Naruto Shippuden Episode 339
What They Say:
The Five Kage watch helplessly as Madara activates his Perfect Susano’o to destroy them. Meanwhile, Itachi succeeds in undoing Kabuto’s Reanimation Jutsu. Before fading away, Itachi reveals to Sasuke the truth behind the Uchiha massacre.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The heavy focus on the fight between Kabuto, Itachi and Sasuke definitely dominated events in a fairly decent way, though it kind of went on a bit long at some points. Admittedly, there’s only so much background I want for some characters, especially after over five hundred episodes where it should have been covered earlier. Still, knowing more of Kabuto certainly helped and it was used to shape the way Itachi was going to deal with him, something that Sasuke certainly didn’t expect as it comes across as a kind of compassion in the midst of something far larger for him. With the bond Kabuto had with Orochimaru and Sasuke’s own time there, it’s a complicated series of relationships that has to be dealt with.
While we do get more of that in this episode, the first half is largely given over to the Five Kage outside facing off against Madara. Remember them? It feels like an age since we last saw them. The fight has continued to go poorly in face of Madara, whose overwhelming power is made clear once again when he essentially cuts a mountain in half in order to display it. At least he says that maps won’t have to be redrawn much because of it since he could do so much worse. This certainly puts some fear and impact into the Kage as they can’t believe what they’ve seen, but we also get that obvious sense of re-commitment to what they’re facing and the need to stop him. It’s a healthy reminder of what’s going on out there and the scale of it and to put the good guys back on track with actively dealing with him.
The second half takes us back into the cave where we get more of what’s going on with Sasuke and Itachi while Kabuto remains motionless. It’s more of the same kind of things we got before, but we also get the small twist in that we see a sort of compassion out of Sasuke in regards to Kabuto now that he understands what happened to him under the Hidden Leaf regime that has so twisted him. That’s something that certainly feels different from how he’s approached him for some time, but the show opts instead to give us more Uchiha back story to fill out areas that I just couldn’t find all that engaging after all this time. There’s so much drama amongst this clan that after so many episodes over it spread over so many years, all the tension has essentially been wiped away for me.
In Summary:
Reminding us that there are events going on outside of the cave for a bit is definitely nice and it’s good to see Madara flexing his stuff once again. But it is mostly just more of the same of what we’ve seen so far with the Five Kage against him and little more. The material in the cave is also fairly similar in that it’s more back story and details fleshing out on a clan that I really can’t bring myself to care about after the last ten years of the story being woven as it has. The show is at least feeling like it’s ready to move forward, but I might be a bit more enthused about that if the title character had actually popped up during the last few weeks.
Grade: B-
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.