Naruto Shippuden – 175
The fight has been won and all the casualties of the battle have been brought back to life. Though I could have done without the flashbacks in exchange for some real content, this episode was a good ending to this fantastic arc.
Purgatory seems to exist in the magical world of Naruto Shippuden as Kakashi and his father were able to settle their issues while they had the opportunity. In doing so, both were finally able to move on.
Naruto Shippuden – 173 + 174
Naruto and Nagato come together to carry out the prophecy, a tying of different elements of the series and bringing it all together quite nicely. Nagato served as the initial catalyst with his original ideal of stopping the cycle of hate, Jiraiya believing in Nagato’s philosophy and incorporating it into his books in which Naruto would later adopt as his own, the very idea planted by Nagato but long abandoned as his life experiences had taught him it could not be done.
Naruto Shippuden – 172
Nagato is obviously a product of his environment, starting off fairly good even after the wrongful death of his parents. A clear example is that the concept of stealing is something of which Nagato takes no part of until the bad influences that are Yahiko and Konan start to show him how orphans of war are supposed to survive in a war laden homeland.
Naruto Shippuden – 169
With the last Pain defeated, Naruto is still unable to prove his moral high ground, therefore seeks out Nagato to hear his story and better understand his motives.
Other than Naruto deciding it would be best for him to settle things between Nagato and himself alone, this was a fairly uneventful episode. On the other hand, Hinata seems to be doing a lot better than being near dead, so good for her, though she has managed to do much of nothing so far throughout the series besides liking Naruto, and even in that regard there has been fairly minimal development between them.
Naruto Shippuden – 168
What I enjoyed about this final confrontation between Naruto and Pain is that the show has Naruto sticking to his roots. Pain is not defeated by anything fancy like with Naruto’s new Sage Mode, his Wind Style: Rasenshuriken or some new desperation move he could have created using Nine-Tails chakra, no, in the end Pain is brought down by Naruto’s old standby, the Rasengan.
Naruto Shippuden – 167
There hasn’t been an episode of this caliber since the original Naruto vs. Sasuke fight way back when. You know you are in for a good episode when the first thing you notice is that the art style has shifted to less character detail in exchange for full on hyper-fluid animation. I really enjoyed the various stages of the Nine-Tails developing over Naruto’s body, the exo-skeleton was a nice touch and really made Naruto’s animal instincts and movements oh so better.
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