Review for Naruto Shippuden: Box Set 6 (2 Discs)

Introduction

That's bizarre. Instead of the usual thirteen episodes of Naruto nonsense that we get with each volume, this collection boasts only 12. Please don't tell me that even anime is economising. I go to the supermarket and find what were 454g tins of beans are now 410g, 125g bars of soap are now 100g, 100ml tubes of toothpaste are now 75ml. And each week the prices go up and up. It's happening across the board, we pay more for less. If it's started happening in anime, I don't think I could bear it. Unfortunately, it looks as if that is indeed the case when it comes to Naruto Shippuden. For I have looked ahead to the US release of volume 7, and that is even slimmer, at just 11 episodes. Fortunately, it has far less to do with economy, than it does to do with neatness. 12 episodes in volume 6, and 11 episodes in volume 7 will take us directly to the end of Season 4 of Naruto Shippuden, the ideal place to end a stretch of episodes.


15 years previously, the Hidden Leaf village was plagued by the Nine-Tailed fox demon. The Fourth Hokage ninja sacrificed his life to defeat the menace, and sealed up the spirit in the body of a newborn child. That orphan grew up as Naruto Uzumaki, a mischievous prankster with great ambition. He wants to be the strongest ninja of them all and be granted the title Hokage, leader of the Hidden Leaf village. In the first Naruto series, we followed him on his training as a ninja, tutored by Kakashi, and partnered with his ideal girl Sakura, and his archrival Sasuke. Of course Sakura was sweet on Sasuke, which didn't help, but slowly the three became firm friends.


The dark clouds of ambition tore that friendship apart though, but it wasn't Naruto's ambition. It was Sasuke's, sole survivor of the Uchiha clan, slaughtered by his brother Itachi. He grew up wanting revenge on Itachi, and wanting to gain in power and strength as quickly as possible. Sasuke gave into the temptation for easy power, offered by the renegade ninja Orochimaru, when Orochimaru infiltrated the village during the Chunin exams, and assassinated the Third Hokage. Sasuke left to join Orochimaru, and Naruto swore to get him back. For the last two and half years, Naruto has been in training with the sage Jiraiya, and he's now returned to the village, empowered and ready to rescue his friend. But Orochimaru and Sasuke haven't been resting easy either, while the Akatsuki group of renegade ninja, of whom Sasuke's brother Itachi is a member, have been accelerating their plans, and top of the list is obtaining the Nine-Tailed Fox Demon, the one that is currently sealed up in Naruto.


Manga Entertainment present the next 12 episodes of Naruto Shippuden spread across 2 discs.

66. Revived Souls
67. Everyone's Struggle to the Death
68. Moment of Awakening
69. Despair
70. Resonance
71. My Friend
Previously, what looked like a simple investigation into grave robbing turned ominous, when the graves robbed turned out to be those of high-level ninja, Asuma's former teammates. It seems an old conspiracy to destroy the Hokage and wipe out the Hidden Leaf Village has been reborn. During the investigation, Naruto befriended a kindred spirit, a boy named Sora, similarly shunned because of his hidden abilities. It turns out that his father was originally behind the plot to kill the Hokage, and it was Asuma who killed Sora's father. Torn between loyalty and friendship, it was the worst time for Sora to become embroiled in the attack on the Hidden Leaf Village, as the conspirators arrived, sealed off the village behind a barrier, and unleashed an army of zombies to wipe out the inhabitants. As the battle continues, it becomes apparent that this is just a diversion, that there are wheels within wheels to the plan, and in the end it will all boil down to the power that has been sealed away in Sora since he was a child. That power is about to be unleashed, and Naruto learns that Sora has more in common with him than he could ever have expected. Meanwhile, elsewhere two members of the Akatsuki have tracked down and cornered a Jinchuriki.


72. The Quietly Approaching Threat
73. Akatsuki's Invasion
74. Under the Starry Sky
75. The Old Monk's Prayer
76. The Next Step
77. Climbing Silver
After quickly healing his wounds, Naruto is ready to recommence his training, to master a special technique all his own, and seeing that he has passed the first stage in altering his wind chakra nature, Kakashi assigns his next lesson. He has to cut a waterfall. Once again he's using his multiple shadow clone technique to speed up the process, to learn in days what would take a normal ninja years, but that may not be enough. For Akatsuki has put its plans to gather the Jinchuriki into effect. Two of its number, Kakuzu and Hidan have been striking at various locations, searching for signs of the tailed beasts. The rumours are that they have attained four already. Their next stop is the Land of Fire, to find the Nine-Tailed Fox Demon, in other words Naruto. And given what happened with Gaara, they're not too concerned with what happens to the vessel containing the chakra. While Naruto continues to perfect his skills, the Hokage sends out teams of ninja to track down Kakuzu and Hidan, stop them if possible, or kill them if necessary.

Picture

Naruto Shippuden is now presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen. What's more, the transfer is a native PAL one, clear and sharp throughout, with no issues regarding blended frames or ghosting. That said, for some bizarre reason, there are still moments where significant judder is apparent. I had hoped that the issue would be resolved following the previous volume, but it's still there, and it's more prevalent than before. It hits random episodes, and afflicts around half of them in this collection. Shippuden's animation, and its character designs are sharper and crisper than Naruto's. It's certainly more detailed than the first series, and the colours are a little more muted. With the advent of filler, it does appear that the quality of the animation skips back a tad, and the animators cut a few corners. But it's not yet as bad as the worst of the Naruto filler.

