Anime: Gekijouban Naruto Shippuuden

This is the fourth Naruto movie, made after the horrible fillers were over and the franchise returned back to being good for awhile. In an attempt to make the old fans return as well as gaining new audience, they poured a lot of money into making both the first dozen episodes of Shippuden, as well as this movie, to look as slick as possible. And indeed, both the series and the movie feel like they are trying to convince you that the show is back on track, better than ever. The characters are older, more powerful, more mature, the stakes are up, the action is better, and the pastures are greener hereon.

They even combined the best elements of the first and second movies (disregarding the third as a complete joke) in an attempt to offer the best possible movie-based plot the setting can offer. Thus we get the team having to escort a young snotty girl with a tragic past (again) and fight their way through villains who want to get their hands on something that will help them rule the world (again). They even went as far as throwing in a vision from the future, where Naruto gets killed and they keep insisting his fate can’t be altered. So yeah, on paper this sounds to be by far the best movie so far… And sadly it ain’t.

Although it looks spectacular and exciting on a superficial level, the directing is bad, many things make no sense, and there are major power level inconsistencies. Just like the second part of the main series, it starts with a bang which promises to be super awesome, only to quickly disappoint you with its juvenile gimmicks and messy storyboard. And here is what I mean in detail.

The first quarter of the movie is nothing but a silly build up without any actual depth. All we see is the villains slowly doing their thing and plotting to kill a priestess. All this time the heroes are not even seen or heard of. When we finally do get to see them, we get the same treatment of what the tv series did. They constantly try to impress us with silly bravado of the type “we are here, better than ever, but still funny and silly occasionally so don’t feel alienated because we are still the same”. And again nothing of importance has happened up until the middle of the movie.

The second part of the film on the other hand is quite amazing in terms of action and dramatic tension. Priestess Shion quickly changes from an apathetic doll to a snotty girl who is feeling depressed for the task that is given to follow all her life. There are side stories like fate that can’t be avoided and obedience that must be followed to the death. And the battles are simply spectacular and even tactical as far as the setting goes. It even has a twist in the end with the demon revealing stuff about his true nature. I must say in terms of superficial entertainment the second half is exceptional and rewards you to the fullest for having to tolerate the most boring first half.

Other than that though the scenario is done on the run and you easily see lots of things that could have been done much better. There is a part for example where someone disguises to look like the priestess to lure the enemy away and yet they make it appear like he used an amazingly hard and forbidden technique to do that. Big deal, they do it all the time in the main series and it isn’t hard or irreversible at all. The evil henchmen in another case lose the fight because they ran out of power and not because they were bested in battle. That makes them feel lame because they were never really strong and the good guys won because they stabbed them in the back while they were defenseless. That is just cheap and mean. Also, they keep on saying how the demon lord will be undefeatable if he ever finds his material body to merge with but they otherwise never seem to care how he was defeated a few decades ago WHILE he was in full power. And as usually, most never heard of such an important event, such as an army of tens of thousands of statues almost taking over the world, even when it happened a few decades ago. Heck, even the statues don’t make much sense since they appear indestructible in the beginning yet are trashed easily towards the end. And the whole prophecy of Naruto getting killed or duty to the death issues are dealt with in a most cheap and childish way for anyone to care. I can go on forever but the storyboard is full of holes.

But in case you disregard all that, Shion is fleshed out nicely for the crummy time she was given and the battles are super cool. Lee and Neji in particular steal the show even if they are cameos in the plot. Because eventually it is still just Naruto doing all the work, being the usual idealistic immature idiot with a golden heart he always was. And yes the ending is once again throwing a Rasengan on the villain’s face and giving his motivational monologue to the emo kid that makes everything feel right. So it is ok as far as action goes but it still leaves a lot to be desired in terms of story.

Naruto's Shippuuden is the sequel to Naruto, a good anime, with mostly fillers.[br][br]Naruto Shippuuden starts off slowly, some people make they're moves while the others train nothing knowing anything about it.[br][br]As the story evolves, we're 50+ episodes further, the anime takes the storyline to slow, the animation is messed up most of the time while in battle.[br][br]The story's nice though, but just slow, the art's still good like always, sometimes they mess up the characters faces, but for the rest it's good.[br][br]Our old characters return and reunite, new characters get introduced and characters will be remembered, we see some major growth in characters, between Naruto en NS, but in NS itself characters grow alot, even the new introduced characters. Although the series could be highly enjoyable, it isn't.[br][br]I like Naruto, don't get me wrong, but the story's to slow, the constant whining about Sasuke gets annoying, and Sakura's whining about how she can't do shit and the worrying about Naruto gets pretty old. The new character which joins Team 7 is a character which you can hate just by looking, his fake expressions, his attitude towards others etc. (This all changes a bit though.. lucky.)[br][br]If you liked Naruto you should watch it, if not, don't bother.[br]

