Naruto Shippuden Vol 2

Review Date: 2010 September 25 09:31

Reviewed by: Azure

Released by: Manga Entertainment UK

Age Rating: 12+

Region: 2 - UK

Volume 2 of 2

Length: 325 minutes

Subtitles: English

Audio: English 2.0 Stereo
Japanese 2.0 Stereo

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Summary

On their way to rescue Gaara of the sand, Team Kakashi are intercepted by Itatchi who try haven\\'t seen since Nartuo left the village to train. Meanwhile team Gai is dispatched as back up, and face their own setbacks. Ca n either of the two teams reach Gaara in time to save his life?

Review

On their way to rescue Gaara of the sand, Team Kakashi are intercepted by Itatchi who try haven't seen since Nartuo left the village to train. Meanwhile team Gai is dispatched as back up, and face their own setbacks. Ca n either of the two teams reach Gaara in time to save his life?

Volume 2 starts with more momentum than the previous volume as both teams engage in fights. There's also a strong sense of the story moving on as both battles tie in to large Naruto story arcs. There's an especially touching scene as Naruto finally reveals a little about his past to Sakura quite openly, rather than have her find out by accident. It's quite an effective way to show that Naruto has matured a little bit.

Mainly though this volume is about the traditional multi episode shonen fight, and luckily for fans of the genre there are some really great action moments. Each of the characters gets their moment to shine, against genuinely interesting opponents. For Naruto fans there are a lot of memorable scenes in this collection, and it's a blast to watch.

By this point in the story Shippuden's murky colour palette starts to wear thin. Though it's supposed to make the series fell more adult and dramatic it's harder to watch, and would have been nicer to see much brighter colours in the outside scene to really contrast those set in the cave.

The dub continues with the same cast, but on flicking through it struck me how young Naruto sounds in the dub in general compared to the Japanese voice where the pitch of Naruto's voice has shifted down. While in some scenes Naruto's voice does sound older, when he shouts the pitch jumps up again. It's only a small thing, but in a part of the story where Naruto's maturation is a key point it would have been nice to noticeably have him sound older. In the large part I ended up watching Shippuden in Japanese, and thankfully unlike the Shippuden movie the subs were timed correctly and read well.

Multi episode stories like this though aren't really suited to DVD, and while this collection has some great episodes it cuts off mid story which can be aggravating. That said there's a decent amount of each set and it's a big improvement over collecting 3 episode DVDs. I hugely enjoyed this volume and as a set contains some hugely enjoyable episodes. Really at this stage only fans who bought the first set will want to know if it's worth picking up this set, and I think it is. The slow build up of the first volume gives way to some great action, though be warned this arc doesn't finish with this set.

Rating: 8/10

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