Review for Naruto Shippuden: Box Set 19 (2 Discs)

Introduction

Can you actually believe that the Naruto saga is finally coming to an end? Not in anime form of course, we’ve got a good few years of that yet to come. But in Japan, the publication of the Naruto manga will conclude in a matter of weeks. Naruto Shippuden will have ended. Whether this is a definite full stop to the adventure of the sneaky luminous orange one, or whether it’s just another pause for breath before a time skip and a new chapter, as happened between Naruto and Naruto Shippuden, is yet to be seen. In all likelihood though, and with the direction the story has been taking, this looks to be it. The ninja Harry Potter will eventually graduate ninja Hogwarts, having faced down ninja Voldemort. But Manga are starting their release of Yu-gi-oh next month, so they won’t be missing a long running shonen show from their catalogue anytime soon.

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 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.

Previously on Naruto Shippuden, the decision was taken for Naruto to take a risk and try and level up his ninja skills, starting by going to the Land of Lightning to train with Killer Bee and learn how to control that demon fox chakra within him. And so began a long stretch of filler, where the urgency of the impending ninja world war was offset by a lengthy sea voyage, where daft things continuously happened, and Gai-sensei threw up a lot. As we begin collection 19 of Naruto Shippuden, the filler continues. Someone get Gai some Dramamine! 13 episodes are presented across 2 discs by Manga Entertainment.


232. The Girls’ Get-Together
Naruto may be bored on ship, but back in the Hidden Leaf Village, preparations are in full flow for the on-coming conflict. Everyone’s hard at work fulfilling their roles, but hard-workers need to party sometime, so Tenten organises a girls’ night out. Then the fifth Hokage invites herself along.

233. Naruto’s Imposter
Gai’s happy. They have to travel by land to the next harbour, but the road through the forest is a target for bandits, and one particular bandit has been trading off Naruto Uzumaki’s notoriety. He picked the wrong ninja to hold up!


234. Naruto’s Favourite Student
Konohamaru is high on his recent victory over Pain, and being Naruto’s favourite student, he wants to be just as much a hero as his mentor. He wants a big mission in the forthcoming war, and to prove he’s good enough, he’s only gone and challenged the cruellest Kunoichi in the Sand Village. He’s yet to learn that not every hero fights on the front lines.

235. The Kunoichi of Nadeshiko Village
Nadeshiko Village is a matriarchal ninja community that shuns the presence of men. Of course nature must win out, but the only men suitable for being fathers of the next generation are those strong and wily enough to defeat the Nadeshiko women in ninja duels. Years previously, a duel between the leader of Nadeshiko and Jiraiya ended inconclusively, the battle deferred to the next generation. So now Naruto’s intended has shown up, challenging him to a duel to the marriage!


236. Friends You Can Count On
With the village facing a greater threat than ever before, it falls to the present generation of ninja to impart their knowledge to the youngsters. Shino tells a group of children how to overcome fear by having friends to rely on. That sparks a memory of how team 8 first bonded, how Hinata and Kiba (and Akamaru) helped a young Shino overcome his lack of confidence.

237. Ah, My Hero Lady Tsunade!
While Tenten trains with her teammate Rock Lee, she has the chance to reflect on her path to becoming a ninja, driven by her initial ambition to be just like her hero Lady Tsunade, and overcoming the roadblock when she realised that she had none of Lady Tsunade’s talents.


238. Sai’s Day Off
Another ninja, and another chance to reflect. This time it’s Sai, who’s exploring the ruins of the village, yet to be rebuilt, when he chances upon a trio of children with a remarkably familiar friendship dynamic. Of course he’s reminded of Sakura and Naruto, and their need to redeem their friend Sasuke.

239. The Legendary Ino-Shika-Cho
The eternal genin Kosuke’s in town again, catching up with the team of Choji Shikamaru, and Ino. When they were young genin as well, they saved the elder Kosuke from a rival group of ninja, and Shikamaru recalls that Kosuke mentioned that it was the second time that he’d been saved by the Ino-Shika-Cho formation. The three teammates don’t remember the first time... Cue flashback and blatant continuity error.


240. Kiba’s Determination
Kiba’s in a bit of a slump. He used to be top dog, and he recalls regularly putting that fool Naruto to shame in any contest that they had as children. Now Naruto is the village hero, and Kiba’s worried about being left behind. He decides to ask Kakashi for more training.

