few years with the second chunin exam.
Naturally, we’re still not going to go high hog on the action just yet for the series, as there’s still some setup to go and things to be dealt with as it’s drawn out. Some of the bits talking about the way the Zetsu/Obito aspect is going is interesting, and we get some decent things in the first half about the status of things, with things being cleared up a bit about it all, and the reinforced focus on Obito and what his real path is after all is said and done. With him having played at being Madara for so long, seeing the truth of it revealed a bit further is pretty welcome. It’s a solid display moment to be sure as well as he’s drawn in and we see some of the power players on the Allied side try to make a move to stop it from happening. While it’s not filled with power, it has some of the strongest members trying to stop the reconnect from going on, only to fail – and hard.
Of course, just as things start to get more and more serious, the show does what it does best – flashback material. This takes us back to the younger Obito days when he and Kakashi were together and you had Obito doing his best to compete against him while being a part of the village. There’s some nice moments here that shows the good side of Obito, which is the main point of it. It’s an effort to further humanize him, and remind us of these parts of him after spending so much time away from the arc, in order to sympathize with him in the present as he makes new choices about what to do amid all the chaos going on. It is fun with some of these childhood moments because of the way they design the characters – it’s almost like adult heads put on kids bodies in some cases, to make the point – but overall it comes together well in expanding the character just a bit more.
In Summary:
Events are moving forward bit by bit, and just being in what mainline continuity again is helpful, even if in some ways we’re still slogging our way through the story itself. I can’t say I’m thrilled to get more flashback material here in this episode, but it’s not a surprise considering things going on with Obito and the potential twist and turn of the character as events unfold here. There are some decent moments in both the past and present for this episode, and an ominous sense about a lot of what’s going on in the present, but the show has to do more to really re-engage its audience overall, at least among the more casual viewers who are waiting for something significant to happen.
Naruto: Shippuden Episode 424 Anime Video & Review
