I disagree with DeDe. ED song and the visual is far better than the OP. The OP song gets pretty weird when the visual starts to flesh out the thematics for what to come next. I was scratching my head at trying to figure out the point the song was trying to get across. The ED song has a very cheery and energetic rhythm to it and the visual matches it as such. The drawing is very high quality too where similar style was observed in a select few seriously good anime series out there.
As for the episode, haha.... the "legendary confession" was not what I expected. Now I'm very curious to read through the discussion of that corresponding manga chapter just to see what prompted the massive amount of discussion on this subject of Sakura's confession. The one thing that I've learned over the years that manga doesn't make it easy for a solid interpretation of the subject matter it is trying to get across due to the limitation imposed by static drawing and with very little background visual aid. Fans tend to misunderstand a lot at first glance to correctly interpret the affect the author is trying to convey. I'm guessing that's probably what happened in that manga thread too when the chapter came out. Wonder if Hunter made any post in it.
This psuedo confession still brought a lot of things to a new light which we were already getting glimpse of in the past episodes. Naruto has matured a lot. I was pretty surprised by how easily he said why Sasuke needs to walk the path he is on. A guy who loses his entire family in the hand of the very brother who he idealized day and night is nightmarish to say the least. When it is revealed that Itachi did what he did because he was nothing more than an instrument to carry out the sentencing so Konoha could exist, the shock would reverberated through his core. He also learned that his brother equally reciprocated the affection he had for Itachi. The proof was Itachi couldn't bring himself to kill Sasuke. In his pursuit of revenge he was relying on a "truth" that didn't even scratch the surface of the whole truth. I'm glad Naruto realized it so easily. Now I wonder if he is able to grasp the true meaning behind this desperation and the outpouring of emotion from Sakura through her psuedo confession. He understood the hollowness of it, but Sakura was still telling him something subtly.
Naruto is the great hero of Konoha who came in when all was seemingly lost against their battle with Pain. He single handedly brought Konoha back from the brink of total extermination. The key point here is
single handedly. Yeah, I understand he wants to carry the burden, but it can't be easy for his friends, especially the one who is closest to him the most next to Sasuke. Naruto needs to share his burden. He needs to show that he can rely on others too. At the moment he is putting a lot of pressure on other by creating these feelings of guilt, helplessness, and the inability to contribute. The end result was Sakura's confession. I admire her courage to put herself through this. She was quite pitiful, but the desperation of the situation wasn't lost on me where the only wish was to tell Naruto he didn't need to squarely put the burden all to himself. I hope Naruto gets it soon. Fortunately for him, Kakashi is still there thoughtfully watching over him.
The rest of the episode was simply awesome. When the episode started I immediately paused to make sure I was indeed watching Naruto. Enka has that kind of affect on people. I'm also sorry to say Killer Bee has no talent for Enka. He is a good note taker though when he wrote down that's not a bear, but a tanuki. He even drew a sketch of it.
The makeshift of chakra-skate was quite awesome too as Gaara and co were traveling over the snow. Where are they heading toward? I guess the goal here is to protect the remaining jinchuriki and I'm guessing half will go toward Naruto and the other half will converge onto Killer Bee's location. There is also the self proclaimed hokage, the killer of frog, that needs to be dealt with. Really looking forward to what's in store for us in the upcoming episodes.
Off to read the corresponding manga thread for this episode just because....
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Next ep will be teh coolness. New OP is the definition of average, kinda liked the old ED more.
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