Naruto’s going up against the enemy at least, at least for a couple of minutes.

What They Say:
Naruto makes his entrance onto the battlefield and uses his sensory powers to detect and destroy the transformed White Zetsu clones. During the battle, Shikaku updates Naruto with what they currently know on Madara.

The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
After an enjoyable break from the main series with the Power storyline, which was better animated and better plotted than a lot of the war arc has been, the show gets itself back on track with this episode. And not surprisingly, it goes for a bit of camp at first with some Ninja News Network material that showcases the battles that have happened so far in a news show fashion, which is a bit awkward in general. I know the series often blends the modern with the old style that allows it to get away with things like this, but these aspects continue to be the most awkward for me, especially when it goofily goes and does a press conference for Sakura that focuses on her love life. It just provides far too much of a disconnect for me.

With the episode title essentially making it clear that Naruto enters the battle, it’s not something that really makes you expect a lot of Naruto fighting material. Just because he enters the fight, doesn’t mean he’ll fight a lot. We get a good bit of recap here across the board early on with the NNN aspects and some of what’s going on with the enemy, as they make it clear that they know that Naruto has gained new abilities and that it’ll likely make his fight with the White Zetsu inevitable at this point. What does come up through the time there with Madara and through what Sakura is doing with her research is to make it clear that things have fully been cultivated from the First Hokage and that the control of plants is now significant, and highly dangerous.

Which we see when Naruto starts dealing with the White Zetsu when he ends up on the battlefield with them as his attacks cause them to revert to just plants. Big plans, but plants nonetheless. And he’s able to strike at them fairly easily because of it, never mind the other things he brings into play while all literally fired up. While it’s a fun segment that gives us some Naruto time, it is fairly brief as the show goes more towards setting the sides once again when it comes to the larger war. There’s some decent moments to it as we see the scale of it all that each side has in different ways. Everything continues to work towards that building point, but not with enough material to really sustain it well.

In Summary:
Naruto: Shippuden finally gets back on track with the war, though I’m not complaining about the back story episodes that we had for the Power arc by any means. With Naruto now having returned to where the battle is actually taking place, he gets to be hands on with it for a bit, at least showing what his abilities will do when coming up against the White Zetsu. There’s a lot of things going on here that’s stage dressing and getting us ready for what’s next, which is admittedly useful on some level after the length of the break that we had. Unfortunately, it does a lot of it early on with that awful News Network angle that continues to be one of the worst things the show does in its efforts to have it both ways. I’m still hopeful that things can start feeling like they’re important again, but it’s going to take a lot of convincing.

Grade: B-

Streamed By: Crunchyroll

Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.