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Review

by Carl Kimlinger,

Naruto

DVD - Uncut Box Set 12

Synopsis:
Naruto DVD Box Set 12
With Hinata in the grips of bee-manipulating ninja meanies, Naruto, Shino and Kiba rush to her rescue, only to be captured and subsequently rescued by Hinata herself. Afterwards it's business as usual for the Konoha ninjas-for-hire. Though who would have thought that the business of ninjas would so closely resemble charity work: freeing villages from greedy gangs, capturing thieves, leading ninja tykes in outdoor training. Naruto, of course, is less than enthusiastic about all of this, as he ostensibly has better things to do, not that he actually does them. His free time is instead occupied with training, which he sometimes begs from other ninjas, like Guy and Lee—though naturally, being the ninja flunk-out he is, Naruto fails to notice that the two have been replaced by badly-disguised rival ninjas.
Review:

Welcome to Filler Club. The first rule of Filler Club is, you do not talk about Filler Club. The second rule of Filler Club is, you do not talk about Filler Club. Needless to say, I'll be breaking rules one and two. Why? Because there's nothing else to talk about. This isn't a brief pause before the plot begins again, it's an entire world of filler, stretching as far as the eye can see. And if you're to survive it, then you need to adjust your expectations to fit the rules of filler. Filler episodes are ruled by what they can't do. They can't advance the plot. They can't invent new fight moves. They can't alter the characters. They're placeholders deployed to chew up time until the person who can do those things—in this case manga-ka Masashi Kishimoto—has the opportunity to do so. So don't be surprised if every story arc ends on a cop-out that negates any prospective plot development, if the same character shtick and finishing moves are recycled ad nauseum, and if the things that once made the series fun become pale imitations of themselves. After all they are imitations, written and executed by people tiptoeing around all of the series' important points. Naruto's search for Sasuke can be used to motivate a story, but the story cannot dig too deep into their messy rivalry for fear of repercussions when Kishimoto addresses the same issues later. The same is true of the ongoing villainy of Orochimaru and Itachi, and even relatively minor points such as Sakura's determination to become a medical ninja or Hinata's Naruto-crush—both of which get lip service, but little more.

So what can filler do? Well, it can do humor. Indeed much of this set is given over to generalized silliness such as the Guy and Lee imposters and Naruto's poor leadership during the outdoor training with Konohamaru. Some of it is amusing (the cop-out that hinges on Naruto's intestinal problems is unexpected enough that it doesn't rankle), much of it is plain stupid, and the sheer volume of it effectively de-fangs the series. Filler can also do short, self-contained story arcs that recreate the series' general formula without falling back on ongoing plot threads. Unfortunately, Naruto's writers prove to be shockingly incompetent at that kind of thing. The new characters around which they build their plots are lifeless, the climactic fights are shoddily set up, and the “emotional” component of each story is so uninvolving that it needs to be put in quotations. The preponderance of dippy humor doesn't help. Witness the indescribably lame curry-saves-the-day climax of the Curry of Life story and the purportedly humorous “Naruto, you rascal!” moments that cap off every story arc.

By this point one might begin to think that surviving the eighty-episode stretch of filler that this set represents isn't a matter of lowering expectations but eliminating them outright. And you'd be absolutely correct. There is the secondary cast, who are given more screen time now that character development is forbidden. As adorable as Hinata is and as weirdly cool as Lee can be, that's not an appeal to be dismissed out of hand. But they're fighting against a tide of tripe, including two-by-four-to-the-head Shonen Jump philosophizing (“experience, skill and knowledge are meaningless in the face of spunk.” How uplifting), so it's best not to expect too much from them. Even the visuals, freed from the restraints of the manga, grow erratic rather than adventurous. At times they are perspective-smearing fun, and at others they are detail-deficient, short-cut-ridden, robotically stiff exercises in soulless laziness. Kishimoto's designs remain appealing, but the new designs are bad pastiches of villains and victims past. Applied to such poorly-scripted, oft flatly-animated material, Toshio Masuda's rocking score is incongruous rather than cool, while the new opening and closing themes are remarkable only in their unremarkable-ness.

So why buy it? There are three possible reasons. One: you're a completist who must have all of the Naruto there is, regardless of the fact that legal web broadcasts of Naruto: Shippuuden now allow you to seamlessly skip every one of these sad excuses for entertainment. Two: you are one of the three people in the world capable of lowering your expectations to the depths necessary to enjoy these episodes. Three: you are an obsessive-compulsive who discovered nine Naruto playing cards in your set, requiring you to purchase the next five in order to complete the deck. Curse you Viz.

Not that you can blame Viz for grasping at straws (or playing cards). These are the least bankable episodes in the entire franchise, and they know it. Their usual deluxe treatment has been pared to the bone: the booklet has been discarded, the extras have become fossilized (storyboard-to-screen comparisons, lots of previews and promos), and even the excellent dub has lost its sparkle. The disposable new characters are cast and acted with less than the series' usual care, and the long-time cast members seem to have lost their enthusiasm. When the opportunity to spruce up the original dialogue presents itself, the script can't even muster the moxie to avail itself of it. Naturally, given Viz's record of late, the dub is solid enough at heart, preserving what charm the original's humor and secondary cast lent it, but as threadbare as that charm is, that isn't much of an achievement.

