Review for Naruto Shippuden: Box Set 22 (2 Discs)

Introduction

Last month, I was complaining about the extensive delay between volumes when it came to Naruto Shippuden, as the gap between parts 20 and 21 turned out to be over half a year, long enough to lose the thread. I’m about to do a volte face, as just one month on, and Part 22 arrives, and this time I’m going to say it’s too soon. Not for any story reason, but because there was that problem with one of the Part 21 discs having the wrong region code, and with Manga having to recall and reissue the set. I don’t know offhand if the exchange programme has been fully enacted, but this soon after the fact, it’s most likely that Naruto fans will be buying Part 22 without having seen Part 21.


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 Shinobu on the other side, in many cases having to face lost loved ones in battle. Oblivious to all this Naruto continues his training, finally learning to master the 9-Tails chakra. 13 more episodes of Naruto Shippuden are presented across 2 discs from Manga Entertainment.


271. Road to Sakura
You’d think there was a Naruto Shippuden movie called Road to Ninja out. This timely bit of filler sees Sakura fall out of the sky and hit her head, suffering amnesia as a result. Ino finds her and takes care of her, but as her memories begin to return, Sakura finds that the Hidden Leaf Village is somehow different.

272. Mifune vs. Hanzo
273. True Kindness
274. The Complete Ino-Shika-Cho Formation
Kankuro’s team alters course to rendezvous with reinforcements as they flee from their pursuers, but the reinforcements are Samurai led by Mifune, and Mifune has history with the resurrected ninja Hanzo that is pursuing Kankuro. Meanwhile, Ino, Shikamaru, and Choji face their hardest challenge when they have to fight their resurrected teacher, and leader of team 10, Asuma, but they may be the only ones able to take him down.


275. A Message From the Heart
276. Attack of the Gedo Statue
277. Unison Sign
It was inevitable of course, Naruto finds out about the Fourth Ninja War, being fought just to safeguard him and the 9-Tails chakra, and the first thing he does is leave to join the battle. What’s unexpected is that Killer Bee goes with him. And on the way, the 9-Tailed Fox Demon wants to have a chat with Naruto about the nature of hatred. Meanwhile, just when they think the battle is over on the beach, Shikamaru’s team have to face Madara, who’s decided to join the battle.

278. Medic Ninja in Danger
279. White Zetsu’s Trap
280. Aesthetics of an Artist
Kabuto may have pulled his resurrected forces back, but that doesn’t mean that the danger is over. The fighting may have stopped, with the Allied Shinobi regrouping and pausing to treat their wounded. But there’s death stalking the hospital tents, death wearing a familiar face. There are enemy infiltrators, and it falls to Kiba, Shino and Hinata to track down their source. But can they defeat the enemy when they can’t even trust each other? Meanwhile Kankuro’s squad have a problem when another infiltrator sneaks in and frees Deidara.


281. The Allied Mom Force!
With the ninja off fighting the war, it’s the mothers, children, and elderly left behind in the Konoha Village, which makes it vulnerable to passing bandits, and sneak Akatsuki attacks. Konohamaru’s concerned about rumours coming from the forest, but no one takes him seriously.

282. The Secret Origin of the Ultimate Tag Team!
283. Two Suns
Naruto and Bee are on their way to join the battle, but standing in their way are Tsunade and the Raikage. They’re not going to let the Akatsuki’s targets walk straight into their crosshairs, and Raikage is willing to do anything to stop Naruto, up to and including killing him. But Bee has something to say to his ‘Bro’ and if Naruto can’t convince the Raikage, maybe Bee can. But elsewhere, Madara is about to unleash a whole new weapon onto the battlefield.

Picture

Naruto Shippuden is 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 authoring has changed for this release. Previously Madman put all the episodes on a disc as a 2 hour-odd chaptered title, easy to skip through, and at the end of it all, a Madman credits page would display. This time around, each episode is a separate title some 23 minutes long, and there’s no credits page. This is how Manga tend to author their discs, but the subtitles are still in Madman yellow, not Manga white. Having now seen a couple other recent Madman authored discs, it’s seems this is just the way they are authoring them now.

The discs present their contents with animated menus, and for extras you get 5 pages of storyboards, and the usual trailers for the Shippuden series (this time in the wrong aspect ratio), and the first Shippuden movie, all on disc 2.

Conclusion

I’m going to sound like a broken record here if you’ve already read my review of Collection 21. It’s more of the same Naruto Shippuden war epic action here, losing the personality and character focus of the earlier series for something of a grand scale and comparatively impersonal feel. It’s all essential stuff if you are following the series though, and this far into the Naruto saga, you’re hardly going to stop watching just because Naruto’s really only in four episodes of the thirteen here. Actually it’s not all essential stuff, as we get four episodes of filler too, but thankfully it’s not all bad filler.


The Road to Sakura isn’t exactly good filler though, as it’s here just to promote the Road to Ninja movie (there’s even a film poster in the background of one scene). It’s a bit of nonsense that looks at what Sakura’s life would have been like if fate had gone another way the night of the 9-Tails attack. I thought the next episode was filler, but apparently not. It does however focus on a character who has barely registered so far in the series, the Samurai Mifune, and someone I had never heard of, a ninja named Hanzo. It’s an enjoyable episode though.


The highlight of this collection has to be the battle that continues to unfold on the beach, as it’s the arc that resonates strongest emotionally. The team of Ino, Shikamaru, and Choji have to face the resurrected form of their teacher Asuma, forced now to fight for Kabuto and Akatsuki. Just as in the rest of this collection, there are plenty of flashbacks to remind us of the characters and the bonds that held them together, to layer on the emotional weight. It might slow the pace of the episodes down, but it does its job in drawing us into the storyline.


Around this time, Naruto figures out that there’s something going on in the outside world, and with his new 9-Tail powers, he breaks out of the barrier sealing him on the training island, and with Bee heads off to join the battle. A quick hint, he doesn’t get there quite just yet. Just when you think there’s a lull in the fighting, there’s a sneaky attempt to attack the medical ninja, so we at least get an episode with Sakura in this collection. There then follows a run of filler, although the first episode actually follows on well from the Medic Ninja in Danger episode, with Hinata, Kiba and Shino given a mission to track down the infiltrators.


Aesthetics of an Artist takes us back to Kankuro and Mifune as they continue to transport the captured Deidara. It’s an episode where Deidara escapes, and is recaptured, maintaining the status quo, although we do get to see Sasuke in this episode, kind of. The nadir of the filler is the Allied Mom Force, because in the middle of this fourth Ninja World War, we needed to see what was happening back in the village with all the kids. This collection does leave on a high note, with the confrontation between Naruto and Bee, and Tsunade and the Raikage, as Naruto and Bee have to convince them that they need to be fighting this war too.


The filler can be infuriating, the flashbacks certainly are infuriating, but the most infuriating thing is that you need to watch these episodes if you are a Naruto fan, as this is the story that you want to know, being told. It’s not being told as well as it could have been, but you can’t miss this stuff out. You might want to miss the next collection out, as we start a twelve episode run of filler in Collection 23. If Manga Entertainment are kind, they’ll release that as a 12 episode collection, but these releases are usually 13 episodes to a set, which means that there will still be that one essential episode after twelve of filler in Collection 23. So here’s hoping that it’s good, nay spectacular filler.