This is the first Naruto movie in the Shippudden series (forth movie overall). Refer to my other reviews for comparisons.[br][br]Visuals[br]So the visuals in this movie are pretty much of an average Naruto quality throughout. For the majority of the time, they do not go above and beyond to signify any particular clue that this is a Movie, rather than a slightly more grander episode of the series. There are no extra details on the character modelling, and the fluidity of the animation is once again, mostly of the same standard.[br][br]There are however, a couple of slight exceptions. For one, there are much more atmospheric surrounding environments in the battle sequences. The climactic final scenes for example, are very detailed, with special effects flying off every crevice and great lighting. The CGI work is also very praiseworthy whenever it's presented - most noticeably the work on the Stone Soldier army - gives a very cool effect to the scenes and surprisingly doesn't feel out of place. CGI has been used carefully - only where it's needed, and where it won't detract from the overall style of the movie.[br][br]The fight scenes unfortunately do not showcase much new skill on behalf of the characters involved in them, and whilst somewhat entertaining to watch, won't have anything new to offer any Naruto fan who's familiar with the series or previous movies. [br][br]Sound[br]The sound in the movie is pretty spot on. It's hard to really find a fault with it, except that I wasn't really impressed with the end music theme, (not that it's particularly bad or anything).[br][br]The sound effects are the real stars here - when someone crashes into the ground you really feel the weight of it with the bass. All the effects are expertly placed and don't sound cheap at any point. The voice acting is what you'd expect from any Naruto based anime - using the same voices for relevant characters from the series where it can. The musical score is also played out well in the movie, using exciting melodies similar to the early action episodes in the series, but coupled with tones of maturity and a subtle eastern feel.[br][br]Story[br]There isn't anything new to see here from the main plot. Over the course of all the series, we have seen pretty much every type of story on offer in the Naruto world. And indeed, this forth movie even uses the same plot-type as 2 of the other movies - Naruto is involved in an escort mission. Again.[br][br]This time around, a demon is freed from it's sealed bonds and wants to essentially, destroy the world, because that's what demons like to do. The only person who can seal it back up again is a priestess, who coincidentally, its about the same age as Naruto. So inevitably, Naruto and his team have the responsibility to, (pretty much like the Fellowship of the Ring), escort the priestess to the demon's lair so she can vanquish him.[br][br]The only real thing to note about the Story in this movie, is that intriguingly, it opens with a vision that the priestess has, showing Naruto's violent death. This of course sucks in the viewer in wanting to find out just what on earth is going to befall our hero and if he'll actually die, or even, if he's already dead and we're just witnessing the events preceding his death.[br][br]The movie-specific plot is quite expendable and indeed, interchangeable with whatever anyone wanted to fit into it. The ending of the movie is a little odd - with the end credits being rolled whilst the climax is still only just being played out. It ended up having an abrupt feel that seemed a little cheap. [br][br]Character[br]The main characters in this movie from the Naruto world are: Naruto, Neji, Rock Lee and Sakura.[br][br]There is once again, nothing new to see in this department. Nobody uses any skill that hasn't already been showcased many times over, and there are no new character interactions or developments that also haven't already been played out. The main support character is the Priestess, who has a turbulent relationship with Naruto, and the two dislike each other from the get go. Of course, predictably, Naurto's ultimate super power of befriending anyone he meets eventually takes effect, but one wonders how often exactly are we going to be subjected to this same process?[br][br]I have only really been accepting of this typical Naruto character development when it was done in the first Naruto movie, where I genuinely felt it was pulled off nicely and still do. But having it happen over and over gets tired very quickly.[br][br]The fight scenes in this movie are somewhat dire in that there really is nothing extra special about them. Each of the established Naruto characters has had a more spectacular fight in either a previous movie or the series, and here there isn't really any instance where you're particularly excited for a fight, or feel exhilarated afterwards. The fights themselves have a half-decent standard, but it's the fact that we're really not seeing anything new that is the problem for me.[br][br]Value[br]I'd watch this movie again when I was rewatching the Shippudden series, just after around episode 54, where there is a sufficient enough break in the saga that the movie seems like a plausible distraction. But I wouldn't watch it without the series accompanying it though. [br][br]Enjoyment[br]There was a medium amount of enjoyment to be had from this movie, but it was nothing extra ordinary. I would have hoped that being the first movie of the new series would have reset the movies' calibre into being more polished and special, but alas no. Whilst being much better than the previous Naruto movie (the muck-filled Movie 3), it wasn't "better" enough to garner any substantial level of enjoyment from me.[br][br]Ultimately it doesn't further anyone's understanding of the Naruto world and it's concepts, and if anything, is just a semi-pleasant distraction to be had whilst waiting for the next proper episode in the series.[br]