Naruto: Shippuuden Volume 13
Naruto Shippuden box-set 13 contains one of the biggest and most important arcs in the franchise so far. The arc doesn’t finish here but it ends surprisingly well and on a big cliffhanger; however, unlike other important arcs that are consistently great, this one runs into some issues.
After learning about Jiraiya’s fate and elder toad Fukasaku giving encrypted intelligence that Jiraiya left about Pain, Tsunade gathers various Leaf ninja to try to decode the information that he left them.
Also, after an episode of mourning last time, Naruto wants vengeance for his teacher but knows that he’s not strong enough to defeat Pain yet since his master couldn’t beat him. It’s then that Fukasaku suggests to Naruto that he learns senjutsu with him at Mount Myoboku – The Land of Toads – which will allow him to become a sage like Jiraiya.
In other developments, Pain starts to prepare his attack on the Hidden Leaf village to capture Naruto and the Ninetails inside of him and as Naruto leaves for Mount Myoboku, Pain begins his pre-emptive attack on the village.
One of the strengths of these episodes, is the scale of this massive battle on Naruto’s village. It’s surprising to see how Pain goes about attacking the whole village and makes the situation for the Hidden Leaf almost hopeless; however, the episodes do well to slowly reveal who Pain really is and how there are six of him.
Again, one thing I keep noticing, is how filler in the proper Naruto arcs can either improve them or not. For example: when Naruto is training at Mount Myoboku, the explanation on senjutsu is detailed very well and you see the development when Naruto is training; I like that but there are moments where it doesn’t always work, Naruto’s young friend Konohamaru gets a full episode attempting to attack one of the Pains but in the anime, it ends up being really stupid and unbelievable.
The reason why I don’t sound that impressed with this supposedly epic arc, is the animation. While there are a bunch of battle scenes, I felt like most of the scenes in these episodes were characters talking. There isn’t a good balance between the action and exposition. I would imagine after one of the decently animated fights, money was saved by the animation studio to fund the next battle scene but you can see some drops in animation quality in certain episodes. However there are at least two episodes that had a change in animation quality to suit those action scenes, so they were alright.
Back to the positive moments! Some of the new jutsu I’ve not seen before are creative; one includes a Leaf Ninja that specialises in torture jutsu and when Naruto finally achieves his new Sage Mode, it’s very interesting on how he uses it and gets over Sage Mode’s drawbacks.
The final episode uses a character you wouldn’t expect to be focused on but she’s given some development and motivation to take part in a battle. There is a moment that might please Naruto fans but at the same time, it doesn’t really make an impact. It’s a weird episode to end the box-set with but the cliffhanger will make you look forward to the next bunch of episodes.
It’s quite strange to see that the animation is a lot better in the new OP “Motohiro Hata – Toumei Datta Seka”; I like the song but it’s not the best fit for that kind of opening. The new ED “OreSkaBand – Jitensha” just feels like an ending from another anime but it’s melody is nice.
Again, extras remain the same with concept art and trailers.
In Summary
With all its animation problems, this arc still holds a lot of importance to the overall plot, which will leave Naruto fans wanting more after the tense cliffhanger.
