Naruto Shippuden 16×362 Review: Kakashi’s Resolve

This week’s anime episode of Naruto Shippuden marked the end of fillers and resumed the battle with Obito and Madara. The episode was fast-paced, and had some great moments.

This episode review is spoiler free for fans who don’t read the Naruto manga.

I just love Madara as a character. He has an air of coolness about him. Nothing seems to surprise him, and he knows what he wants. He easily blocked Naruto’s attack, and ordered Obito to get rid of Kakashi and Might Guy, while he went to extract the eight and nine-tails. Madara summoned Hashirama’s wooden dragon and it looked epic! It easily entangled Naruto, who was in full nine-tails mode, with ease and started to drain its chakra.

Most of the episode focused on Kakashi’s and Obito’s relationship. The flashback showed that Obito and Naruto weren’t different from each other. Obito too wanted to become Hokage, but went to the dark side because of Rin’s death. The whole thing really made me appreciate Naruto more as a character. Even though his parents were killed, and he had to grow-up alone, he never lost the ability to love and care for his friends. I know Kishimoto writes the story, but I really wanted another angle with regards to Obito’s anger. Obsessing over the death of a teammate feels weird to me. It caused him to attack the Hidden Leaf Village, kill Minato and Kushina, and initiate the current Ninja World War. I find it hard to take Obito seriously as a villain ever since his true identity was revealed. It’s not as if Rin loved him back when they were both twelve years old.

Obito and Madara attacked Naruto’s friends at the same time, but he managed to create a clone of himself in order to protect them. This was followed by attacks from Kakashi and Might Guy. I have to hand it to Guy, his attack looked awesome. The animators did a good job. For those of you who are fans of Might Guy, this is just a taste of what he’ll do in the future.

In the end, Naruto helped Kakashi gain back his confidence, and helped him stop blaming himself for Rin’s death. Naruto and Bee threw a combined Bijuu Bomb in order to stop the Gedo Statue from turning into the ten-tails. At first, it looked as if they succeeded but the smug look Madara’s face said it all. The ten-tails appeared, and the heroes were left facing an even bigger threat than before. I can’t wait for the fight next week.

What did you think of the episode? Share in the comments below!

Author: Farid-ul-Haq

Farid has a Double Masters in Psychology and Biotechnology as well as an M.Phil in Molecular Genetics. He is the author of numerous books including Missing in Somerville, and The Game Master of Somerville. He gives us insight into comics, books, TV shows, anime/manga, video games, and movies.

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