|
R2 DVD Reviews
|
|
Monday, 31 March 2008 16:00 |
|
Page 1 of 4
 The Chuunin Test continues, as the one-on-one battles to whittle the 20 remaining candidates down to 10 continue. While Sasuke's certainly got the strength to make it through, will Naruto, Sakura and their friends be able to face the challenges posed by Gaara and the others? And just what is Orochimaru after..?
For full episode summaries and screenshots, check pages 2-4 of this review. There are 13 episodes in this release, so there's a lot to get through...
So, the beginning of the Chuunin Test during the last set marked the point where some traitorous part of me began to enjoy Naruto - very much against my better judgement, but there you go. This release is entirely taken up with the latest phase of the Test, the one-on-one battles, and that's both good and bad.
On the good side, the battles are still nice and short, with very little of the long, overly drawn-out sequences that plagued the earlier Land of Waves arc - each confrontation lasts at most two episodes, and while there's a little bit of standing around and explaining things (okay in small doses, but not every dang move, please), there's also a lot of flashback material, looking at how the "good" character in each pairing (and with one exception there's always and identifiable Bad Guy™) has developed since they were a kid and what motivates them now to be the best ninja they can be. If you value character development over action - and I do - then this is just the way to do it, and in a lot of cases it helps you get a better feel for the characters involved.
On the downside, there are ten pairings, one after the other, and each one follows exactly the same pattern. Fight, flashback, burst of renewed strength, fight, declare winner. Maybe a little more flashback somewhere just for good measure. Rinse, repeat. It's okay once or twice, but fill 10+ consecutive episodes that way and yet get back into the old problem of overly repetitive stories. To be fair, if you were watching this on TV at one episode a week it might not seem so bad - I watched it all over the course of three days, and that was testing the limits of my patience.
Fortunately, it's not all about the Chuunin Test. There are a few detours that deal with the sealing away of Sasuke's curse, Orochimaru's plans to get Sasuke to come to his side, and related betrayals and sneakery. Since Sasuke has never really appealed to me as a character (too cold to be interesting), I can't say I care much what happens to him - but the possibility of him being tempted to switch sides raised some good possibilities for future storylines. Orochimaru certainly seems to be suitably evil in his motivations, which along with his relatively-powerful sidekicks should ensure he provides plenty of challenges to our "good guys" once he inevitably takes more of a role in the story. I can't see him operating in the background for long.
Overall, though, while this volume was enjoyable up to a point, it was too repetitive in places to really be easy to get into - although it never quite got to be tedious, either. Naruto knows what it is and executes the idea well enough, but this time around doesn't quite manage to rise above "average", which it is capable of doing at times.
<< Start < Prev 1 2 3 4 Next > End >>
|
Reviews Archive 
