English Dub Review: Naruto Shippuden “Land Ahoy! Is This the Island of Paradise?”

This is the moment we have been waiting for! Season 12 of Naruto: Shippuden began yesterday, and we have the review right here!

Naruto, Yamato, and the rest of the ninja are closing in on Naruto’s next assignment: which is hide on a secluded island where Bee trained to control his Eight-Tails powers. Naruto flashes back to when he got the prophecy that he will find an octopus. Yamato is relieved that Naruto didn’t catch on to the true reasoning behind the island excursion. They come to the island, and the shoreline is all spikes. Naruto is dejected, until he finds a giant squid that he mistakes as an octopus.

The squid attacks the ship, and grabs Naruto. Before the squid takes Naruto, Killer Bee slaps the shit out of the squid. Naruto is put off by Bee, because he is a rapper. Another Cloud ninja, Motoi, greets the ship as it reaches the island. Guy finally gets out of the ship, because he had sea sickness. This reminds me of a family outing on a cruise ship. They are walking through the island, where they come across a huge gorilla. Bee takes point, and gets the gorilla to stand down, because he tamed every animal on the island.

They get to the housing quarters, and adjourn until the morning. Naruto rests for all of five minutes, before he goes to Bee. He asks Bee to train him, but he refuses because he was sent there for vacation. He gives Naruto to change his mind by rapping, and it seems to start. Then comes the fist bump, which Naruto passes as well. He tries to rap again, but fails. He uses his harem jutsu, but Bee has no need for shadow clone females. He goes to Motoi for help, but pisses him off when he starts mouthing off about Bee. Naruto uses the fact they were both hated as kids, but Motoi asked him if Bee greeted him. Motoi seemed pleased with the yes, so he took Naruto off to Bee’s training grounds.

They go to the Waterfall of Truth, and Motoi asks him to sit in the tiny island in the middle. After a few seconds, Naruto comes face to face with the manifestation of all of the hate, anger, and resentment that he has had over the years. It’s better explained as a “Dark Naruto.”

The darker Naruto says he’s the real Naruto, the one that he hides. He realizes that the Nine-Tails latched on to this doppleganger, who then attacks Naruto. Elsewhere on the island, Bee is having sumo matches with the bigger animals on the island. The Eight-Tails tells Bee he should have been watching over Naruto, because he reminds himself of the younger Bee. Back at the waterfall, Naruto is trying to defeat his darkness, but it isn’t going so well. They have the same exact power. They attack each other with Rasengans, and Naruto was defeated by his darker half. Motoi tells Naruto that he has to defeat his darker half before he can move on with his training.

I have to say, I was very impressed with the dub. They followed the Japanese script, almost verbatim, all the way down to Bee’s repeating “You fool.” I was leery of this, because Disney’s version of the dub was pretty bad. But all in all, it was a good watch. I really dug how Viz kept the little intro after the opening theme as well, because it’s as close to the Japanese airing that we’ve gotten in a show in quite a while.

This story sets up his training to control the Nine-Tail’s powers. In just one episode, it shows how far Naruto has come, but also how far he needs to go to help in the oncoming war. I really enjoy the episodes where they just focus on one arc within the season, so we can focus on what the main focus is supposed to be. Everything here just fell into place.

If there was a good starting point to get into Naruto, this is a wonderful spot, because it will go into the biggest arc of the series, the Fourth Ninja War. Good intro episode to the season, with not too much going on. More importantly, however, there was enough to keep us sated and ready for next week’s episode.