Naruto Shippuuden Ep074

Hey, they modified the opening so it's got a nicely animated fight between Asuma, Shikimaru, and the Akatsuki guys! Pretty badass. Actually, that's probably the best thing about this whole episode!




I really haven't much to say about this episode. Mostly because it was BORING. Honestly, this is a show about freakin' ninjas, all I ask is a stealth assassination at LEAST once an episode. But I digress (or do I? That was kind of on topic, wasn't it?), this episode was basically all about Naruto taking another step forward in his training. The only problem with watching Naruto train, though, is that there's NO WAY to relate to his methods! I mean, we look at Rock Lee and go "a thousand pushups, holy shit!", but we look at naruto and go "ok, he's palming a waterfall. Looks, uh, hard, I guess." Honestly, Naruto training scenes are some of the most tedious training scenes of any anime ever. i'd rather watch Goku train in that time chamber thing he's always training in. Then at least there'd be some martial arts or something!

Once again, why are these guys working together if they want to kill each other so badly??

Because they sure as hell weren't a good team BEFORE THE TIME SKIP.

Yeah, take that, waterfall! YEAH!

Sai's always so matter-of-fact.

"Especially Sasuke. That guy was the shit."

"Remember the time I cut my hair? That was pretty freakin' amazing."

"Quick, Ino! To the NINJA-MOBILE!!"

A day in the life of A NINJA!!!

PLANT WATERING JUTSU!!

WHAT? No! Remember that time you, like, uh...cut your hair?

Holy shit, look at him kick that waterfall's ASS!!

Beating up waterfalls is tough business.

That's Naruto, one: waterfall, zero!

And it only took you three tedious episodes!

And that concludes the screenshot portion of this episode! I'm quite a bit behind the series at this point, so I'll see about playing catch-up. Doing these blogs can take a while, so sometimes it's daunting. Oh, I almost forgot about my favorite screenshot of the episode!

Sexually pleasuring Kakashi is tough business!

Naruto Shippuuden Ep073

You know, I remember back in the chunin exam when the manga showed Temari Vs. Ten Ten and then the very next page was ten ten sprawled unconcious across the top of temari's fan. I thought "damn, I wish I'd gotten to see that fight!" and the anime actually delivered on that! In fact, it delivered quite competently, because it was one of the coolest chunin prelim fights to see animated, and it didn't even have a flashback in the middle of it!

Then, during the manga storyline when Team Gai had to face off against their dopplegangers, the manga showed only that they'd overcome their evil clones, but skipped the fight. Once again the anime delivered these unseen fights, and, although not particularly thrilling, at least filled in the gaps from the manga.

So when the manga skipped over Hidan and Kakuzu's capturing of the two tailed Jinchurriki, as well as the massacre of the fire temple, I figured the anime would deliver on what must've been some totally badass action!

I WAS WRONG.

Other than a rather hilarious scene where Hidan and Kakuzu get bitch slapped like pansies (more on that later), these fights were once again totally passed over. Well, fine then! Thus far these Akatsuki guys are still far off from being as threatening as Deidara (exploding clay guy with Vampire Hunter D mouths in his hands) and Sasori (immortal bishounen puppet dude). All they've done so far was complain about having to work with each other. Their banter is almost as painfully forced as Asoka's and Anakin's banter in that new Clone Wars CG movie! And that's pretty damn forced. At least it's slightly less cringe worthy because it's all in Japanese. Yes, watching something in a foreign language lessens the edge on awkward dialog!

But really, this episode wasn't so bad, a lot of stuff happened, so I am, admittedly, pleased! So, onto the screenshots!

Hidan gets politically incorrect.

Kakuzu shares his true feelings with Hidan.

Kakuzu shares his true feelings with Hidan (again).

Poor Shizune never gets a break.

This girl just needs to find another job or something. I don't think she has ever once not looked stressed and on the verge of a total nervous breakdown. Maybe she should pick up an application at the local ramen shop.

REALLY?? I'd totally forgotten!

"Or maybe just the 'kills people occassionally' Rasengan?"

Naruto's always so eager to learn how to do the same move slightly differently. Does he have no desire to learn, maybe, a genjutsu, or some Rock Lee-esque taijutsu? I can see how something like that would be good for a character whose only attack works by getting right up in your opponent's face.

Yay, he's improving!

That necklace doesn't look like a penis AT ALL.

Naruto gets shirtless! Wow, this kid is RIPPED. How's he even fit in that retarded orange jumpsuit? Oh, I want to mention one of the coolest bits of this episode! Watching the animation on Yamato's wood bending almost made this whole episode totally worth it. What a badass jutsu! (if not totally underused)

VISHNU GHOST PUNCHING JUTSU!

It must be seen to be believed! Bald monk guy summoned a multi armed woman to punch those Akatsuki guys with giant ghost fists! HILARIOUS! I don't want to say that's the best jutsu ever, but it's pretty high up there on my list of "WTF Jutsu". Also, to get beat down by a jutsu like that has to be terribly humiliating. Especially if you're a supposedly badass Akatsuki memeber!

"No, seriously, I'm really scared of the Akatsuki right now."

"Grr, how dare you not take our constant infighting and childish bickering seriously!!"

"And now you're dead." Wait, what??

So here was the highlight of the episode for me (you know, aside from the cool wood jutsu animation). Kakashi teaches a bunch of cute ninja kids how to light their parents on fire!

Yes children, it's important to practice your fire breathing jutsu or you'll never be able to give your friends third degree burns!

Next time I'll teach you how to shove Raikiri through a man's ribcage!

Until next episode, peoples!