Sound

The DD 2.0 English and Japanese stereo is more than adequate in recreating the original experience, and given a little Prologic magic does offer a pleasant ambience and some discrete action. Yasuhara Takanashi takes over the music reins from Toshiro Masuda, and the result is if anything even less memorable than the music from the first series. But it works well enough in driving the action, and it doesn't get overbearing. Once again, I only sampled the English dub and found it acceptable if unspectacular. It certainly isn't the worst I have heard, but some of the actors don't seem particularly suited to the characters.

Extras

The discs get static menus, with the episode chapter breaks in place. Each episode ends in a brief animated Naruto comedy skit. The extras are on disc 2, 15 line art images in a Production Art Gallery, and trailers for the first Naruto Shippuden movie and the Naruto Shippuden series.

Conclusion

Now this is what all filler should be like. The Sora story that comes to a conclusion in the first six episodes of this collection is both interesting and entertaining. More importantly, it's well written, paying close attention to what is occurring in the overall storyline, and tying in neatly with that. When we started the filler, the focus of the story was on Naruto and his training to develop a new ninja technique. The start of the filler arc carried that over in the previous volume, and there was much discussion about various techniques and how they relate to each ninja's individual talents. When we get back to the main storyline in this volume, it's apparent that the Asuma character plays a significant part, and it turns out that the latter half of the filler arc, the six episodes on this volume, are used to create a back story for Asuma, to give him some more screen time to develop his character. Also, when we get back to the main storyline, it blends into the filler arc, makes reference to it and uses it to add to the motivations of the characters. If I didn't know any better, I'd be hard pressed to consider the Sora story to be filler at all.


One thing is for certain though, this particular story that Naruto always uses as filler, where he meets another young character who he initially clashes with, only to learn that he has much in common with them, really has to stop. The Sora character as the story plays out is the ultimate expression of that trope. He practically is the mirror image of Naruto, to the point that he not only has a similar isolated upbringing, but he has a similar problem when it comes to internalised monsters. It certainly gives the plot occurring against the Leaf Village a certain weight, while the conclusion of the story where Naruto has to confront Sora and redeem him makes for a striking visual and emotional spectacle. The only way that they can reiterate this storyline and make it any more personal and meaningful to Naruto is if one of his Shadow Clones goes rogue and starts living a life of its own. But as filler goes, this arc is certainly the best that Naruto has ever delivered, the only weaknesses are the character designs, which as usual don't quite live up to those of the main manga, and the quality of the animation, which takes a bit of dip here, disappointing in the action sequences. One moment did make me smile though, where Naruto literally had a ninja battle with a fright wig!


It's then back to the main storyline, and it's back to Naruto's training regime, which for something that sounds so mundane, this series manages to somehow make interesting, and even exciting. Naruto is working on the next step of powering up his Rasengan, venturing forth where no ninja has gone before, where not even the Fourth Hokage who created the technique in the first place could go. There are no tricks to employ, no shortcuts, and no hints that Kakashi can give him. He has to figure it out for himself. Of course with the main storyline resumed, that also means that the pace comes right back down again, and we're back to eking out the story a drip at a time. Naruto Shippuden continues to walk a fine line between entertainment and tedium, and it manages to hold the interest in the final six episodes on the disc.


Part of that has to be down to the introduction of the two Akatsuki hunting the Jinchuriki, the tailed beasts. Kakuzu and Hidan are a couple of interesting characters. Kakuzu is a taciturn bad ass whose sole concern is the acquisition of wealth, which is why he is the Akatsuki treasurer, and why he is prone to interrupting their missions to collect on a bounty or two. Hidan on the other hand is a religious nut, a fanatic that insists on performing the rituals of his own personal religion at all times, but who is loud and annoying about it to boot. By the way, Hidan is immortal, while Kakuzu is invulnerable, which makes them an ideal team, even if they are prone to trying to kill each other. The problem with their introduction is that we don't get to actually see their bad-ass-ness. We first see them cornering the Two-Tailed Beast, we see her begin to fight back, but then the attention shifts elsewhere, and we only return for the aftermath. The same thing happens when they encounter Asuma's monk friend Chiruku.


There's a bit of a plot hole when they enter the Land of Fire to look for the Nine-Tailed Beast, a.k.a. Naruto. Given that other members of Akatsuki know where the Hidden Leaf Village is, and that Naruto is the vessel for the Demon Fox, they should really head straight for the Hidden Leaf Village and nab him. Instead they wander around searching for him, having no idea what his identity is or where the village is. Of course that does give the Hokage time to organise a response, which is to send out a host of ninja teams to capture them if possible, or eliminate them if necessary. This is where Asuma comes in again, son of the Third Hokage, significant other of Kurenai, former teacher of Shikamaru, Choji and Ino and whose been having a fair bit of character development of late. He's got a personal stake in finding the Akatsuki ninja, and quite naturally his team is the one that encounters the two around the end of this volume. Immediately it becomes apparent that they are in over their heads, and fortunately, it doesn't look as if we'll cut away from the juicy action this time; we'll get to see what Kakuzu and Hidan are made of. The downside is that we will cut away from the action until Collection 07 of Naruto Shippuden is released.


Good filler and great if slowly paced main storyline action makes this probably the best instalment of Naruto Shippuden yet. The downside is that the transfer doesn't do the show any justice. You'd think that with the advent of native PAL conversions, dodgy transfers would be a thing of the past, but some of the episodes on these discs are as bad as some of the worst NTSC-PAL converted Naruto episodes.