Review for Naruto Shippuden: Box Set 18 (2 Discs)

Introduction

Can you believe that I’ve just had to review five fan service titles in a row? Five of them! It’s a wonder that I’m not bleeding from the eyes, my grasp of social etiquette irretrievably warped, or I’ve been sectioned under the mental health act. I mean, there’s something wrong if you expect every single gust of wind to blow someone’s skirt up. I’ve been longing for something, anything to bring me back to normality, or as normal as anime can get. I’ll even be willing to watch more Bleach at this point. Thank God Manga have sent me the next Naruto Shippuden to review instead. We’re at Collection 18 now, as the serious business of the main Naruto storyline continues. Only it looks like the serious business will be taking a break from this volume...


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, Sasuke finally got his revenge against one of the figures responsible for the deaths of his family, but didn’t have time to recover from that victory before he came face to face with his old team, Kakashi, Sakura and most importantly Naruto. It was a fraught confrontation for both sides, with Sasuke learning that he still has ties to cut with his old life, and Naruto finally realising that his former friend might just be irredeemable. At the same time, the main ninja nations united and declared war on Akatsuki. This was the worst time for the Leaf Village to lose the next Hokage before he could even formally take up the post. As we begin this collection of episodes, an unlikely candidate is about to be offered the position. 13 episodes are presented across 2 discs by Manga Entertainment.


219. Kakashi Hatake, The Hokage
220. Prophecy of the Great Lord Elder
221. Storage
222. The Five Kages’ Decision
War is imminent, the five ninja nations are in turmoil and Akatsuki is on the rise. It becomes even more imperative to come up with a plan of action when intelligence finds that Kabuto is making deals with Madara, and it seems that Kabuto has learned some of Orochimaru’s old tricks. The Leaf Village needs some continuity following the fall of Danzo, and the first bit of good news is that Tsunade recovers from her coma. The next thing is what to do about the surviving Jinchuriki, the 9-Tails Naruto, and the 8-Tails Killer Bee? Before they can decide that, Naruto is summoned by the Great Toad Sage to have his fortune read. When it becomes clear that he will face Sasuke again, he’s faced with a choice, maintain the status quo, or risk losing control of the 9-Tails in order to develop an ultimate jutsu. But it might just be that Naruto can learn control from Killer Bee.


223. The Young Man and the Sea
Naruto sets off on his S-rank mission to the Village Hidden in Clouds, and that means a sea voyage. The problem is that the sole port in the Land of Fire is besieged by a sea monster, and no one is willing to set sail. But one vengeful young fisherman is determined to catch the monster.

224. The Ninja of Benisu
Guy’s sea-sickness enforces a layover at an island, but Naruto’s surprised to see that Sakura, Ino and Choji are already there. They’re on a mission to replenish stocks of medicinal herbs in preparation for the oncoming war. But there’s a rival group of ninja also on the island, and they keep getting to the herbs first.


225. The Cursed Ghost Ship
When the ship is becalmed in fog, how better to pass the time than swap ghost stories, especially when Naruto is so gullible? But then an actual ghost ship turns up, its crew missing except for one cabin boy, a boy who’s dead set on avenging his fallen crewmates against a perilous sea monster.

226. Battleship Island
Sailing through rocky waters in the middle of a storm is dangerous enough without an island opening fire. But that’s what happens when a pirate spots Naruto’s ship, and decides to take its cargo for his own, and its complement to sell as slaves.

227. The Forgotten Island
A storm blows up, but that’s the least of their problems when Guy is carries off by a giant bird. The pursuit leads to a mysterious island inhabited by a menagerie of giant animals. There are also the ruins of a ninja laboratory, and a reason just why Naruto and the others have been drawn to the island.


228. Fight! Rock Lee!
As Rock Lee once more persuades himself that more training will make him stronger, Guy reminisces on some special training that the two conducted following the results of a rather regrettable celebration.

229. Eat or Die! Mushrooms from Hell!
The voyage continues, and the ship is about to enter a two-week stretch where they’ll be restricted to a single course, a single current. They stop off to buy two weeks of supplies first, but someone sells Naruto a dodgy mushroom. They’ve barely left port, and their entire food supply is spoiled.


230. Revenge of the Shadow Clones
Another storm means all hands on deck once more, but Naruto’s called on the assistance of his shadow clones once too often. They’re tired of doing all the work and getting none of the credit... so they mutiny!

231. The Closed Route
Shikamaru is facing a crisis of confidence at the thought of possibly leading ninja to their deaths in the oncoming war. To help him get his head straight, his father gets him onto a resupply mission to Naruto’s ship, along with Tenten. But it’s no vacation.

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.

The subtitles in the preview for episode 220 are completely mistimed, although the episode itself is unaffected.

Extras

The discs get static menus and jacket pictures, with the episode chapter breaks in place.

The extras are on disc 2, 5 images in a Storyboard Gallery, 3 pieces of key art, and trailers for the second Naruto Shippuden movie as well as the Shippuden series.

Conclusion

With this 18th Collection of Naruto Shippuden, the series returns to the depths of mediocrity, as the dreaded filler makes a return. The last time this happened, the show actually put some thought into the non-canon episodes to tie in, at least thematically with the ongoing storyline. Not this time, as all we get here are standalone episodes, and none of them really rise above the level of the kind of filler that we used to get with the original Naruto series. In other words, they’re wholly silly, disposable, and forgettable, and worse, they make you forget all the good storytelling and world-building that Naruto Shippuden has been doing in the last few volumes. And the capper on it all is that the collection starts with four canon episodes before the filler, and Collection 19 will also have a majority of filler episodes before returning to the canon. So neither this nor the next part can be left out of your Shippuden collections.


The first four episodes are the manga adapted material, but they are really calm-before-the-storm episodes, low on action, easing out some exposition, and playing mostly for comedy to lighten the mood after the previous collection’s dramatic and action heavy episodes. But there are moments in the narrative worth noting, particularly Tsunade’s recovery, and the Toad Sage prophecy regarding Naruto, and his decision to risk loosening the seal on the 9-Tails beast, Kabuto’s alliance with Madara, and finally the decision to send Naruto to train with Killer Bee to learn to control his hidden 9-Tails power. It’s slow moving but entertaining, and important narrative.


And then the filler starts, some twenty episodes while the animators wait for the manga material to accumulate for adaptation. The journey to the Village Hidden in Clouds turns out to be a lengthy sea voyage of filler, with all standalone episodes set on and around ship till the end of this collection and beyond. It’s all daft and repetitive stuff, mixing and matching ideas through the nine filler episodes in this set. There’s more than one sea monster, and more than one victim seeking revenge for lost loved ones, there are ghost ships and ghostly ninja, pirates show up on more than one occasion, mysterious islands abound, and so do the foolish storylines that make no sense and offer even less in the way of entertainment.


And then in the final episode of this collection, with our heroes halfway through their lengthy sea voyage on their super-important mission, Shikamaru catches up to them in a matter of moments. If he can get to that halfway point so quickly, and it’s so important for Naruto to get this training, why are they taking the slow boat? And with my suspension of disbelief shattered, I leave this 18th collection of Naruto Shippuden, in full dread of the 19th collection, which will pick up where this leaves off.