Hi everyone and welcome to this week's rather late review for Naruto 660.
I honestly thought we wouldn't have a chapter today, with Christmas and hearing how there would be a break this week, I just arrived home a little while ago and decided to review this chapter before going to bed. Oh right happy holidays everyone and I hope you all have a Christmas as fun as I did today.
Last week was a rather weak chapter in my opinion, although a lot of people seemed to enjoy Madara being so badass I just thought it was ridiculous to see him play gold with the Bijuus like that. I expected more crazy giant Pokemon battles this chapter but Kishi went for a totally different pace in 660 which was a very refreshing surprise.
We see Naruto struggling to pull Kurama back into him which I guess means that extracting the Bijuus is much harder when the host is in tailed beast form, this makes sense since we used to see Naruto transform into higher tailed beast forms depending on how weak the seal was so I actually like that the more freedom the Tailed beast is given, the easier it is to extract.
I cannot stress how much I enjoy seeing Zetsu in these chapters, it's nice to see a sort of "smart" villain who really isn't much of a fighter but just provides strategies and ideas, Zetsu suggests that while Madara extracts the last two tailed beasts he continues with absorbing the other 7, this is a very time efficent strategy but it's still very ridiculous to think that Madara can remove 2 Bijuus and absorb another 7 all in the same time, I mean how long would that have taken the original members of Akatsuki to do all this? a month?
Madara targets the One tail first which I wonder is it because the Ichibi has to be sealed first? or is it simply the weakest Tailed beast of all? earlier we saw Kisame and Itachi discuss how they have to seal Kurama last but do these rules still apply to Madara?
This is when the chapter gets interesting for me, seeing Gaara go all out to save Shukaku is so far one of the best moments since this war started and even more so thanks to the flashback that we get which doesn't focus on Gaara but instead on his Tailed beast and how ruthless he used to be. This works especially well since Shukaku is the only tailed beast who wasn't freed by Naruto and therefore is still very violent and feral.
We see Shukaku talking to one of his former Jinchuriki, it's not really specific which one this old priest is but it's safe to say that this is during the time of the first Kazekage as he mentioned how they had controlled the Ichibi and the Jinchuriki before Gaara was considered a failure I think, not quite sure here to be honest and would love it if anyone can shed more light on the history of Shukaku's hosts.
The priest and Shukaku talk about the price of being a sacrifice and it's interesting to see how all the Jinchuriki have reacted to being hosts, Naruto craved attention and to be accepted, Gaara became a murderer and this old priest simply accepted that being a host might mean being hated and he took it in stride. Unlike all others who tried to change how people view Jinchurikis the priest simply changed himself to accept that hatred everyone threw at him.
If there's one thing I learned from personal experience this year, it's that people don't always say what they truly feel and when the old priest tells Shukaku that everyone might act harsh yet yearn for love, it's quite touching because it's something we can actually relate to as readers, sorry Kishi but I don't feel much when I see a giant flower explode, if you show me two people talking about emotions though that's when Naruto truly shines as a story, when it focuses on people's feelings and not their ability to slice mountains in half.
The old priest's last words are that Shukaku will find someone who feels the same way he does, the fact that Shukaku himself engraved the words on Gaara that the priest has is proof that he always thought of Gaara as being similar to the priest and marked him as such.
Zetsu yells at Gaara to let go of Shukaku as he sees no reason why he should continue to protect him, Zetsu can't see a point beyond self-preservation, an ironic trait to have considering his whole existence is meant to serve Madara.
Speaking of Madara, apparently he can use his Susanoo to throw boomerang like swords or something, bit odd really but either way he manages to land a solid hit on Gaara which somehow doesn't hurt him as much as I would have imagined it to but still gets a warning from Shukaku that he should back down and not fight so hard and I never would have thought that someone saying "I can stay up past my bedtime" to ever sound badass but Gaara pulls it off.
Madara gets annoyed and pulls all the Bijuus back at the same time in a very confusing panel as we see Gyuuki lose one of his tentacle tails and then Kurama apparently shouts some sort of instruction to Gaara without us being told exactly what is said and next thing you know, Naruto loses Kurama and the chapter ends very suddenly.
Predictions
1- Whether or not Naruto loses Kurama doesn't make much of a difference in that he will still receive the half of Kurama that resides in Minato.
2- Where the hell is everyone? I mean it's the whole world vs Madara and we don't see ANYONE do anything while Bijuus are flying around and Naruto is being killed, what is going on here?
3- No guesses on whether Gaara will have Shukaku re-sealed in him, hard to tell really since right now Kishi is telling us that Bijuus are nice so do they still need to be sealed and controlled?
Rating
I liked this chapter a lot more than the big explosion chapters we have been treated to lately, it was perhaps slow for some people yet I thought it had near perfect pacing showing emotions and history that were actually interesting for once. I can't say I liked the ending though since it seems really rushed compared to the rest of the chapter but I'll still give it a 4.5 out of 5 and say that I am loving Gaara these days.
Quote
Kishi: "I am prepared. I've been storing up for working on this week's chapter for many years. It is now time."
Editors: "Then let it be done..." (Editors pull up a toilet) "Please - begin..."
Kishi: (sits down) "This will be my most difficult challenge yet. Please - attend to me..."
Editors: "Yes - Kishi-sama" (all bow)
Kishi: "Uh.... Ooooh.... Oh - here it comes...! Oh $%&*...! OooooaaaaAAAAAAAUUGHHH!?!?#(&%#@!...! I SEE THE UNIVERRRRRRSE...!" !!!PLOP!!! (sound of shattering porcelain)
And there you go. That's how Kishi gave us this week's 4-inch diameter, steaming brown chapter and all the chunky yellow plot contradictions, impossibilities, and continuity errors contained therein."
-invader
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