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arachcobra · 6 years ago

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Naruto Episode 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 and 19 Review

Let’s get ready to rumble

Review of Naruto Episode 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 and 19: Haku's Secret Jutsu: Crystal Ice Mirrors, The Number One Hyperactive, Knucklehead Ninja Joins the Fight, Zero Visibility: The Sharingan Shatters, The Broken Seal, White Past: Hidden Ambition, The Weapons Known as Shinobi and The Demon in the Snow

ArachCobra

Hoo boy, this is gonna be a long one.

So Gato's henchmen Zori and Waraji bust into Tazuna's place by straight up carving the wall open. That's kinda awesome. And then they immediately start busting the inventory, because fuck Tazuna's dishes I guess. Anyway, they take Tsunami hostage and plan on killing Inari, but Tsunami promises to let them do whatever they want with her if they spare Inari.

In the English dub anyway. Originally, she threatens to bite her own tongue and drown in her blood if they hurt Inari, denying them a captive. Gotta go with the original Japanese take on this, that's fucking hardcore. Go Tsunami.

So Inari is left behind, crying, because now he's also at risk of losing his mom. But then he remembers Naruto and storms after the two thugs to... Actually, he has no plan other than yelling a challenge and running towards the enemy. Which I grant is very Naruto. And Naruto does show up right then and saves them both.

But imagine if he hadn't. We're supposed to see this as Inari overcoming his issues and gaining courage. But again, courage is defined here as being an idiot. If Naruto hadn't conveniently showed up when he did, having figured Gato's goons were heading for Tazuna's house, Inari would have been cut to ribbons. Courage does not mean not being smart, but the way the show plays it off, we're supposed to think this is admirable. Sure, brave people head into danger all the time. Firefighters, policemen, soldiers. And sometimes, you don't have a choice but to risk it all. I do get that. But that's last resort and only narrative coincidence saved Inari.

Back at the bridge, Haku enters battle by spinning like a fucking beyblade. Not the most intimidating entrance. Then they fight and despite the hype, Sasuke does get the better of him, which makes Zabuza declare that Sasuke is Haku's rival.

Sakura and Kakashi just watch. I guess it would be too much to ask them to join the fight and even the odds in their favour.

Yes, climbing trees magically gave Sasuke the ability to keep up with Haku. I guess. Somehow.

So Haku uses his ace in his sleeve and summons several ice mirrors which he can enter and fight from. Sasuke supposedly gets fucked up pretty badly, but given the sheer amount of needles animated, seems like Haku is missing with most of them.

Finally, Sakura tries to help by throwing a kunai, but Haku catches it, only to get conked in the head by Naruto.

A brilliant sneak attack from our ninja idiot. Good to see.

Of course, he immediately ruins it by doing a dramatic entrance worthy of Darkwing Duck and starts blathering about how this is just like in the stories when the hero arrives in the nick of time.

After getting yelled at, he tries to do the clone thing, only for Zabuza to attack him mid hand sign.

Stuff like this is why I like Zabuza.

Now, Haku does intervene because he wants to fight Naruto, but there's a fundamental problem here that must be addressed.

Now, Naruto, he likes to talk about becoming the greatest ninja ever. But scenes like this reveal something rather... Peculiar.

Fundamentally, Naruto has no fucking clue what a ninja is.

He always tries to storm in and hit hard. Even accepting the much more offensive role ninjas have in this universe, emphasis is still placed on deception, trickery, stealth, tactics. Meanwhile, Naruto thinks he's on an episode of Dragonball, charging in loudly and swinging his fists no matter how big and dangerous his opponent is. At least the others call him out on it this time, but it is troubling that Naruto has managed to become a ninja, despite obviously having no fucking clue what he's supposed to be doing.

And then he 'sneaks' into the mirror dome, trapping himself there with Sasuke.

Because Naruto, on top of everything else, is also an idiot.

Meanwhile, Sakura is guarding Tazuna. That is their main objective, so technically that's great, but since the show instead wants to focus on the interesting battles, it leaves little for her to do.

Back in the dome, Haku keeps destroying Naruto's clones, while Sasuke uses his ally as a distraction to analyze Haku's jutsu to find a way to counter it.

Good on Sasuke. He's actually ninjaing.

And then Kakashi and Zabuza starts fighting, with the latter summoning an extra thick fog to counter the Sharingan. Then, on top of that, he tries to go for Tazuna and Sakura to lure Kakashi into a vulnerable position. Kakashi gets in the way, blood sprays and Sakura screams.

Back in the dome, our two intrepid friends are starting to look rather like pincushions. Makes me wince whenever they fall over, because you know at least one of those needles just got shoved into them. Not that it ever amounts to anything.

So Naruto faints from exhaustion, Haku tries to finish him off and Sasuke gets in the way. He gets some actually sad final words and Naruto loses his fudge and gets ready to end fucking everything. The power sealed in explodes outward and everyone notices it.

