Naruto Shippûden: The Movie

This time, the narrative centers on a gang of renegade ninjas who choose to bring back to life a demonic spirit that, if it were to reconnect with its body, would destroy the entire planet. Team 7 (Naruto, Sakura, Rock Lee, and Neji) is tasked with protecting Shion, the shrine maiden, as there is only one way to stop this from happening: for her to go and reseal the demon. This Naruto movie follows the same pattern as all the others, with them needing to defend a significant person, getting to know them, and engaging in fierce combat along the way. However, the underlying premise concerning Shion's ability to foresee people's deaths adds a little spice to the otherwise mediocre story.

The characters this time are Naruto, Sakura, Rock Lee, and Neji, as I previously mentioned. You know what to anticipate from them if you've been watching Naruto Shippuuden, but as usual, Naruto is the main character and remains irritatingly foolish until a later point. Shion turns out to be a rather deep character herself, so it can be forgiven that it does the whole Naruto attaching himself to the main character thing like it always does. This time, the antagonists are quite creative-drug users-but their acts aren't really justified.

Since this is a motion picture, excellent production values are to be expected, and they are. Fluidly animated action sequences, amazing lighting effects and interactive settings. But it's evident that some details, like the CG army and fire effects, were trimmed. The soundtrack will make you feel as though you've heard it before, even though the music is really great and fits the emotions nicely. The humorous ED theme, however, is something that no one has heard before.

Actually, I'm not too surprised by the kind of movies that go with Anime in Japan. But every Anime has characters and everything around comes with its own world, which is unique. And each character has also unique characteristics and personality.

And I can't imagine how disappointed I was at the way my favorite characters were treated in this movie. I no longer recognize them. Of course, the humor still exists, but the content of the film is too bad, the characters are too boring and the mage princess Shion is like a fusion of Garra and Neji.

The villains also don't last very long in my memory, they just show up, get defeated, and then disappear. And when they were killed, sure enough, it was when Sakura, Lee, and Neji laughed and enjoyed it with no mercy.

At that time I wondered "What the f** sh*?" why should the voice actors have to put up with this, they're destroying every teen's favorite characters and no one is protesting?

And if for comparison, look at the pointless and offensive joke at the end of the movie, then the scene is cut suddenly, that's my feeling. If this wasn't a Naruto movie, I would rate it 2 stars.

Naruto Shippūden the movie is noticeably darker than most Naruto movies. It is the first Naruto Shippūden film and fourth Naruto film overall. It was a pretty hyped up movie. The main part of the plot that got fans interested during promotion was the rumor of the death of the series' main character, Naruto Uzumaki. Now the annoying thing about this film is that the plot follows the classic mission for Naruto in the series: protect or escort a client-usually a female-usually a princess. Naruto is assigned with Sakura, Neji and Lee to protect a princess named Shion who has the limited ability to foresee the future, limited meaning that he can only see death. Apparently the priestess/princess wakes up from one in which some unfamiliar blonde leaf Shinobi in orange(Naruto) dies fighting this frigging scary demon called Moryō. It really added a mystery factor to the movie. Hence, Destiny...Prophecies...The Boy's...End!(trailers) To add to the horror aspect of the movie, the antagonist is stirring up some crazy ritual jazz and the priestess Shion in basically an exorcist who has to stop Yomi. Overall, the movie's plot is a general repeat of the whole protect the girl thing, even adding the whole thing where she's mean, spoiled and ungrateful for what he has until Naruto changes her with his ideology. But this is movie is more thought out and is on the darker side of Naruto movies for sure. The glimpses of Naruto Uzumaki's death and his friends mourning at his grave really hype up people to watch the film and find out what happens to the main character and how he avoids such a terrifying end to his life by this dark creature. The constant deathly visions of the near future also keep you curious. Action in this film is pretty cool too as it was nice to see Naruto, Sakura, Neji and Lee(original series main characters) face these new foes who sought world destruction. There are a bunch of cool and epic moments and touching parts too concerning sad back-stories. I do recommend this movie though to most if not any type of viewer as it should be entertaining enough.

The first "Naruto Shippuden" movie and the fourth "Naruto" movie overall, this one could have been a lot better. It is mostly a decent movie, but many things held it back from being anything spectacular.

The storyline has some cool mythology in it and the priestess is an interesting character with an engaging backstory. A problem, though, is that some things weren't explored nearly enough. The main villain is woefully underdeveloped as they barely showed him at all apart from the beginning and the climax, and we didn't even get to see any flashbacks pertaining to the priestess' backstory until near the end.

The interactions between Naruto and the priestess kept me interested most of the time, even if it undeniably felt rehashed from the previous films. I really like Naruto's teammates in this film, which were Sakura, Neji, and Rock Lee. Neji was his usual awesome self, and I liked that Rock Lee got to have more involvement in here than in "Guardians of the Crescent Moon Kingdom."

The majority of the animation in this film is pretty solid, but there is sadly some really bad CGI used for the stone army. Not only was it hard to get invested when they fought the stone army due to the subpar CGI, but the way the army was defeated felt anticlimactic. However, the fight scenes against the henchmen are some of the highlights of this film as they are exciting, intense, and do a good job of giving everyone the spotlight.

I suppose the themes of this movie are pretty good. It talks about how nothing is inevitable and that people make their own fates. I do think it's kind of strange, though, how the movie ended at the moment that it did. Be sure to watch the post-credits scene, or else the movie will feel incomplete.

I did have a mostly positive feeling after watching this movie, but it definitely isn't a great film by any means and it's not as good as the original "Naruto" trilogy. Despite it's many shortcomings, I still liked it well enough and I'd say it's worth checking out for "Naruto" fans.

RATING: B-

The first three Naruto movies were entertaining and exciting. And they showed the essence of what Naruto's character is about. This fourth installment is not that much different but is nearly not as compelling as the previous movies were. In Shippûden Naruto has grown considerably. And you do notice that he has matured. In this movie it is like he never changed except for his appearance. To me it is strange why the writers don't show some elements that are relevant to the show or it's characters. After the developments in Naruto Shippûden I had hoped that we at least got to see what happened in the two years that Naruto was training with Jiraiya or something like that. But to have the same story told over and over does get boring. (Priestess is cocky,Naruto gets angry and corrects her and finally ... her. You know. The end!). This movie does contain some superb action scenes especially the one with Rock Lee. Not a a bad movie,but very pale in comparison to the previous movies and the series.