[Ero-Senn1n]

Originally Posted by itachi-san314

yea, i get that, but his brother was still boring and pointless

Well, then it comes down to a matter of individual taste It was ok in for my taste. In the manga at least, in the anime they usually make things too lengthy.

Originally Posted by itachi-san314

why would kabuto even bring back sasori with no puppets?

Because Kishimoto didn't want him to fight any more, to avoid boring fights where he repeats his moves that we already know about. I think its still much less bullshit than him having all his puppets army and then he loses so quickly to rookies like Omoi, Sai and Kankuro. So if he either loses quickly because he has no puppets or he has a longer and thus boring fight, then i would choose the first option. The 3rd option would be that most of the battle is skipped, but then we would complain later how Kankuro and the others are not half dead by the time they sealed Sasori, because according to the plot they are figthing the whole day and then they can't even sleep at night because of the Zetsu clones.

Originally Posted by itachi-san314

the whole scene felt forced and unreal to me.

I can't argue with that My point was just that Kishimoto didn't give him puppets so that you would not feel it "forced and unreal" and simply accept that without his puppets this was the natural outcome, but if you also consider not giving him puppets as part of the whole situation then of course you are right it was forced. I just didn't care that much about that since Kishimoto never explained if he should give any tools to the ninja who are useless without their tools, so it was the author's freedom to choose what's best for the plot he imagined.

Originally Posted by itachi-san314

the same argument can be said about any fight if all you're looking for is story progression and character development. naruto is about fighting more than anything else.

It's the character development, but these are mostly secondary characters and some of them like Sasori had already revealed all their secret moves. So the author has to prioritize, either show more of the Sasori vs Kankuro fight or show more of the other fights. I was really interested in the other 3 kages because they were the best what past generations could offer and also in the fights of more interesting characters like Naruto (which will be next episode).

Originally Posted by itachi-san314

would you have preferred empire strikes back to cut the last fight and just have vader's speech and luke's reaction at the end?

Naruto is the main character here not Gaara. But anyway i found that fight between them boring, most of the Naruto fights are more interesting than that was. I don't know why but i was never really interested in Star Wars, the ideas in it were pretty cool but the outcome was somehow boring to me.

Originally Posted by Captain Commando

Wow, I disagree... To me this was already explained in the scene, and being killed by his parent's puppets was just poetic justice at its finest. I thought it was such a great exit for Sasori; sometimes over-explaining can ruin a scene. In this case, I thought the explanation was adequate, and certainly didn't require something as drastic as resurrecting the character from the dead, especially when Chiyo essentially explained why he allowed himself to die in her brief retrospect. As Itachi-san states here...

I didn't literally mean an explanation, and of course it was not given like that. I meant it about Sasori's character possibly changing, as he clearly failed in his goal to become an emotionless puppet but despite that he didn't say or think anything about this in his last moments. Also he helped Sakura and Chiyo with some important information even if he didn't have to. So it felt like Kishimoto didn't give a closure to this character, becuase he was clearly not meant to be a simply evil character who just dies as evil as he lived, like Kakuzu and Hidan. He was even given a story, flashbacks to his childhood, so i was really missing some closure there, and that's what he got here by talking with Kankuro.

Originally Posted by Captain Commando

I don't find many of the fights put forth by the rookies very impressive, and that goes for the ones who were even shown in non-trivial fights to begin with.

What about the Shika-Ino-Choji trio? They were pretty epic. As for not being impressive, remember they are against legendary kages, none of them could really match up against these kages in 1on1, of course the exception being Gaara and Naruto. So what remains for them is to rely on teamwork and other stronger ninja like the generals.