On that note, boy, Zabuza sure did spend a lot of time with his sword stuck in Kakashi if we have to judge from how long passed between the scream and us getting back to them.

But anyway, Naruto goes berserk and absolutely ruins Haku, stopping short of killing him only because he recognizes him as the cute crossdresser from the woods. They exchange words and Haku tells his backstory. It's a genuinely sad tale about prejudice, hate, exclusion and finding a place in the world to belong. Finally, feeling that he is now useless again, Haku encourages Naruto to kill him. But before out blond ninja can euthanize him, let's go back to Kakashi and Zabuza.

So Kakashi got hurt, but that allows him to do a little dance routine with a scroll of paper to summon dogs to hold Zabuza still. Then he charges up his lightning hands and gets ready to fingerbang Zabuza in the heart with the power of Zeus.

Haku sensing this decides he has one last use left in his life, taking the blown and attempting to hold Kakashi still while Zabuza finishes him off. While he succeeds at the former, Kakashi gets away with his body before Zabuza can kill him.

And thus dies Haku. Its a rather sad tale.

Meanwhile, Inari runs around trying to gather an army, but no one dares fight Gato. Still, his words strikes a chord and later when he prepares to go off on his own armed with a crossbow, the villagers show up to help.

Back on the bridge, Sakura sees Sasuke and freaks out. Tazuna thinks some encouraging words. Wish he'd say them instead.

And while that is going on, Zabuza is getting his shit kicked in by Kakashi. It's seriously embarrassing. Like, we cut back, and Zabuza has already broken an arm off-screen. And then Kakashi bitchslaps him away. It's like, now that his role as villain is over, Zabuza has gone from a complete menace to some jobber getting slapped around before the main event. Honestly, kinda disrespectful to his character. And then Kakashi breaks the other arm.

Then Gato shows up with an army of misfit goons, because he's tired of how shit's going down. Then he kicks Haku, which triggers Naruto. Zabuza says he didn't care about Haku, using him only as a tool, which causes Naruto to yell at him.

And then Zabuza cries, Naruto's words cutting deep.

Sure. We'll go with that.

So then he charges Gato armed only with a kunai in his mouth, cutting through Gato's army and killing the lil' guy himself after delivering a chilling speech about Hell. It's all kinds of awesome.

Then the rest of the villagers show up, scaring off what goons remain. Personally, I think they should have shown up a little earlier, so that they could have part in the showdown with Gato, since all this build up was for them to stop letting their fear of the guy control him. But that's just my opinion.

With everything resolved, Kakashi drags a dying Zabuza to Haku's body, so he can see him one last time before he dies. Between the music, cinematography and dialogue, this scene genuinely got me misty-eyed. There's only one stupid line from Naruto that doesn't work. This truly does feel sad and I gotta hand it to the anime for pulling that off.

Also, Sasuke is miraculously alive. I guess Sakura forgot to check his pulse before deciding to cry all over him. Yes, yes, I get it, she was distraught, but really, that should be the first thing they checked.

Zabuza and Haku get buried and our protagonists leaves.

Anyway, the bridge also got finished. Which is surprising considering that bridges of the type we see here, spanning quite the distance across the ocean, takes quite a fucking long time to make. I guess they've been away for a couple of years and nobody told us. And then it's named the Great Naruto Brudge.

Go fuck yourself, Tazuna.

Seriously, okay, great, Naruto helped. So did everyone else, including Sakura, who was babysitting your sorry ass while you were being hunted by a hulking ninja wielding a steel girder sizes kill-blade. Not to mention Kakashi, who fought Zabuza, and Sasuke, who took a bullet(Well, handful of needles) for his comrade. And of course, let's not forget Kaiza, who was oh so important some episodes ago.

But no. All credit goes to Naruto. What a cop out.

Anyway, while these episodes have some legendarily great moments, from Haku's past to Zabuza's final moments, they're also hindered by several issues. First of all, they were spread out over too many episodes. There's too much faffing about and “Last time on Naruto,” which kills the pacing at times.

Secondly, Naruto makes some truly stupid mistakes that really makes it hard to believe he's got what it takes to be a ninja, much less the hokage.

And thirdly, despite having a technically important role, Sakura gets to do nothing. This is a shame, as the previous episodes have established that she is quite skilled in her own way. But since her job is to guard Tazuna and the camera would rather focus on the epic action, she just felt put on the sideline. At least she still did something, I guess, but Sakura by this point really needs opportunities to shine.

Givenea

Let’s see. Zabuza is a big threat until he isn’t, then Kakashi just slaps him about. There’s also this weird moment where we’ve cut to Naruto, Sasuke and Haku for a long conversation then cut back, and Zabuza and Kakashi has apparently just been standing there for several minutes. We get Haku’s backstory, it’s genuinely touching. Then Gato shows up with a bunch of goons. Team 7, the villagers and Zabuza team up to defeat him. Everyone is happy, except for Haku, Zabuza and Gato who’re all dead. Zabuza’s death scene was pretty touching though.

