Recommended
"Naruto Shippuuden: The Inheritors of the Will of Fire" is the third installment of "Naruto Shippuuden" movie and sixth overall. Hiruko, a former Konoha ninja who abandoned the village a decade ago, declares war against all five major nations in the name of Konoha Village. He had perfected the "Chimera Technique", which absorbs opponent chakra and skills, and starts kidnapping ninjas with Blood Line Limits. The final target of Blood Line users is Kakashi, who possesses the Sharingan from Obito. To prevent the impending 4th Ninja War, Tsunade sends Kakashi on a suicidal mission to stop Hiruko. ANIMATION: 7/10 The animation is impressive. I would describe it as`extreme fluidity`. In fact, this film probably has the smoothest character movement I have ever seen. Battle scenes and leafs/wind effects were stunning. Unfortunately, the drawings of characters are very simple, and backgrounds lack detail. Some scenes were so bad that it seemed like the poor drawings from the original series filler episodes.
Still the director Murata Masahiko did a great job in this film, with some breathtaking scenes with CG-assisted camera movement, and wonderfully choreographed action sequences.
SOUND: 5/10
The voices are same as the original series, and generally fine. Kakashi`s voice was exceptionally well done.
There was very little music, and not very effective. I still have no idea why they replaced MUSASHI for musical scores since the flute and drum instrumentals in the original Naruto series was epic in my opinion.
Theme song is also very weak despite being sang by Puffy. I miss the days when top artists like Hamasaki Ayumi and Every Little Thing sang those touching and memorable songs for anime films. Even the theme song for the first Naruto movie by YUKI was better than anything I`ve heard from anime movies in the past 3 years.
STORY: 6/10
The theme for this movie is pretty good: the clash of moral values. Is sacrificing one person for the welfare of the village a right thing to do? This is what the entire story is centered around. Pretty much the whole movie is about Naruto and Sakura chasing after Kakashi to stop him from sacrificing himself to save the village.
There were couple of major plot holes.
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- Why did Sand Village advance its troop to the border? Sand Village has a strategic alliance with Konoha, and Gaara of all people should know that Hiruko had nothing to do with Konoha, and that Tsunade would never try to invade other countries. The whole thing was just an excuse to bring out the popular Gaara to the movie, since he had a very limited appearance in "Shippuuden" series so far.
- Why did Hiruko have a child-form? Tsunade even mentioned he should be much older by now, but it was never explained to the end. We are left guessing that maybe it had something to do with the Chimera technique, but there is no apparent advantages in having a child-form.
- Isn`t `give your life for the village` an honorable thing to do and what all the great Konoha ninjas did? The Third Hokage gave up his life to stop Orochimaru`s invasion. The Fourth sacrificed his life to seal the Kyuubi. Itachi gave up his life and lived as a traitor for a secret ANBU mission. Jiraiya also died on a clearly suicidal mission. In fact, Naruto himself was sacrificed as a vessel for the Kyuubi as a baby. I`m sure there are more that I can`t think of at the moment, but it seems to me like sacrificing one`s life for the village is what Konoha is all about. It also creates heroic and legendary figures that children can look up to. Naruto`s argument was severely flawed.
- Wasn`t Fuuton: Rasen Shuriken devastating to Naruto`s arm? I can understand him using the forbidden technique in that situation, but he seemed to be completely fine after using it.
- I understand Kakashi's desire to leave a keepsake for his apprentice, but with everything those bells stood for, it was like saying 'please break the rules and come after me'. Just a dumb thing to do if he really wanted the mission to succeed.
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The story also repeated the same old theatrical Naruto battle formula: Three villain ninjas ending up in head-to-head battles to buy time for the last boss. Only this time they were 1v3s instead of head-to-head, and some Kuchiyose (summoning) were used.
Still, the story is well-structured with an introduction, story development, climax, and a comical ending. Following through the central theme. Flashbacks from the anime series were used very effectively, with the animation completely redone from story board. 'Will of Fire' and 'Obito' cards were played especially well.
CHARACTERS: 2/10
There are very little character developments in movies for series. In fact, I don`t really expect too much from them. "Will of Fire" still managed to completely bomb this section.
They made a fatal mistake for movies: Making every single character in the series appear. Pretty much all the ninjas in Naruto`s generation showed up, only to make their signature move and used as action fillers. They ate away precious screen time that could`ve been used to develop the main characters or the story. As a result, the main characters remained paper-thin, with Naruto acting like a stubborn child and Sakura a tsundere who kept beating up Naruto and Sai.
I did like Gaara`s involvement though, since his action sequence was very cool, and his role supported Naruto`s determination.
ENJOYMENT/OVERALL 7.5/10
Theatrical releases of continuous series (as opposed to episodic series like "Doraemon" or "Crayon Shin-chan") are always going to be a side-story, and should be expected as such. There will never be a good animated movie for series.
Despite all the criticisms, "Naruto/Shippuuden" is my favorite 100+ episode anime series after "Yuu Yuu Hakusho". The 3rd Shippuuden movie "Will of Fire" was a great side story for me, even though the story and characters would be terrible for a stand-alone film.
I didin't really agree with Naruto's decision that could've destroyed the entire village over one person, but I guess as a movie, they had to push the friendship over responsibility.
Sometimes I feel these movies are targeted toward younger audiences than series or manga itself due to their corniness and deliberate attempts for inspiration, but compared to all previous Naruto movies, "Will of Fire" was by far the most well-directed, and personally the best Naruto film since the very first Naruto movie "Snow Princess".
