Review for Naruto Shippuden: Box Set 23 (2 Discs)

Introduction

The January review discs from Animatsu and Manga turned up, and this month instead of the usual pressed check discs, we have single layer DVD-R screeners. Despite the fact that they are copies of the final retail discs, this review will be useless if you are looking to see what the AV quality is like. With the compression (in a couple of cases almost 4 hours of video on a single layer disc), these discs aren’t in any way representative of the retail copies. The review will be about the content only. If there is a bright side, I don’t have to write as damned much!

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 Fourth Great War began, with Akatsuki on one side, using the insidious Reanimation jutsu to bring back fallen friends and foes to fight on their behalf, with the Allied Shinobi on the other side, in many cases having to face lost loved ones in battle. In the last volume, Naruto finally realised what was being hidden from him, and true to form, both he and Bee broke out and headed straight for battle, only to be confronted by the Hokage and the Raikage, intent on keeping them out of the fight. Not a lot will happen in this collection, as 13 more episodes of Naruto Shippuden, 12 of them filler are presented across 2 discs from Manga Entertainment.

Disc 1
284. The Helmet Splitter: Jinin Akebino
Sai is under a lot of stress, expected to use his ultimate sealing jutsu on the battlefield, a technique that needs him to get in touch with his emotions, something he’s not too good at. He’s run out of time, as the resurrected Jinin Akebino is wreaking havoc on the battlefield.

285. User of the Scorch Style: Pakura of the Sand!
As a child, Maki trained under the hero of the Sand Village, Pakura. She also grieved when Pakura fell in battle. Now Maki has to face her mentor, resurrected by Akatsuki, and Pakura has some unfinished business with the Sand Village.


286. Things You Can’t Get Back
287. One Worth Betting On
Following their confrontation with Naruto and Bee, Tsunade and the Raikage reflect on what has occurred, and the Raikage questions Tsunade’s faith in Naruto. He’s reminded of their first meeting, when he and his men were coming back from a mission, and fell afoul of some mercenary ninja. In desperation they sought a medical ninja to heal their injuries. They got an itinerant alcoholic gambler instead.

288. Danger: Jinpachi and Kushimaru
The battle against the resurrected Mist Ninja continues, this time Kakashi seems outmatched by two dangerous killers, Jinpachi and Kushimaru. But Gai shows up in the nick of time to help, calling to mind their youth as genin.

289. The Lightning Blade: Ameyuri Ringo
One more ninja swordsman to face, and while Gai and Kakashi race to help, it may be too late for a trio of Cloud ninja who come face to face with this lightning wielding monster. One of them, Omoi can’t understand why his leader chooses to flee rather than fight.

290. Power – Episode 1
Disc 2
291. Power – Episode 2
292. Power – Episode 3
293. Power – Episode 4
294. Power – Episode 5
295. Power – Final Episode
Stepping outside the main storyline, Power is an original tale from before the war, regarding an isolated village that was attacked and destroyed one night, its inhabitants massacred. The sole survivors were five orphan children, and the portly guard Dokko that rescued them. With Konoha village stretched, Tsunade can only spare Naruto, Sakura, Sai and Yamato to investigate and deal with those responsible. When they reach the ruined village, they discover that the massacre was the work of Kabuto, who has been researching and testing his Reanimation jutsu, resurrected ninja were responsible for the slaughter, all for a secret that that the village held, and the unusual properties of a nearby lake. When Naruto swallows a mouthful of that water during a battle with Kabuto’s forces, it has unexpected and ominous consequences.

296. Naruto Enters The Battle
The nature of White Zetsu has been uncovered, and the threat facing the Allied Ninja becomes clear, although how to deal with the threat is less clear, with the Zetsu clones taking on any form, hidden in Allied ranks wearing familiar faces. Not to worry, as Naruto has finally entered the fight, and he’s picked up a new ability too, the ability to sense enemies. If only there was a way for him to be in all battlefield hotspots at once...

The Discs

You get a 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen image, and Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround English and Japanese, with optional translated subtitles.

The images in this review were kindly supplied by Manga Entertainment.

Extras

You have Madman trailers, Storyboards and a Production Art Gallery on Disc 2.

