Naruto Shippuuden Movie

 The characters over at the right side say "Naruto’s Death." I know right? Mild spoilers ahead.

The movie opens with Naruto fighting a tentacular I mean dragony-looking monster (I just saw Urotsukidoji, well skimmed through it, that genre just isn’t my cup of tea. But that’s another story). The fight scene continues and we see Naruto die. As in die. Deads. Dedsu. 死忙. Bye-bye. Pwned.

Which if you know could never happen in the real storyline, hello the show is named after the protagonist! So what gives?

The next few scenes includes a burial ceremony with the relevant characters weeping and Tsunade asking, "Was it all fate?"  This foreshadows the theme of the whole movie.

So here’s the gist. Bad guy with four goons unsummon uber bad guy from other world. Uber bad guy has to claim his physical body in order to wreak havoc among the five countries (in short destorying the world) to create the "Thousand Year Kingdom." The catch is, there is one way to stop him - a priestess to seal him again from his tomb or whatever that place is. There is only one person in the world who can do so, so uber bad guy decides to off her using the goons. Before the goons leave though, uber bad guy sends them a parting gift, a tentacular chakra enhancer thingumajiggy. He also raises an ultra FMA movie-ish CG army to go reclaim his body.

Konoha gets wind of the situation, since it’s a matter of world safety (lol) Naruto, Neji (Team Captain), Sakura, and Lee are tasked to become the priestess’s (Shion) bodyguards. The rest of the cast is on protect and defend duty/stem the CG army rush.

The thing with the priestess is, she gets visions of people close to her dying, which includes Naruto. She tells Naruto this and Naruto, stubborn as he is claims that he won’t die and someday he shall be Hokage. When her place (Demon Country) finds out about the revival of uber bad guy, she sets forth to fulfill her life missions - to seal away uber bad guy. As the party make their way to the place where they’re supposed to go, the audiences sees that the priestess is uber whiny and an all-around selfish lady. Again, there’s a Naruto parallelism, they really do have to stop doing this. I can’t go on much more without spoiler larger sections of the movie so let’s just fast forward to the fight scenes. You’ll have your standard fare of kick-ass animation. But let’s get back to the story, the thing with those parting gifts from uber bad guy is that they provide a certain rush of chakra (hallucinogens!!!!!) so there… Eventually Naruto and Shion are tasked to go to the mountain of MORDOR!!!!! Kidding. They go to the place where uber bad guy’s real body is to perform some ritual. The thing is, uber bad guy recalled his CG army to defend that area. Naruto does what he does best - annoy the enemy while the girl does her mojo only to… UBER SPOILERS I will shut up now.

Needless to say, Naruto lives and it’s a happy ending.

I must say that the writers are doing a pretty good job. The themes are gravitating towards "heavier" or philosophical matters whilst still possessing that authentic Naruto flair of humor. This movie talks about destiny and how you can change it. A very powerful take-away message comes from Naruto himself:

"You don’t have to accept a destiny you don’t want."

And the movie shows just that, because Naruto will never die, lol.

My favorite scene would be from 1:26:40 onwards to the end of a certain character’s speech. That part was intense. Amazingly hair-raisingly intense. You really have to give it to the voice actors and the animators, they know what they are doing.

I highly recommend that you guys watch this movie, even if you don’t follow the Naruto franchise. There aren’t that many storyline-based tidbits that you would miss out, the context clues are brilliantly-placed.

Until maybe 24-48 hours, I’ll be doing another Lost and Grey’s Anatomy thing. Because right now, my Fridays consist of that. Which is kinda depressing…

See ya!