Review for Naruto Shippuden: Box Set 3 (2 Discs)

Introduction

It's a little disheartening how quickly familiarity returned to Naruto. I somehow made it to the end of the first series, after around 80 episodes of filler, dreading each subsequent volume, and forlornly hoping that we would eventually get back to the manga storyline, find out what happens next in the search for Sasuke, and the battle with Akatsuki, knowing full well that it wouldn't happen until Naruto Shippuden started. Yet, by the time it did come to Naruto Shippuden, memories of that filler had faded, and I was excited and anticipating with glee, another dose of the bright orange ninja. And that first collection cheered me up no end, with its meaningful story, character growth and advancement, and the absence of filler. Sure it was slow, it took its time telling the story, but it wasn't so bad. It was like when the first series was finding its feet, with the lengthy diversion of the Zabuza arc. When it came to the second collection, I may not have had that same anticipatory thrill, but I did look forward to it, only to find that this time the episodes were even slower, stretching out the story till it was tenuously thin, bolstered with flashbacks and lengthy character diversions. I have to admit that with this third collection of Naruto Shippuden, I'm beginning to feel the start of that same dread that so afflicted me at the end of the Naruto series. But this isn't the filler that is so loathed by fans; it isn't even the scene setting Zabuza arc. This is what I have been waiting for so eagerly. It's Sasuke, it's Akatsuki, it's the main storyline. Hopefully this third instalment will prove my dread misplaced.


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 13 episodes of Naruto Shippuden spread across 2 discs, 7 episodes on disc 1, and 6 episodes on disc 2.

27. Impossible Dream
28. Beasts: Alive Again
29. Kakashi Enlightened
30. Aesthetics of an Instant
31. The Legacy
32. Return of the Kazekage
Last time, on Naruto Shippuden… Battle had been joined at Akatsuki's lair. Granny Chiyo and Sakura together faced Sasori in the cave, while Kakashi and Naruto were pursuing Deidara, who had fled with Gaara's body. Meanwhile team Gai had their hands full facing their doppelgangers. Things came to a head in the cave, when Sasori managed to wound Chiyo, and impale Sakura with his puppets' weaponry. As always, he had coated his weapons in a deadly poison. Sakura only had one dose of antidote left, and now Granny Chiyo is left with choices to make.


33. The New Target
34. Formation! New Team Kakashi
35. An Unnecessary Addition
On their last mission to rescue Gaara, and during her battle with Sasori, Sakura learned that one of Sasori's spies with Orochimaru is due to meet with him in a few days. Sakura can now be there instead to learn where Sasuke is. But team Kakashi is in no fit state to go on another mission. After using his new Mangekyo Sharingan ability, Kakashi is in hospital recovering. Which means that they need a new member in the team, or since Tsunade is under pressure from the elders to keep Naruto safe from the Akatsuki, 2 new members. She assigns Yamato from the Anbu Black Ops as the team's new temporary leader, but it's the contentious Danzo who has the final word on who will take the place of Sasuke as the fourth member of the team. That turns out to be the enigmatic Sai, a young ninja who immediately manages to rub both Sakura and Naruto the wrong way. It's a bad start to a new team, but they have no time to waste getting acquainted if they are to get to the Tenchi Bridge and capture the Akatsuki spy. But Sai has a mission of his own to accomplish…


36. The Fake Smile
37. Untitled
38. Simulation
39. The Tenchi Bridge
The mission is a tricky one, to get to the Tenchi Bridge, in disguise, and find the Akatsuki operative and capture him, all without killing the spy. That's going to be hard enough, but with Naruto, Sakura both rapidly wanting to kill the obnoxious spy, they may not even get to the Tenchi Bridge. They may be up against a deadline, but acting Captain Yamato realises that they need to take the time to get their teamwork sorted. He gives the three younger ninja a choice, a day in prison, or a day at a hot springs resort. They'll need to be able to tolerate each other if the mission is to have a chance. Even with the opportunity of half a day's mission simulation, they get no closer to liking each other, but Naruto grudgingly accepts that he will have to work with Sai. Not a moment too soon either, as the spy arrives, ready for the rendezvous. It's the last person that they expect to see though. Fortunately, it's not a trap for Naruto set by Akatsuki as the elders feared. It's a trap set by Orochimaru instead…

Picture

Naruto Shippuden gets a 4:3 regular transfer that is clear and sharp throughout. There are some minor compression artefacts that are only really noticeable during freeze frame, and as you would expect, it's an NTSC-PAL conversion. 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. At this stage of the game, it's clear that the animators' love is being poured into the project, and while it is still limited and simpler than shorter run animations, it's still no slouch to look at.

