Naruto: Shippuuden Volume 5
We begin directly where we left off with Sasuke attacking a weakened Team Kakashi with no remorse whatsoever towards his friends. He confirms that he has no desire to go back to the Hidden Leaf Village and, still showing desire to kill his brother, has allied himself with Orochimaru. Just as Sasuke is about to unleash a powerful jutsu, he is stopped by Orochimaru who wants Naruto’s team to live to defeat the Akatsuki, and makes a decision to retreat. Both Naruto and Sakura are both distraught that they couldn’t capture their friend – but knowing that Sasuke is alive is enough to give them hope that they can save him one day. And so the team return to the Hidden Leaf Village.
The next arc starts off strongly with Kakashi offering Naruto a chance to do some training on a brand new ultimate jutsu; of course, he agrees. We are given a much more detailed version of his training compared to the manga and this provides some of the best humour so far, even if Naruto’s dimwittedness can be a tad annoying. Then we cut to the first major filler arc of the series. A mysterious graveyard robber is attempting to steal coffins from tombs protected by the Fire Temple monks and Team Kakashi is sent to investigate.
When it comes to filler arcs, I am positive toward them as long as they’re interesting and, for the most part, this one is. It also ties into Naruto’s wind chakra training and Sai developing his social skills, which is a positive. While the arc starts out as a simple mission, it builds into this huge story full of mystery and great battles. But there is a flaw: Sora, the main character in this arc is a whiny teenager and has a similar personality to Naruto. However, throughout these episodes, he never seems to break out of that mindset; he also seems to share a similar back story to any other character who has had a hard time in the series, which makes him all the more uninteresting to a point where I just couldn’t care about him.
The animation through most of these episodes was fine for the most part, except that it was the first time that I could clearly see characters’ eyes out of place, which was weird. Also the English voice acting (most notably the characters exclusive to this grave robber arc) is awfully dull at important points. By that the end however, it ended on an exciting cliff-hanger, and the build-up to the climax was well done.
The third opening to Shippuden is “Ikimono-Gakari’s – Blue Bird” a decent J-pop replacement along with harmonica; the accompanying animation shows us what to expect from this arc. Two new closings appear in this box set: the first is a classical piano tune (Surface -Sunao na Niji) that shows the main male cast in cool sharp suits, and the second has more of the light-hearted Samurai tribute with Naruto and Sasuke along with the J-Rock theme (Nico Touches the wall – Broken Youth) which is one of my favourites Naruto endings so far.
Extras are unchanged from the previous box set.
In Summary
If you can get past the lame main character of this arc and the poor animation at times, then this filler is seriously entertaining enough to leave you satisfied.
