Review: Naruto Shippuden “One Worth Betting On”

“One Worth Betting On” is the second of a two part episode, chronicling one of the first times the Raikage and Tsunade met. The problem here, as with most of the non-canon episodes, is that this was not needed at all. I get that this is backstory that didn’t exist in the manga, but holy shit. There has to be another way to actually convey this story, as well as tie it into the greater arc of what’s going on.

I had a talk with a friend of mine the other day about television. We were going on and on about adapted shows, like The Walking Dead, and Naruto. As much as I’ve shit on The Walking Dead, they are on point with how the show structure is laid out. We don’t have to have an episode every week so that we can have something to watch. Same with shows like Suits, Attack on Titan, Sword Art Online, and the list goes on. In The Walking Dead, and Suits’s case, we get about eight episodes, then a midseason break. Attack on Titan, Kill la Kill, and Sword Art Online drop a full 26 episodes or so, then go away for a couple years. That said, Sword Art Online returns to Toonami tonight.

The reason I went into detail about this, is that these long form shows, like Naruto, Bleach, and Dragon Ball, are old hat. It’s almost fact that no one likes non-canon episodes, and have dubbed them filler, because they’re just there to pass the time between canonical episodes. We went through all of these flashbacks before: Tsunade’s family dying, Naruto’s fight with Kabuto during the Sannin battle were both shown plenty of times before. I went into a diatribe before, but the layouts of anime like Attack on Titan and Sword Art Online are the ways of the future.

“One Worth Betting On” was a waste of 24:11 that I will never get back. I can go on and on about how this was a waste of time, but you can just read last week’s review. It’s sad that a show like Naruto can really have three diametrically opposite types of episodes: canon, non-canon that can fit the canon arc, and non-canon that has no business airing. These last two episodes are almost as infuriating as the final 84 episodes of Naruto, because it does nothing to advance the story.