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 Here we go, with the latest volume of Naruto Shippuden to brighten our days. Or not, as the case may by. On the plus side for most fans, this is a proper arc volume, with no real filler - but for me, that's almost a disadvantage...
Just as Sasuke is about to execute a powerful jutsu to finish the team, Orochimaru and Kabuto appear and stop him. Orochimaru and Kabuto convince Sasuke to withdraw with them, leaving a weeping Naruto, who is distraught at his failure to bring Sasuke back to the Leaf. Once back in the village, the team reports to Tsunade about the results of the mission, leaving her greatly angered over Danzo's treachery of leaking classified information about the village's Anbu Black Ops team to Orochimaru. Sai, meanwhile, asks Danzo to allow him to remain longer with Team Kakashi, a request that Danzo reluctantly agrees to - it seems that Sai has come to see the other members of Team Kakashi as his friends.
Later, Naruto, Sakura, Sai and Yamato head out for the Fire Temple on their new mission. When the other group they were supposed to meet with fails to show up at the rendezvous point, the team gets separated while looking for them, and Naruto stumbles upon one of the four hidden tombs that they'd been assigned to protect. There, he meets one of the monks-in-training from the Fire Temple, Sora, and believing each other to be one of "the bad guys", battle is briefly joined. Once the misunderstanding is resolved, the monks and Team Kakashi complete their journey to the Fire Temple - which Naruto instantly recognizes from his nightmares...
I've probably covered this before, but it's no great secret that I'm far more of a fan of Naruto filler episodes that probably any "true" fan of the series. They have more of a sense of fun about them, they're short and to-the-point when it comes to battle, and they have an endpoint. That last bit can't be understated, in my opinion - when you get to the main story arc in Naruto, there's too much of the feeling that, no matter how epic the scale of the battle (and Naruto's face-off against Orochimaru does get rather epic), there's very little point to them - the bad guys will always retreat before they're killed, the good guys will return home empty-handed once more, and Naruto will dive into another bout of depression over his failure to rescue his non-friend who really doesn't want rescued anyway. I don't see much of a point to that.
Gripe over. For this review, anyway. What we get this time around is the necessary tying-up of loose ends as the battle against Orochimaru and Sasuke comes to an end - a process that sees Sai more closely tied to the gang, which is actually quite good to see - and the beginning of a new quest that could hold the fate of the Leaf Village in its hands. Sai has come along greatly as a character since he was first introduced, with a lot of back-story having been revealed to turn him from a character of pure evil into someone who's beginning to realise that Danzo's been playing him for a fool, and who's now doing his best to fit in with the "real" world he hadn't been allowed to see for so long. Most of his appearances here have a comic-relief feel to them, as his efforts to act normally around the others fail horribly and land him in no end of trouble, repeatedly, but hey, I like Naruto when it has a sense of humour, and Sai's scenes work for me. More, please.
Away from that, though, we're less successful. The retreat of Orochimaru and Sasuke was expected enough to be be depressing when it came (sometimes I hate being right), and while the new Fire Temple story introduces a few new people to the mix, the lead newbie, trainee monk Sora, fits a role that I've come to hate over the years: the overbearing person who does his damndest to be obnoxious and who refuses to accept that the help the Leaf ninjas are offering is required. I've seen the type so many times in Naruto over the years that I could almost write his story in advance - and sure enough, the revelations that are supposed to help us feel sorry for him and sympathetic towards his plight soon come. Yawn.
Some of the scenes around the Fire Temple story are also so far towards the silly end of the scale that it's hard to take them remotely seriously - show me a set of coffins high-tailing it through the forest at high speed, and I will lose all hope of seeing anything sensible, and that's what we get here.
Add in the now-routine extra training for Naruto, and warnings about his use of his inner demon; and a few little story aspects that seem to have been pulled out of nowhere just for this arc (how come no-one's thought to mention different chakra types and resulting fighting styles until now?), and the eye-roll factor was high with this one.
I have a real love-hate relationship with Naruto. That I'm still bothering to watch and review it says that I do find some things of merit with it - I cannot tell a lie - and there are times when I really do enjoy the series. There are a few volumes with 4-star ratings to prove this. This isn't one of those volumes, though, as it sticks to the routine and doesn't really try to be as good as the series can be. Disappointing, this time around.
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