It's about time the fillers ended!!! I just saw the new episode and there's quite a lot of stuff in it that I enjoyed, like the letters bit (no clue why they were there, but who cares! They were hilarious!), the cute little animation at the ED, the cool animation scenes in the OP (for some reason, I really like the part where Naruto does that 3-2-1 bit), and the animation itself is great, especially the opening. The filler at the beginning brought back memories, and the 'I'm gonna be the seventh Hokage!' but was cool :3

I for one don't mind the fillers in the ep too. I don't want years of fillers appearing again anytime soon.

P.S. Shika for the win!

P.P.S. I finally caught up in the manga. Shika for the win! Again!

I watched the new episode last night and was blown away. See, I don't keep up with manga on series' as I most thoroughly enjoy the anime versions. So this was all new to me, and I loved every second. Even if some of the stuff in there was "fillerish", it fit into the episode well anyway and was clever. How can you not love Konohamaru growing up to be just like Naruto? I thought it was a wonderful homage to have them chasing the cat around followed by Kono complaining. It had me rolling, especially when Tsunade said he was becoming more like a 2nd Naruto than a 7th Hokage.

The little "looking back" segments with Naruto and Sakura were great too, as they were wonderful to directly compare how different they are now and were just plain hilarious (reference: young Naruto excitedly asking about new techniques and young Sakura getting worried about all the training she'll have to endure with older Sakura giving her a "Gunbatte!")

I'm going to talk now as someone not reading the manga so maybe us anime-watchers can have our little discussion outside of the manga-readers. :cool:

Well, I dropped my fork when they showed Naruto down in his mind in front of Kyuubi and then f'ing Sasuke was there. He can SEE IT NOW?! Christ, that's wild.

I was downright amazed to find out Gaara is Kazekage now. Granted, he's sort of "inheriting the throne" and they don't have just a lot of other candidates after the big battle at the chuunin exams, but I would have never imagined Gaara as 'kage material. But good on him.

Sort of related to that, I was interested to hear Kankorou and Temari are jounin's now, but again, the sand village probably don't have many other really high level ninjas besides them now. Though to imagine Neji as a jounin... I guess he really IS a genius.

But overall, the thing I'm most excitedly looking forward to is to see how all of the old gang has changed. Much like Naruto would say, I want to see how much better they've become and what kinds of great new techniques they've all learned.

Ding-dong, the filler is dead! Which old filler? The Naruto filler!

That was pretty shocking in the manga, too. Considering the huge brawl that happens before that scene with another bad guy, I figured Naruto would refuse to let the Kyuubi out again and that'd be the end of the scene. Instead we get Sasuke outta nowhere with the ability to seemingly nullify the Kyuubi.

Part Two has it's up and downs and, for a while, I was completely turned off by the series as a whole due to Kishimoto's poor storytelling. Recent chapters involving Shikamaru kind of redeemed the series, but it seems he's taking a back seat again.

I was very scared of them dropping Takeuchi and getting someone else to do Naruto's voice - I'm glad it didn't happen. So I'm fully satisfied. The whole series is just amazing with the OP and the ED getting a honorable mention, beautifully done.

Looking forward to the next episode this friday.

Did anybody else notice the subpar animation quality that kinda started happening; espiecally the part where everybody is in the office? Like i was really impressed with everything; espiecally the part where naruto and sakura try to find sasuke. But the actual episode was kinda distractingly poorly drawn... maybe it's just me being picky.

heres a screen

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...snap-57045.png

No you aren't picky at all. Its because Japan is going cheap by hiring Korean for some parts :tpg: :gonk:

Yeah, that hand wave thing was really really ugly, and I had a wtf moment when I saw that. I like how the ep intro set it up with awsome art/animation, then the actual ep end up with crap like this.

I don't really see whats so bad about that picture. For a series that is so incredibly long and must be drawn every week, this was great animation.

Have you been watching following the series since inception? There have been much more grievous animation errors in this show. If you are disappointed to the point of distraction with the quality in this episode, the highly anticipated premiere episode might I remind you, than you will probably want to stop watching now before the series starts to progress into a more normal animation routine.