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. The rap song opening certainly works in kicking off the new series with the right triumphant mood. 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

This is good stuff, really good stuff, as we get back to the manga storyline and find out what happens next in Naruto's battle against Akatsuki, and his ongoing quest to find and redeem Sasuke. Unfortunately, it's good stuff that is stretched out so thinly, padded with so much navel contemplation, flashbacks, and just plain standing around and talking that it nearly becomes too painful to watch. Nearly. There's still enough entertainment value, and narrative satisfaction to be derived from these thirteen episodes to warrant watching them. But Naruto doesn't make it easy on itself, or the viewer.


This set's first six episodes comprise the conclusion of the first arc of Naruto Shippuden, and given how an arc now comprises a season rather than a set number of episodes, this is the end of the first season as well. We wrap up the battles between the Leaf and Sand ninja and the two Akatsuki members, Sasori and Deidara. Most of the good stuff took place in the previous collection when it comes to Sakura and Chiyo's fight with Sasori, so what we get here is a little bit of mopping up, and one major plot development that will feed into the next arc. This is followed by the epitome of shonen dumbness when we rejoin Team Gai and their battle against their doppelgangers. After fighting for several episodes against their clones, the fights are beginning to take their toll, their strength is being sapped, and reflexes dulled. Meanwhile their clones are still fresh as daisies, and getting the upper hand. Then Rock Lee comes up with the solution to their problem. The answer is to get stronger. Such moronic scripting is typical of the lowest form of shonen, and were it anyone but Rock Lee stating that, I would have thrown something at the television.


Finally we get to Naruto and Kakashi's pursuit of Deidara. This has been going on while Sakura has been fighting Sasori, but nothing much has developed. We can now concentrate on this side of the action, which means that they finally catch up to Deidara. Kakashi reveals that he has been working on a new Sharingan skill, and we also learn that Naruto going all Fox Demon during battle is a bad idea, as opposed to the coolness of it during the first series. The situation resolved, what follows is not one, but two episodes of closure, with a certain character choosing to pay the ultimate price to rescue Gaara, and then getting an overblown, schmaltzy requiem that overwhelms with its saccharine manipulation. Then of course we have to have another episode to see the Kazekage home safe and sound, the aftermath for the Akatsuki group, and the return to the Leaf village. Two episodes is a little overkill for a story coda, and it's only because of the comedy rivalry between Kakashi and Gai taking a new twist, that I managed to keep my eyes open.


It's new arc time at this point, and with it come new opening and closing sequences, with theme songs that are a lot more forgettable than those of the first arc. It's only a matter of days before the rendezvous between Sasori and the Akatsuki spy within Orochimaru's organisation, just a few days for Naruto's team to get there and intercept, but once again, we get the preliminaries for this stretched out to six episodes, making you wish that these DVDs came with accelerator pedals. Still, there is a lot to appreciate here, certainly more than during the closing of the previous arc. We get to meet new characters, with Yamato a new Captain to take the place of the recuperating Kakashi. Yamato is an interesting fellow with a few secrets to hide. He's mild mannered and easy going, but can also turn his dark eyes into weapons of terror when Naruto acts up. That happens quite a lot here as team Kakashi also has another new member, the enigmatic Sai who apparently has no social skills whatsoever, and winds up both Sakura and Naruto in equal measure. But Sai has even more secrets than Yamato, a hidden agenda, and his own mission to follow. Danzo, a former rival to the third Hokage has assigned that mission to him. Danzo has his own, harsher vision of how the Leaf Ninja should operate, and his plans seem quite ominous at first glance. We're getting to see some of the politics of the Hidden Leaf Village, with Tsunade quite obviously not the ruler of all she surveys, and it's adding another layer of interest to the story.


We finally, finally get to the rendezvous with the spy at the Tenchi Bridge during the final episode in this collection, and it turns out to be more than one reversal given the identity of the spy, and given that Orochimaru shows up to advance his own agenda, fully adapted to his new body, and possessing his dark ninja arts once more. It's a peach of a cliffhanger to leave the collection on, and at least it leaves you looking forward to the next set of episodes in a few months. Naruto Shippuden's third collection is entertaining and fulfilling, but getting to the entertaining and fulfilling stuff is like trying to get blood out of a stone.