241. Kakashi, My Eternal Rival!
Back in the village, Kakashi receives an SOS tortoise from Gai calling for help. But back on the ship, while he’s not being seasick, Yamato is messing with Gai’s head, telling him that the closer they get to their destination, the greater the danger of attack, especially from imposters. Which is when Kakashi shows up to help...


242. Naruto’s Vow
Almost at their destination, they just have to make a quick stopover at a small island. It’s also where a meeting is set to take place between the Mist ninja and the Stone ninja. Only one of the Mist has a grudge against the Stone that’s about to explode into violence. The fledgling Alliance against Akatsuki is already at risk of falling apart, and with Naruto caught in the middle, he’ll have to persuade the erstwhile allies of the value of peace.

243. Land Ahoy! Is this the Island of Paradise?
244. Killer Bee and Motoi
They’ve finally made it to their destination. The long sea voyage is over, and they’ve arrived at the island where Naruto is to carry out his S-Rank mission. Of course no-one’s told him that the mission is to lie low with the 8-Tails Jinchuriki and avoid the war and most especially Akatsuki. Naruto’s got his own priority though, following the Toad Sage’s prophecy, and learning how to master the 9-Tails chakra. He needs to find an octopus first. Pity he can’t tell the difference between an octopus and a squid. More is the pity that he doesn’t appreciate enka-rap music, as getting the 8-Tails help, Killer Bee’s is going to be harder than he thought.

Picture

Naruto Shippuden is now presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen in native PAL. The image is sharper, ghosting and blended frames are absent, and there’s an increase in resolution. Absent this time is the judder that plagued the first attempt to release Naruto Shippuden in PAL, and it may be down to these being the Japanese broadcast episodes, not the US versions with the edited English language credit sequences. Shippuden’s animation and its character designs are sharper and crisper than those in the first Naruto series. It’s certainly more detailed while the colours are a little more muted. The story comes across well, and the action sequences are impressively animated, while conforming to a long running anime budget.

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 and jacket pictures, with the episode chapter breaks in place.

The extras are on disc 2, 10 images in a Storyboard Gallery, and trailers for the second Naruto Shippuden movie as well as the Shippuden series.

Conclusion

Let’s keep it short and sweet this time. We have here another collection of filler. Out of the 13 episodes in this collection, 11 of them have been created by the animators to fill time while they wait for the manga to catch up. It’s only the last two episodes that resume the canon story, and at this point, all that it amounts to is Naruto finally meeting Killer Bee (incidentally a character I find so annoying, that when he first appeared, I thought it was more filler!). It’s really just the preliminaries at this point, the two getting to know each other, and rubbing each other the wrong way, and Naruto taking the first steps towards controlling the 9-Tails. We also get a bit of flashback to show Killer Bee’s childhood, to show how he became the annoying adult that he is today. He started off as an annoying brat.


There’s not a lot to get excited about with just two episodes of canon material, and we have to look towards the filler to see if there is anything worth getting enthused about. Given the last volume’s filler which dipped in quality almost to the point of the worst of the original Naruto filler, I didn’t have a lot of hope for these episodes. Surprisingly, they turned out pretty entertaining for filler. There are still the odd duffers like the Kakashi Gai episode, and the Naruto’s Imposter episode, but for the most part they take a look at the other characters in the show, concentrate on them for an episode, and venture into their back stories to expound on how they became the ninja they are today, as in the Tenten, Kiba, Sai, and Ino-Shika-Cho episodes.


Incidentally, that latter episode gets its chronology wrong. See if you can spot the continuity error. There’s also a good story in Naruto’s Vow, which has the young ninja’s vow to bring peace tested by two groups of ninja who are dead set on attacking each other. By and large the filler in this collection is a significant improvement over the filler in collection 18. But after this long a stretch of filler, almost two boxsets’ worth, it’s about time we got back to the main storyline. Unfortunately, just two episodes of that isn’t enough to tell whether the story is progressing in as an appealing a manner as it was before the lengthy filler hiatus. You know if you’re still enough of a Naruto fan to buy this, and you certainly don’t need my recommendation. But for what it’s worth, this batch of filler is watchable enough.