Also the bridge is named The Great Naruto Bridge, because fuck everyone else.

I have so much to say about this episode.

Let’s start with tying a nice big bow on Naruto and Inari’s relationship. There are two scenes to carry in mind for this.

First, Naruto saves Inari and his mother Tsunami from some goons Gato send to kidnap one of them for some reason. Inari starts crying (can’t blame him) but tries to stop himself. Naruto tells him that there’s nothing wrong with it as he’s being happy and that’s fine.

Ok, so tears of happiness are fine, got it. Crying can happen due to just about any strong emotion and is a healthy outlet of such thing, but this seems to be the thesis we’re going with.

Inari then fetches the villagers to go scare of the last of Gato’s goons, good for them.

The second scene to bear in mind comes as the episode is ending when Kakashi and team is saying goodbye. Inari is trying not to cry, and Naruto tells him it’s ok to do so. Then we see that Naruto too is bawling his eyes out, and I agree with Sakura here… this is really damn stupid.

The lesson is apparently that it is only ok to cry if you doing so helps make Naruto look good… I don’t think I have a middle finger big enough, to express just how far this show can shove that idea.

So, let me moan and complain about the bridge instead. See, there is a Great Naruto Bridge in real life Japan. It lies in continuation of The Small Naruto bridge and crosses the Naruto strait. Now I was not able to find anything on how long it took to build The Great Naruto Bridge. I was however able to find something on the New Little Belt Bridge here in Denmark.

Let’s compare bridges:

New Little Belt Bridge:

Suspension bridge.

Length: 1700 meters.

Width: 31.2 meters.

Time under construction: 5 years (1965-1970)

Great Naruto Brigde:

Suspension bridge.

Length: 1629 meters.

Width: 25 meters.

Time under construction: no idea

Now, The New Little Belt Bridge is slightly bigger than The Great Naruto Bridge, but I don’t think it is completely crazy to say they could be constructed within a similar time span. And from the view the show gives us of the damn thing, we can conclude a few things:

The bridge is a suspension bridge. This can be seen from the general design when people are working on it in episode 11

It is almost finished. When Zabuza and Haku arrived in episode 12 you can see that the bridge is very close to reaching shore.

At the end of the ark it is done. The team walks home over the bridge, it kinda must be done for that.

From the scenes in episode 11 where Giichi quits we can see that keeping workers is hard.

From the scene in episode 11 where Sakura and Tazuna goes shopping we can see that resources are tight.

Also, according to the tale of Kaiza in episode 11, Kaiza arrived 3 years prior and Gatö arrived about a year prior to the events of the ark according to Tazuna’s explanation as they sail under the bridge in episode 7.

So with these facts in mind, time to make some assumptions:

With the difficulty of keeping workers and the lack of resources it is assumable that the progress on building the bridge has been pretty much halted in the year Gatö has been there.

The bridge could not have been built response to Gatö’s takeover, as construction would have to have started 4 years prior to his arrival.

Again, with the lack of resources and workers, it is assumable finishing the bridge would take longer than anticipated.

We are gonna assume for the need of simplicity that it takes equally long to build a meter on any part of the bridge and that the short distance we can see is 50 meters long. We are also gonna assume that The Great Naruto Bridge of the show is the same size as The Great Naruto Bridge in Japan. That means that under normal conditions it should take Tazuna and a full crew 56 days or almost two months to finish the bridge.

Now Tazuna does not have normal conditions, he has, if nothing else, to bring in more workers and figure out how to pay their wages. But let say he manages all that he needs to quickly. In that case the ninjas could maybe be home after something like 5 months after heading out…

But see… here’s the thing, as far as I could understand. The bridge is supposed to have been built in response to Gatõ. Tazuna supposedly finished a five-year project in about a year, with barely any money, few workers and a sadistic, dictatorial business tycoon breathing down his neck.

I don’t think I have to explain how impossible that is.

Here are the links for the pages I used to look up the bridges:

https://www.japanhoppers.com/en/shikoku/naruto/kanko/662/

https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilleb%C3%A6ltsbroen_(1970)

http://www.vejdirektoratet.dk/DA/viden_og_data/statens-veje/broer/Sider/Lilleb%C3%A6ltsbroen.aspx

Fluttersniper13

I'll keep this brief. Goons blow up wall, Inari's an idiot, Naruto is an idiot. On the bridge, Sakura does nothing. Sasuke does something. Kakashi is being cool. Silent killer isn't being silent again. Haku is cool. Naruto comes in, is a mororn. Things go downhill. Ends with a relatively touching scene, which Naruto ruins. Good job, show.

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13125294/9/Naruto-Rewrite-1-Road-to-Ninja

#naruto #naruto rewrite #review

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