English Dub Review: Naruto Shippuden “Target: Nine Tails”

Naruto now has the help of Kushina and her chakra. But will it be enough to capture the Nine-Tails’s chakra?

 

 

Spoilers Below

At the end of last episode, Naruto and Kushina start their attempt to subdue the Nine-Tails, while Bee and Yamato are on the outside, monitoring the transformation. Naruto is half-transformed into the Nine-Tails, and fighting for control. Bee thinks Yamato stopped the transformation, but Naruto did it on his own.

Back inside Naruto’s head, Nine-Tails is chained up, but Naruto has him taking his chakra. Naruto expels the chakra, and goes in for an attack. Nine-Tails breaks most of the chains, but Kushina trips him with the chain on his leg.  Naruto unleashes a shadow-clone army, who then use all of their Rasengans for a Rasengan barrage. Naruto enters Sage Mode, and it turns into Sage Art: Massive Rasengan Barrage, with a final Rasen-Shuriken. He pulled out the chakra, Nine-Tails is pissed. He is about to unleash another attack, until Naruto twists the symbol on his stomach, and he seals the Nine-Tails.  What was weird here, was that the Nine-Tails thinks the seal is the six paths.

Naruto spends a little bit more time with Kushina, and she has to tell him some things, especially when the Nine-Tails attacked. Kushina starts with telling Naruto that she was the Jinchiriki before Naruto, and she came from the Land of Eddies. We get a history of the distant past, where the Senju and Uzumaki were distant blood relatives. In my professional opinion, that’s big news, considering the conflicts we’ve seen thus far.

The Uzumaki were a bit savage, but they excelled how to seal. The crest on his jacket is the Eddy crest. During one of the Ninja wars, her village was destroyed, with the survivors spread across the world. Next, before Kushina, the first Jinchuriki was Mito Uzumaki, Hashirama Senju’s wife. From then on out, the Leaf had the Nine-Tails. The only people who knew were the Third, and a couple elders.

Mito called for Kushina one day, and told her that she felt her pain. Neither could escape their fate, but there is a way to find happiness through it by filling herself with love. Naruto then asks about the attack, and Minato left a few things out when they talked. Minato sealed more of Kushina to give her more time. The Masked Man, Madara, found out the exact time when the seal on the Nine-Tails weakens, and that is during child birth.

Minato and Kushina really are unique, and somewhat silly, but they work as parents. Sarutobi tells them of the plan to keep Kushina safe, by keeping them in a place that is secluded, and a barrier can be put up easily. Only a couple people know of this plan. Kushina meets the mother of Sasuke as they walk out, and the epic foreshadowing is truly epic here with Sasuke and Naruto’s parents meeting like that.

They make their way to the barrier, where Sarutobi’s personal ANBU guard are stationed. They begin, and Minato is nervous about Kushina’s health. The Nine-Tails is dying to get out, but Minato keeps him at bay. Madara makes it to the hideout, while Kushina is pushing out Naruto. Naruto is born, but that’s not the worst of it.

That cliffhanger, right? We got a good history lesson in this episode, as well as the lead in to what happened before the Nine-Tails getting unleashed. This episode was to give a break to Naruto’s training, yet give progress on what was the motivation of the war. I am just glad to finally get to see this.

What I have failed to mention since we started covering Naruto, is how faithful the script is to it’s Japanese counterpart. A lot of the nuances that are lost in a lot of translations are kept, like Kushina’s “you know,” or Bee’s “You fool, you fool!” I am really impressed, especially when considering how atrocious the script was for the original Naruto. Listening to that dub was really painful, considering what the show was. You see how much growth the translations have come since 2007.

The opening act of the episode could have been attached to the last episode with better editing, but that’s nitpicking. Next week, the fireworks begin, and the Leaf Village starts to burn!

Believe it!