Without reading the rest of this thread I'll give you my take...
I was actually very entertained by the first few minutes of this episode and thought that while the pacing is $hit to be kind atleast the high quality of animation made me forget about it a bit, but once the anticlimatic fight with Gaara ended this episode turned into a crawl of a pathetic display...The second half of the episode was Kankuro walking the desert while the Akatsuki guys walked the desert as the paper-bird flies in the desert
...I mean they gave no attempt to even hide the fact they were moving this ep at a snail's pace...The overall effect of Deidera vs. Gaara suffered aswell because of the horrible pacing...I don't get the sense I saw a greatly improved gaara vs. a awesome Akatsuki guy....I saw this unexciting methodical fight...Gaara V. Kimmimuro was 20 times better than this slow-exploding fight...
Naruto 2 years later still whining about everything seemed out of place too..In the first ep he's happy and hyped by the challenge that everyone has passed him in rank, but now he's all emo about it...Just didn't seem real...and Neither was the choppyness of going back and forth between Naruto eating Raman and what was supposed to be this "
SPECIAL!!" episode fight...If it wasn't for a cool scene with Shiki and Temari and Kankuro atleast starting his assault I was ready to give this ep a 1 or 2...I finally settled on a 4, because overall, in execution and in content this ep was quite poor...
Something else that's really starting to bother me is the BGM's...I'm sorry guys, but
THEY ARE BORING, this earth-tone music does nothing to enhance the fight or the atmosphere...Hell there's even several scenes where there is NO MUSIC (just generic sound FX)...I'll have to cope but boy do I miss old-school naruto BGM's (Atleast those tracks could make a $hitty ep have a fake feeling of hypeness)...
Now we wait 2 more weeks for what seems to be another lame-a$$ mission for team Kakashi when we we're being teased they may actually do the Gaara case...One thing I dig about America over Japanese presentation is that atleast we hype the hell out of the first few eps of a new series before we $hit on the fans with subpar eps...For some reason I guess the opposite applies here...