Unless this has already been mentioned or greatly implied,

"Crap"? Do you guys really have any idea what "normal TV quality" animation is like (especially for a series with over 200 episodes)? Or have you only been watching Kyoto Animation products?

Let's not forget Naruto has always had its fair share of hilarity in random frames.

http://myy.helia.fi/~a0400729/Pics/icansee.jpg

EGAD...did you have to show that pic? It sure is hilarious though.

Unless the animation is like, super bad, I can tolerate it. I'm sure you realize that in a super long series like Naruto without reruns, you can't expect the animation studios to churn out top quality animation every week. It's near nigh impossible.

And here I thought people loved FLCL animation. I guess they only used them for fast-paced fighting or something. The least they can do is make it widescreen and convince me that it's awesome quality. In the end, it doesn't matter. Only today's episode, Everyone has big eyes in the beginning. Nothing bothersome, with Diedara around =].

Pl0x? What's FLCL? I am not that strong when it comes to annimation >.<

The Key Animators. Tetsuya Nishio's name is in one of the groups. We'll be seeing more of him in Shippudan when that time comes =/.

??? When I Wikipediaed it... some other stuff came out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flcl

I don't really like wiki as much but ANN has more then they do. Organized that is >.>.

This basically all that he and a few other people work on. So if you recognize that then you know what I'm talking about(Otogizoushi was the best btw). That picture Qwarky put up is one of his crappy jobs. They intend to fuck it up on purpose but I guess that's the beauty of it.

Except that Tetsuya Nishio is involved in character design, not key animation.

Even if he was involved in that for any particular episode, there's also the in-between animation which you end up seeing the majority of the time, and this is mostly outsourced. One person's effort does not make the whole product.

CH 343 RAW


EDIT:
Am I the only one who is not liking Akatsuki's theme? Why did they have to use medieval style music? I think it should be a fast pace "we're coming to kick your ass" theme.

Lol'ed, I doubt Sasuke will let that fag touch his body.

Anyways, Naruto's manga is slowing down IMO... taking way to long >.>

Your're not alone. I hate the akatsuki themse myself.

I don't know, except for the opening and ending of Shippuden, I don't think the soundtrack is as good as the tunes from the original naruto series. They've should just used the old ones. It would've been better, and I don't think most people would've cared.

This week's anime was better than last week's one hour special.

I'm pumped up about the manga more than anything. I can't wait to see what happens next week.



These are only my speculations of the manga and kishi will probably do something different :).

I don't know, I thought this week was a bit of a letdown over last week's episode. They explicitly showed that Naruto and Sakura are better than they used to be and can give Kakashi a run for his money, but it wasn't bad ASS, it was just "Kakashi actually almost gets hit with stuff and Naruto and Sakura see through some illusions." It's hard to explain, but I guess it doesn't look any more intense than, say, Naruto versus random thugs on a street.

Aaaaand, that Akatsuki guy didn't impress me at all. His paper creations are unique, but not the kind of power I would expect befitting an Akatsuki member. The best part was Gaara showing up out of nowhere to try to deal with him. I surely hope this fight is interesting.

Hey wow, the fillers finally ended I thought I wouldn't live to see this day.

I thought the start of the new season wasn't bad. It didn't have much in the way of badass-ness, but it's good to see that it still has its sense of random hilarity. I'm very glad that Sakura is a force to be reckoned with now. Before it almost always seemed like she was more or less useless in a fight, unless extremely basic (but intelligent) skills were needed. On that note, it's really nice to see that Naruto isn't an idiot that always rushes in without thought any more. He still wears "here I am" orange, but at least he's starting to act like a ninja now.

The series started off nicely, but goddamn can they drag shit out. It shouldn't take that long to show that Naruto and Sakura have advanced. Do we really need a thousand and one flashbacks showing how much they sucked when they were children?

Then again, the show's demographic is pretty young, so I guess I'm splitting hairs on a bald head. As for the Akatsuki, Deidara himself never really fights seriously for all two or three fights he's shown. He's interesting because his tactics are pretty thought-out, as opposed to 'my jutsu's bigger than yours,' which Naruto seems to have devolved into.

His partner, Sasori, is much more impressive, but you won't be seeing much of his stuff for at least fifteen-twenty episodes.