The fight for survival is on, though it’s an easy bet to place on who will survive.

What They Say:
Time is running out for the Leaf shinobi whose souls are trapped inside the Sound Four’s barrier. Ino and Shino exhaust their own chakra to keep their friends alive.

The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
As the series continues to work through some side battles and encounters in the larger war to stretch things out, we did have a fairly interesting story presented in the previous episode where a group of supporting characters with Shikamaru, Neji, Choji, and Kiba ended up being trapped inside a special barrier where they have to deal with some nasty reanimated opponents. The Sound Four aren’t memorable for me for their past existence in the series as a whole but they at least made things a bit challenging for the group here as they were split on the outside but have to work together on the inside. And their battle plays out as two different attempts to save them on the outside unfolds as they attempt insert chakra into them.

While we do get a little bit of a tangent with Naruto being involved, if only to “check in” to find out what’s happening to Shikamaru and the rest, the episode is largely focused on the battle within the barrier. Each of the Leaf Village ninjas have their special abilities and certainly enough knowledge and experience to work with each other in order to fight an enemy. And with people like Shikamaru and Neiji there that can figure out strategy, it’s just a waiting game when you get down to it as they try to suss out the weaknesses of their opponents so they can win out against them. While not as well animated as the Power storyline we had for filler material recently, they do a fairly decent job here overall and it does come across as an on the cheap job.

In the midst of all the action, we do get to see some fairly interesting flashback material to when this group served Orochimaru, back when he was pretty weakened and difficult to deal with. Their loyalties are shown to be pretty strong, even though he has little positive to say to them about their efforts from back then. There’s some good material there overall before it shifts back to the present and lets the gang cope with the Sound Four. At least until Naruto finally – finally – catches up to them after all of his running and just uses his mighty fist to bring everything to a close with ease. While I would have preferred Shikamaru and his group to be the real closers of the situation, it at least showcases the whole journey itself as an ensemble effort with those on the outside helping and them doing the best they can.

In Summary:
With Kabuto working his little manipulations in order to secure information and advance his agenda through the reanimated shinobi at his disposal, this two episode filler arc doesn’t really do all that much. It slowly brings Naruto a little closer – and he gets a minute or so of not running, which is welcome – but mostly it’s just more fighting without any feeling that it has a real meaning to any of it. It doesn’t affect anything long term, at least visibly, and the Sound Four group was pretty forgettable. Which makes sense considering I had forgotten them from their appearances in the series ages ago. There’s nothing really bad here, but it’s just simply uninteresting since it doesn’t advance anything nor really challenge or change anything either.

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.