Conclusion

Filler! Don’t you just hate it? Well, conserve your bile in this case, as the 23rd volume of Naruto Shippuden may have twelve out of thirteen of its episodes as pure filler, but six of those twelve are good, no, downright brilliant. In fact, they might just be the best episodes of Naruto I have seen since the conclusion of the original Naruto series. But at first acquaintance I was ready to consign Collection 23 as just as disposable as most of the other Naruto filler.


Those first six episodes are the disposable filler in question, episodes featuring Kakashi and his team of ninja as they go about battling Kabuto’s resurrected forces on the battlefield. You could be forgiven for assuming that four of them were canon episodes, given that they are exploring aspects of the main manga storyline at this point, the ongoing ninja war, but they aren’t canon, and that tells in the quality of the writing and the animation. It’s basically the same story four times over, with Kakashi’s team hunting down and sealing away reanimated Hidden Mist swordsmen. One character in the good guys’ forces will take centre stage, some dramatic development will occur that will require a flashback to their past to explain, and against the odds they will prevail.

The exception to this is the two part storyline featuring Tsunade and the Raikage, a conversation on why she trusts Naruto so much leading to a flashback to her first meeting with the Raikage. It’s a fair enough tale, pretty much covering what we already know about the characters, but it commits the cardinal sin of leaving the story hanging. The flashback story is all about the Raikage getting medical help for one of his men, as they are being hunted by mercenary ninja, and the story ends with them surrounded. It’s obvious here that the storytellers felt that they had told the story that they wanted to tell as far as it went, and felt no need to wrap up loose ends.

The final episode in the collection is a return to the main storyline. When I recently reviewed Naruto The Movie: The Last, and compared it unfavourably to Road to Ninja, I suggested that somewhere in between the two movies, the series jumps the shark. I have a sneaking suspicion that episode 296 is that point. For now, we have an uber-powered Naruto, with the ability to sense his enemies instinctively, with so much power that he keeps glowing like some luminous orange rabbit, overdosing on Ready-brek, and in this episode he goes full on Shadow Clone mode, and it looks like he’ll be simultaneously saving the day in every battlefield in every corner of this war. He will most likely be in every action sequence from now on. I know that we’ve had a couple of collections of Naruto Shippunden with a paucity of the title character, but surely this overcompensating!

Then there is Power, the six episode filler arc, which is the best Naruto I have seen in ages. The quality of the writing shoots up, the animation reaches theatrical quality, and the story is extremely well told for Naruto. This might just be the best Naruto movie, not released as a movie. It’s certainly up there with Road to Ninja as staying true to the Naruto mythos while engaging viewer emotions. Quite frankly I don’t understand why it wasn’t released as a feature film, I would certainly want this arc in that form, on Blu-ray, it is that good.

Apparently it was made to celebrate 500 episodes of Naruto, and it’s best to take it as one whole, as a feature film instead of six episodes. Certainly it has a climax worthy of theatrical features. It stands alone like any filler arc, but you could see it as a prequel to the war, with team Kakashi, sent to investigate the massacre of a village and deal with whoever was responsible. It turns out that Kabuto was partly responsible as he targeted the village, experimenting and trying to perfect the Reanimation jutsu that is wreaking such havoc in the canon war story.


Like any Naruto movie, the main character has his arc here, and in this case it’s Naruto trying to understand his power, the responsibility that comes with it, and what look like the first steps on that path that would eventually lead to his training with Bee. Of course power is just what the antagonists are after too, which makes the title of this arc apropos. But the guest characters also have their philosophy regarding power explored. Incidentally of all the Naruto movies, the guest characters in Power get the best development and story arc of them all. We have Dokka a ‘failed’ guard of the massacred village, a portly schoolteacher that managed to rescue five orphans from the carnage and take them to the neighbouring village where with his childhood friend Shiseru they try and restore some normality to the children’s lives, help them through the grieving process.

But Dokka and Shiseru have a traumatic past too. Shiseru was grievously injured in an accident when they were children, and Dokka has forever blamed himself for letting that happen. It’s blame that has kept a wall between the two ever since, but having to look after the children starts breaking that barrier down.

Power should be a Naruto movie. It should be out on Blu-ray, but instead it is the best stretch of filler the show has ever presented. It’s reason enough alone to buy this collection of episodes, and you’ll be returning to this arc far more often than you will the series itself.