Grade:
Overall (dub) : C
Overall (sub) : C
Story : D-
Animation : C+
Art : C+
Music : C+

+ Hinata and Rock Lee fans will get a belly full of their favorite supporting players; occasionally kind of funny.
Bloated with filler that is incapable of replicating the intensity and depth of feeling that made the series the phenomenon it is.

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Production Info:
Director: Hayato Date
Series Composition:
Katsuyuki Sumisawa
Junki Takegami
Script:
Kou Hei Mushi
Yuka Miyata
Satoru Nishizono
Katsuyuki Sumisawa
Yasuyuki Suzuki
Junki Takegami
Akatsuki Yamatoya
Michiko Yokote
Shin Yoshida
Storyboard:
Tetsuro Amino
Hayato Date
Takafumi Hayashi
Yuki Hayashi
Tsubute Hyakuno
Hayauma Ippaku
Satoru Iriyoshi
Takaaki Ishiyama
Mashu Itō
Kei Jūmonji
Shigenori Kageyama
Hiroki Kawashima
Hiroshi Kimura
Yuki Kinoshita
Ichizō Kobayashi
Junya Koshiba
Rion Kujo
Masaaki Kumagai
Yasuaki Kurotsu
Koji Masunari
Hitoyuki Matsui
Tsuyoshi Matsumoto
Tokuyuki Matsutake
Yasuhiro Minami
Yuichiro Miyake
Masahiko Murata
Noriyuki Nakamura
Atsushi Nigorikawa
Toshiya Niidome
Mitsutaka Noshitani
Seiji Okuda
Takeyuki Sadohara
Mamoru Sasaki
Shinji Satō
Toshiyuki Shimazu
Hirofumi Suzuki
Tetsuji Takayanagi
Chiyuki Tanaka
Toshiyuki Tsuru
Hidehito Ueda
Yasunori Urata
Atsushi Wakabayashi
Yū Yamashita
Ryō Yasumura
Episode Director:
Hayato Date
Mamoru Enomoto
Kiyomu Fukuda
Hayato Goda
Yuki Hayashi
Yasuyuki Honda
Masayuki Iimura
Mashu Itō
Shigenori Kageyama
Keiichiro Kawaguchi
Hiroshi Kimura
Yuki Kinoshita
Rion Kujo
Masaaki Kumagai
Tsuyoshi Matsumoto
Yoshihisa Matsumoto
Kyōsuke Mikuriya
Shūji Miyahara
Masahiko Murata
Atsushi Nigorikawa
Toshiya Niidome
Mitsutaka Noshitani
Yoshinori Odaka
Yukio Okazaki
Takeyuki Sadohara
Shinji Satō
Akira Shimizu
Yoshihiro Sugai
Chiyuki Tanaka
Toshiyuki Tsuru
Yasunori Urata
Atsushi Wakabayashi
Kazuyoshi Yokota
Unit Director:
Rion Kujo
Koji Masunari
Tokuyuki Matsutake
Hirofumi Suzuki
Toshiyuki Tsuru
Yū Yamashita
Music:
Musashi Project
Toshio Masuda
Original Manga: Masashi Kishimoto
Character Design:
Tetsuya Nishio
Hirofumi Suzuki
Art Director: Shigenori Takada
Art:
Tomoyuki Shimizu
Shinji Sugiyama
Kazuhiko Suzuki
Shigenori Takada
Michiko Taniguchi
Animation Director:
Naoki Aisaka
Mariko Aoki
Atsushi Aono
Seiko Asai
Yukiko Ban
Jong Ki Choi
Hideki Hashimoto
Kumiko Horikoshi
Masaru Hyodo
Yasuhiko Kanezuka
Kazuhisa Kosuge
Akira Matsushima
Tokuyuki Matsutake
Minoru Morita
Yūji Moriyama
Kenichiro Ogata
Hidehiko Okano
Hiromi Okazaki
Takako Onishi
Takeshi Ōsaka
Yukimaro Ōtsubo
Kazuya Saitō
Chikara Sakurai
Gorou Sessha
Haruo Sotozaki
Hirofumi Suzuki
Shinichi Suzuki
Marie Tagashira
Chiyuki Tanaka
Akihiro Tsuda
Takenori Tsukuma
Zenjirō Ukulele
Atsushi Wakabayashi
Masafumi Yamamoto
Hideyuki Yoshida
Sound Director: Yasunori Ebina
Director of Photography: Atsuho Matsumoto
Producer:
Tomoko Gushima
Ken Hagino
Noriko Kobayashi
Licensed by: ShoPro Entertainment

Full encyclopedia details about
Naruto (TV)

Release information about
Naruto [Uncut] (DVD box 12)

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