Naruto Shippuuden Ep072

Oh hooray, back to the manga storyline! Certainly the series will pick up again and improve dramatically now that the main storyline can progress, right? RIGHT??

Every good episode starts with a funeral!

Naturally the only time ninjas all wear black in Naruto is when there's a funeral. Considering their line of work, there are probably a lot of funerals. I bet they'd save some time if they just always wore black. What a novel concept, ninjas wearing black!

Paperwork, a Hokage's worst nightmare!

Apparently Tsunade's responsibilities as Hokage involve rapidly stamping hundreds of pieces of paper without reading what's on them? No wonder the village elders are always telling her she's terrible at running the village! She's approving every request put forth to her without any review! Gods, just let Shizune do the paperwork, it's not like she does anything other than look worried and upset all the time.

Back when I was a young genin, we never had any of this jinchurrikoo nonsense!

Kakashi and Azuma have their "we're gonna lay down and die for the new generation" speech. Azuma's already dead in the manga, how long until Kakashi bites it, I wonder? The way he prattles on about how much better Naruto is than him makes his death seem all but inevitable!

Now, maybe it's just me, but all these 'sensei' characters like Kakashi, Iruka, Asuma, and such don't really seem THAT OLD! They look like they're all between 20 and 30!! I'M BETWEEN 20 and 30!! I sure as hell don't feel that old, and I don't feel I'm totally inferior to all the teens out there who are ten years younger than me. I guess they all just have self esteem issues or something.

"Dur, I likes killin' da peoples!"

So we've got some Akatsuki members chasing down a Jinchurriki. Admittedly these guys are badass in the manga, but I think something about the show's bad animation takes off a lot of their edge. Instead, they mostly just seem whiney and annoying (I can relate). And Hidan just won't shut up about how much he loves killing people! Literally every line out of his mouth the whole episode directly relates to his desire to kill. Unintentionally, this makes him hilariously dumb sounding.

"I'm not a strong enough! I need an attack that can kill even less people than Rasengan,
which hasn't killed anyone at all."

Naruto is apparently still too weak, despite having won every fight he's been in since the chunin exams AND not killing any of his opponents in the process (other than that monster guy in the second movie, but are the movies even canon?). So how does he wish to counter this supposed weakness of his? By developing a power that won't hurt anyone! Yeah, because Rasengan is just TOO LETHAL. Stop killing all those people with Rasengan, Naruto! You're turning this show into a blood bath! Honestly, you'd think every battle he fought didn't end with a punch in the face and a new friend.

Eat it, Naruto. Eat it all up.

Oh, but I forgot the highlight of the episode! naruto has a wet dream and humps a pillow right in front of Sakura and Sai! You have to see it to BELIEVE IT!

Naruto Shippuuden Ep071

Hey! After many hours/days/years of ranting about Naruto to all my friends (or nearby people caught in the crossfire), I now have a blog where anyone can read all my naruto related ravings! Obviously the show's kind of far along at this point (gods, how long has this series been going?), but I'll just jump into it as if I've been doing this all along, since, in a way, I have...

So the series is just wrapping up yet ANOTHER wonderful filler arc! Not sure exactly why they're still so insistent on filler since the anime's about three years worth of material behind the actual manga, but hey, that's cool, everyone loves a good filler arc! Too bad good filler arcs don't exist. I have my suspicions that japanese anime writers just have this 'Big Book of Filler Plots' that they open whenever they need an inconsequential arc to take up time while the manga finishes up a more relevant plotline.

As far as the Naruto series is concerned, though, there's mostly just ONE type of filler arc, and that's basically the Gaara storyline retooled with a different, less awesome character. This filler's pick is the ever so creatively named Sora! Who is Sora? Some kid who was magically infused with Kyuubi chakra from way back when the Kyuubi attacked Konoha! How did this happen? Well, some bad guy named Kazuma magically put the evil chakra in his child so the child would grow up to DESTROY KONOHA! I'm not really certain what Kazuma would've done if the Kyuubi had run amok and ended up destroying the whole Fire Country, his homeland, but, hey, as far as I can tell Kazuma was pretty much just nuts anyway so he probably didn’t even give a damn.

Anyway, as things often go with this particular storyline, Sora of the Fire Country is looked down upon by his peers because he’s a monster and he has no friends so on and so forth. So naturally Naruto comes along, fights Sora a couple times, and decides they’re friends. They go back to Konoha, Kazuma shows up, Naruto kills a floating wig (as in a hair piece with glowing eyes), Konoha’s overrun by ninjas zombies, and Sora turns into the Kyuubi. After all other threats to Konoha are taken care of, Naruto gets down to business ending this filler arc as quickly and painlessly as possible by punching Sora in the face and reminding him they’re good buddies!

You and me both Kazuma. Seriously, this was almost the most unintentionally hilarious filler arc yet!

Punched...IN DA FACE! What better reminder that you're friends?

Naruto is BURNT FACE MAN! Could he look any angrier about being friends with Sora? Maybe if he were crying tears of blood...

And goodbye forever! Sora was so desperate to get out of this series he didn't even wait around to finish healing. But, you know, it's cool. He only had, like, eighth degree burns over his entire body is all.

Asuma has self esteem issues. In fact, he goes on to compare himself to a pawn in a shougi board, and then hints that Naruto's the King. NARUTO!! The only time he's competent at all is when he goes into "Generic Selfless Hero" mode, at which point he's hardly even recognizeable as himself! All other time's he's just a bumbling idiot.

Well, if there's one good thing that came out of this filler arc, it's that it signals the series' return to the manga storyline, hoorah! Not that the manga storyline is much better (but at least the plot progresses!).

Goodbye, Sora! We'll miss you, assuming we haven't completely forgotten about you by the next episode!