Naruto 649 review

Greetings everyone and welcome to this week's review of Naruto 649, last week  I asked you guys which "inspiring" speech you enjoyed the most in this arc, Naruto's or Hashirama's, the biggest number of votes go to Naruto with 11 votes, 10 people voted that they didn't like either, 4 votes said they were all awesome and just one guy thought that Hashirama delivered a better speech than Naruto. Personally I think both were unneeded but if I had to pick Naruto's was better, the flashback with Hashirama was kinda pointless and just showed him being pathetic really.

Anyways lets talk about this chapter and from the start I'll give you a nice summary
TL;DR: nothing happens.

We see the five Kages also get inspired by Hashirama's speech from, saying how they wont need meetings like that after they win the war, Tsunade calls them the Gokage which I believe means 5th Kage unless I am wrong and I think I am because A is the 4th and Oonoki is the 3rd, must be some sort of translation error or maybe I just am mistaken.

We get some panels of the Alliance getting pumped up and ready and we all know it's pointless to show them, I mean is Madara going to be brought down by some no name? will any of them contribute something meaningful to this war? why are we wasting our time seeing these guys do absolutely nothing?

Thank god Captain Shuriken is here or this war would be a lost cause.

We see Obito deflect the combined attack of Naruto and Sasuke, shocking since this is the 6th time he's done something like that and all it leads is to Naruto thinking about how he promised not to let anyone of his friends die ( Neji not included in this promise) and due to this new found power of friendship his chakra starts moving on its own and heals Shikimaru.

Surprise everyone, we get a flashback of Shikimaru and it's something we've seen before actually during the Pain arc when Shikaku confronted Naruto, exactly the same thing but from Shikimaru' point of view this time and all it does is just have him say he will become Naruto's adviser in the future... I think Sai sums up the whole flashback in a single panel.

Quality writing people.

After Shikimaru's flashback everyone decides " hey, I want some panel time too" and we get everyone say something that's really irrelevant, I mean come on we have had 3 chapters of people getting inspired and spouting out crap, firstly I thought Shinobi were supposed to throw their lives for the greater good, what does it matter how they feel? they should be emotionless and yet here we have 3 chapters of trying to inspire them and all this is in less than 15 minutes by the way because the tree still hasn't bloomed yet.

Oonoki showing us how observant he is.

Of the flashbacks the ones I did enjoy were A's remembering how Naruto also bowed his head to him, I liked that and had a feeling we'd see it since we saw Hashirama bow in the last chapter, its a nice comparison of the two by using actions instead of words and I quite enjoyed that. The other thing I enjoyed this chapter was the glimpse of Kakashi and knowing he will rejoin the battle ( and Minato) soon, I look forward to that reunion quite a lot.

Otherwise the chapter ends exactly as the last one did, with Hashirama shouting something big and that's it... yeah really nothing happened.

Predictions.

Firstly all this talk and inspiration from the Alliance will be completely useless, none of these fodder will contribute anything so I still can't see why we are wasting time and panels on nameless ninjas but fine it's something I'm used to by now.

I expect a meeting between the former team Minato, Obito and Kakashi, it will be interesting to see how Minato finds out that it's Kakashi and not Obito who inherited his will of fire and I really hope that happens.

I expect we will see a lot of characters perform their signature moves, like the Double Lariat, Ten Ten will throw something, Lee and Gai will open the gates, basically everyone will do something that is nice to look at and won't contribute much unless Juugo powers everyone with the cursed seal.

Ratings.

A chapter like the last 2, completely pointless and just shows how slow the pacing is right now, seriously if Naruto moves any slower we're going to start going backwards soon and apart from 1-2 enjoyable panels this is was just a complete waste of a chapter and gets a 1 out of 5 from me.

Quotes.

"The five kages can't keep Madara busy, what makes you think anyone else can?

Tobirama minato and Hiruzen along with the kages focus on taking down the tree.
Hashirama focus on Madara
Sasuke and naruot focus on obito..
Everyone else: move bitch get out the way."

-Prince Sasuke