Naruto: Shippuden Episode #365 Anime Review

Naruto Shippuden Episode 365

The next fight slips in during the middle of the night.

What They Say:
Naruto is overcome with grief over Neji’s death, but Hinata’s words restore his fighting spirit. Shikaku outlines his final strategy before he dies, in which Nine Tails will send its chakra to increase everyone’s strength. United in their cause, Naruto and the shinobi set out to take on Ten Tails, determined that Neji and their comrades will not have died in vain!

The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Naruto: Shippuden did a lot in the last couple of episodes to boost up the impact of what’s going on with the big and main fight going on against Obito and Madara and it was simply welcome to bring Naruto back onto the stage. That fight has a lot going for it in general, but it also had the added benefit for me towards the end that Naruto really got a lot of positive energy in a couple of different ways from Hinata. She’s long been the favorite of many, myself included, but she gets so little time overall that you end up rooting for her all the more when events bring her into play. With her standing side by side with Naruto and him stepping up to the plate in a big way that’s really surprising everyone, it’s a great moment. Even more so when he starts powering up everyone else with chakra in order to get everyone ready for what’s to come.

The heightened chakra from the Nine Tails now running through everyone gives us a few moments to provide some flashbacks, a re-staging of who is who and the sacrifices made since there’s connections to those that have moved on as well. The emotional side of the series has always been one of its stronger points since everything is so connected and having that come up in the midst of the fight just adds a bit more weight to it all as they fight back against Obito. There’s some pretty good bits along the way as some of the elders in the shadows get to provide their advice and we see how the younger generation is truly stepping up and leading the way, but we also get a bit of planning and organizing going on amid it all as well. There’s some odd changes in tone as it goes on since it pauses for these moments, but it works overall.

The build up of all of this and what Naruto does by distributing the chakra power is quite good since it allows a super-powered army to form behind him that’s ready for just about anything, and to take down the first real line of defense. This all moves along quite swimmingly, but of course we have to go away to other things. That’s usually problematic and annoying, but what we get here is the “infiltration” of the Leaf village by Sasuke, Orochimaru and the others working with them to advance their goals. Waiting for the big guns of the village to be away was definitely a big part of their plan and with some pretty disturbing bits along the way, we see them moving their plan into motion with some reanimations going on that will let Orochimaru move to the next level in his grand plan, once again truly painting him as the master manipulator and ultimate evil of this series. His plan, revealed in the last frames, is truly disturbing.

In Summary:
While the fight with Obito and Madara has been interesting and we’ve had a lot of back story that explains its deeper connections, the threads to a lot of other elements and the various characters involved over the years, this episode once again reminds us that Orochimaru just continues to be the real thorn in everyone’s side. His movements here are brief, but damn if they’re not fun to watch because you just want to see what kinds of things he’s going to do next. In a lot of ways, he’s reminiscent of the Joker from the Batman mythos because he just does and does and does things no matter how many times he’s stopped. There’s a lot to like here, even if we don’t get anywhere near enough Hinata, and we can see certain things closing up soon while others are just beginning to reveal themselves.

Grade: B+

Streamed By: Crunchyroll

Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.