Review: Naruto Shippuden “The Orange Spark”

Naruto is still fighting the Nine-Tails. But he finally gets some surprise help from a very unlikely source!

 

Spoilers Below

In case you couldn’t get it from the picture, we have a surprise for anyone who hasn’t read the manga, a certain red haired, angry tomato finally makes it to Naruto! Well, kind of, anyway.

This episode starts right where the last episode stops. Naruto goes in with his Giant Rasengan, but gets swatted away by one of the tails from Nine-Tails. He then gets swatted to the ground. That turns out to be a shadow clone, where the real Naruto takes a tail, and swings the Nine-Tails to the ground. Naruto throws a Rasen-Shuriken, and knocks down the Nine-Tails. He goes to pull its chakra, but the Nine-Tails pulls back, infecting the shadow clone with the hate. This drains his nature chakra, taking him out of Sage Mode. Naruto is slowly getting infected with the hateful chakra of the Nine-Tails. As he loses control, Naruto goes into a subspace of his subconcious, where his mother is waiting.

Naruto has no idea who she is at first, and he thinks that she is the Nine-Tails true form. She knocks him upside the head, and just tells him that she’s Naruto’s mom. Meeting her releases all of the hate he had from the Nine-tails. Outside, Yamato and Bee are confused, because Naruto’s transformation stopped. Back inside, the Nine-Tails is pulling Naruto’s chakra still, until chains come out of Naruto’s chest. Nine-Tails knows right away that it was Kushina. Naruto is just in awe of his mother’s beauty, and wishes he had her hair as well. Naruto asks Kushina how her and Minato met, and how they fell in love.

We get a flashback to when she was a kid at the academy, and was made fun of by everyone except Minato. She then says that she will be the first female Hokage. She dwells on Minato, and says she didn’t think he wasn’t very manly or dependable, and couldn’t see him being Hokage. She chalks that up to being young and stupid. Because of her declaration, the kids gave her the name of Tomato. Naruto thinks he took charge, and stopped it. But she just started beating the kids. Because of this, they earned the nickname, “The Red-Hot Habanero.”

She got into a fight one day, where she couldn’t win. A classmate got his big brother to bully her. She booked it, but the brother was using real kunai. So she just turned around, right into his trap. The brother  grabs her hair, and makes her cry, because she hates it as well. She tries to pull away, but ends up ripping her hair in his grasp. After the escape, she beats up the brother. In a moment of infinite wisdom, he uses “outsider” as a derrogatory term. She finds Minato looking on from the tree, and thinks he just watched and didn’t want to help, because she was an outsider.

Flash forward to when she was a genin, Kushina looks to be alone at her house. That was, until the Cloud ninjas kidnapped her. There is a discrepancy between the show and the manga. The manga had it where the Leaf sent a rescue party right away. But in the show, they played heavily on her kidnapping, saying that Kushina didn’t hold out hope for a rescue. Anyway, Kushina uses her hair to mark where she’s going, so someone can follow her. Then Minato showed up to rescue her, making quick work of the three Cloud Ninja.

Minato said he came to rescue her, saying her hair was beautiful and noticed it right away. He kept ignoring her because he knew she could take care of her. He came after her because he didn’t want to lose her. No matter where she came from, she lived in the Leaf. At that moment, she fell in love with Minato. She says a few words only on those who complement her hair, and they were “I love you.” His dreams are the continuation of Minato and Kushina’s. Now that they had that moment, they have something to finish up. Poor Nine-Tails. He won’t know what hit him.

This episode is the prelude to some of the most important episode in Naruto. only because it gives you the most insight into the Nine-Tails attack on the Leaf Village. I have wanted to see this episode since I first read the manga. Kushina shows the audience exactly where Naruto gets his hot-headed nature, because it sure as hell didn’t come from Minato. Specifically for the dub, I actually really enjoyed the voice of Kushina. She had the range to do the calm, happy, sad, and angry that is integral to Kushina’s part of this arc.

There was less emphasis on the Nine-Tails, which I thought was weird. I mean, the whole thing started with Naruto needing to control the Nine-Tails. Then we are going to get a bunch of  Kushina and Nine-Tails backstory, then finally conquering the Nine-Tails.  I think Kishimoto could have organized this part of the arc a little better. How hard could it be to have Kushina say “Yeah, so, we have this gnarly demon to control. Let’s do that, then we can talk.” It’s a slight gripe, but I think it just makes a bit more sense.

That gripe aside, I really liked this episode. Kushina’s interaction with Naruto just makes me laugh, because she could pass for a sister with how she treats him at first. I am really excited to see how this part is animated, because the coming trip through memory lane is very integral to the Naruto mythos. I really can’t wait unitl next week.

You can check out “The Orange Spark” here.