I enjoyed the episode, the music that we heard was ntoably good and I'm really enjoying the new soundtrack.
Some flaws though:
- The Bell Test and the Gaara/Deidara fight just don't mix. You have an epic battle between the Kazekage and an Akatsuki member and then you flash to a minor fight, it just doesn't gel too well. Everytime the Bell test showed up I was pretty much waiting for it to end, not because I thought it was bad but because I wanted to see what was happening between Gaara and Deidara.
- As ShikaShika touched upon, the Gaara and Deidara fight lacked music (at least any that I noticed). It was still a good watch and without music gave it a 'real' feel but for an epic fight like that some music probably should've been involved, especially considering how good the soudntrack has been so far for the Shippuden.
- Even though it was in the manga the way Naruto and Sakura beat Kakashi just felt weak to me personally, although I'm sure that plenty share a different opinion to me on that.
Over-all though I liked the episode, it had me very firmly glued to the screen and has me excited to see how the other ends up (I'm not a manga reader so it's still unknwon to me
). I gave it an 8 although maybe that's a little higher than it deserves now that I look properly at what I percieved to be the flaws.