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The first episode of Naruto Shippuuden was to me, far more than I ever could have hoped for. I had all kinds of fears about it trying to revive itself. Will the first episode be slow? Will the characters remain unchanged (i.e. undynamic) except in looks? Will Naruto feel old in the wake of all that filler? Will I even care about the plot anymore? With the characters and themes impact me as much as they did before? When this episode started, I was absolutely blown away. The scenes they show before the intro song were amazing. So much darkness in Naruto, so much coldness from Sasuke. To what degree have BOTH of them fell in their pursuit of power? When the F*** is this taking place.

The art doesn't look like it has had a major overhaul, but a noticeable quality increase did occur. I was slightly disappointed that more wasn't done with the voices, they all sound the same except for real the little kids (Naruto's tag-a-longs) have grown up.

I don't know what kind of starting point this would make for people to jump on. A great deal of why this episode is so great is actually stated by Naruto himself many times. Nostalgia. Naruto, REAL Naruto has a nostalgic feel to it. A year an a half is a long time to go with out seeing something you love. Being reunited is a wondrous feeling. Seeing how everyone has grown is also great. All you Shikamaru fans get some love here btw.

I want to make special point of the music. It fucking rocks. All of it. Creepy chorus of Akatsuki on down to the licensed intro and exit. It all rules. I'm glad they made the change. It totally helps Naruto carve out some depth that has been deprived it of late, and that would be necessary to move the show to some more mature themes.

One of the most important things in this episode though, is that it doesn't waste anytime screwing around. It jumps headlong into the story and head butt's it into oblivion. Most impressively, it transitions between the nostalgia scenes, to the plot scenes so seemlessly, that both aspects feed off one another.

Oddly Snake man doesn't make an apearnace. Anywhere. I wonder if the big O was done in by Sasuke or not? But then agian, aside from the future telling at the beggining, we don't see Sasuke either.

More importantly than anything else, this has made me more excited about Naruto, than I have ever been period. No fight has giving me the sense of anticipation. No secret move have ever giving me this sense of hope. Naruto lives Boys and Girls, so stop hiding from the filler or feinting coolness by hating the show. You'll only rob yourself of an event that should not be missed by any fan of anime.

This is what I both hoped for and expected. Havn't seen it yet though. The music in naruto always rocks and the story is great. Only the non main story filler brings it down. Some of that was good too, but for every decent ep there were 2 that kinda sucked.

Glad to hear how awesome it is. I'm looking forward to how Lee has changed as well. Will be interesting to see Gaara too.

Cidien Wrote:Glad to hear how awesome it is. I'm looking forward to how Lee has changed as well. Will be interesting to see Gaara too.

It actually looks like they will be treating Gaara as a main character. You see him a lot. That means some very bad things will happen in that case though. Like I said before, the plot comes right out and just lays it on the line in this episode. No build up. Of course, there didn't need to be. The anticipation for this episode is so great that it would have killed me for them to try to build suspense.

Based on this thread I checked out the new episode of Naruto and was very impressed. Now I'm regretting all the unwatched episodes I have back in Canada.

I only made it up to the bit where everyone was in the woods against the other schools... I seem to remember Naruto getting swallowed by a snake before I got distracted by other things.

I'll have to see what I can get my hands on while I'm here in Singapore to get caught up with this series.

If you have regular access to a computer, try just using Limewire and downloading the eps that way. Almost ALL of Naruto is on there in decent format.

And you were somewhere around episode 28. I'd start there, or hell rewatch the whole thing if you really want to. Naruto kept getting better and better as it went on (until the filler of course )

I am so freaking excited about this. I hate being the person, of all that I know, that is the most excited because everyone else gets sick of talking about it before I do lol.

I have to wait till I'm back home in June to download most things. You can serve jail time here in Singapore for just downloading pirated material. If you check IPs of people serving material I'm pretty sure that you will almost never see anyone from Singapore seeding.

Experience here tells me that I can grab things that have a TON of seeds (more than 400 seeders) fairly safely (not to mention those seem to overcome the throttle my connection has from this apartment).

Even in Chinatown I haven't seen anyone selling bootlegs. The only time I have seen any was when I was in the Chinese Garden taking photographs and a woman came up with a duffle bag full of bootleg porn for sale (even Playboy Magazine is illegal here).

I have been keeping track of Heroes since I got here and there were over 12,000 seeds for the new Naruto so I was able to snag that with no problem.

The big thing for me is I don't want to do any jail time or get booted out of Singapore.

After watching it, i was impressed, they got back to the manga storyline with few atristic liberteys...during the year and a half of fillers, i got heavally into the manga, and i am so relived that they are finally back on track. Though i when i first saw the teaser with sasuke, i almost yelled at my monitor since so much happens before then, i was thinking they were cutting it all out, someone says something about gara becomeing a main charictor /slight spoiler/ well the next 12 or so epasodes will take place place in the hidden village of sand...but thats all ill say about that

Zagatto Wrote:The big thing for me is I don't want to do any jail time or get booted out of Singapore.

Um, yeah, I think you should wait too. Don't know too much about Singapore in general or I wouldn't have suggested that. Sorry.:o

That's crazy Zag. Considering all the bootleg crap i've been sent from there (i've been sent stuff from there when I tried buying legit stuff) i'd think there would be bootlegs all over.

Just watched the first three eps. From your post I was expecting a little more, but ya i'm again at the point where i'm gonna be anticipating each weekly release. I havn't even watched like the last 15 naruto episodes yet just cuz I don't care about the filler at all. I do like how Naruto looks now. The art is much much better. First thing I noticed. It's so much darker now. Looks much cooler.