[Anime-only] Shippuden Episode 164 Discussion

[Mr.Amazing]

I love how Naruto used the smoke bomb. It was impressive, along with the combo that followed. I though the summoning of clones was pretty awesome. My only dislike in this episode is that the Frogs were pretty much useless. They just seemed nerfed to me. And am I the only one who wants an explaination for Pain's summonings?

[sayde]

I liked this episode. A couple aspects of it reminded me of part1's glory days. In particular the strategy/tactics Naruto used to take out that pain body as well as the music used during that moment. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the song sounded like a remix of Naruto's theme song from part 1. In any case, I think that was my favorite track in all of Shippuden so far. I definitely wouldn't mind getting more bgm's like that. Lastly, the anime is finally closing in on the very part that got me to start keeping up with the manga. So to say I'm looking forward to the next few eps would be an understatement to say the least.

[Emilis]

nice avatar sayde which reminds me,

I should have voted one place above average for this episode just for the extra scene at the end. That was really funny!

[kitten320]

Ah yeh, poor Katsuya

[inspirations365]

Can someone explain what Pain meant by his line "Deidara was right, he does not listen"? I have no idea what he's referring to.

Also, I liked the explosion from FRS better when it was used again Kakuzu. Yay big explosions. But the way it was tearing up that other pain was neat too.

[morbosfist]

When Deidara was describing Naruto in whatever episode, he said that Naruto wouldn't listen to reason.

[ntherblast]

wasn't gas good as i thought and what instantly made this a crappy episode for me was when they had to tell the viewer specifically how the combo was performed.

[DarkHollowIchigo]

Totaly awsome episode.

[lotus_lee]

Man I love the sound effects that come along with Pain, especially when Deva Path does the Shinra Tensei, and Animal Path summons.

[Alchemist007]

At least Pain has a good VA. The Shinra Tensei's are awesome.

[Shiryuu]

Pain has 3 sets of eyes. Yet all of them keep looking in the same direction.

[DeDe]

Originally Posted by kitten320

It might have had some nice moves but over all it looked horrible. Purely blue skies, characters don't look like themselves and even smoke is not realistic...

Spoiler for Just who the hell is that?:

More reminds me some American cartoon character.

I can't enjoy fighting when it looks that bad.

Hidan. I know exactly what you are saying. I remember seeing some screencaps of Choji from 82 in the Team 10 FC on NF and he looked a blob with a bad wig. So ugly. But there is a reason for this. Hirofumi Suzuki, who is the top animation guy for Naruto, is all about fluidity. Notice how there is very little shading and bright colors. He is only concerned with movement and making things come to life. So a screencap of it will look odd. But everything looks beautiful when it moves. Just look at the difference between the animation in this episode compared to 82, 85, or 123. 164 looks like cheap fan animation compared to them.

[jsu718]

Originally Posted by DeDe

Hidan. I know exactly what you are saying. I remember seeing some screencaps of Choji from 82 in the Team 10 FC on NF and he looked a blob with a bad wig. So ugly. But there is a reason for this. Hirofumi Suzuki, who is the top animation guy for Naruto, is all about fluidity. Notice how there is very little shading and bright colors. He is only concerned with movement and making things come to life. So a screencap of it will look odd. But everything looks beautiful when it moves. Just look at the difference between the animation in this episode compared to 82, 85, or 123. 164 looks like cheap fan animation compared to them.

But when 99% of the episodes are done one way, and Suzuki comes out and does random episodes another way, it stands out... and not in a good way. It'd be one thing if they all looked that way with characters drawn the same and moving fluidly, but when you are accustomed to characters always looking the same, it is a BAD thing to have them look wrong no matter how fluid the motion is. The only thing I really end up noticing about his episodes is that the lines are thin, the drawing quality is terrible, and the "camera" moves around a lot more other than just side to side. I prefer the "crappy" animation.

[Starrk]

This is literally the worst-animated episode of anything I have ever seen in my entire life. So much untapped potential... why couldn't they make it like Sasuke's fight against Deidara, Itachi, or Hidan/Kakuzu fight? They literally have a prejudice against Naruto, I can't remember one time they gave him good animation since Zabuza unless it had Sasuke in it. The animators all have a boner for Sasuke, yet don't give a shit about Naruto, even during his most important fight ever. When the fight happens, everyone's just standing there watching each other do things. Naruto throws his Rasen-shuriken (they don't even show how it is formed, too lazy to animate that) and the Pains are just standing there for 2+ seconds, waiting to get hit. Ridiculous. In the manga they are literally scampering for their lives, moving as fast as they can, and they still get hit. In this anime it looks like they are playing a slow, boring chess game, no sense of urgency, action or skill at all. When I read the anime, I was utterly flabbergasted by Naruto's sheer display of power, speed and wits, and truly got convinced that he was one of the strongest people in the ninja world. Here when I watch it it is like everyone else just died against Pain because they weren't competent enough, and Naruto's just scoring hits because he's lucky and and he has slightly more of a hax power now. No sense of dynamics, I actually want to see the villagers slightly appreciating what's going on, instead of sitting there all wounded and broken whenever we see them. Why the f**k did they just do a play-by-play scene of the manga?! In every good animated fight that was ever done in this anime, they just used the manga as a rough guideline, focusing on the action and translating it into real-world dynamics. In this show I feel like I am reading a bad portrayal of the manga, practically color-version still shots while having slight pockets of animation just so they can say "oh yeah, we animated it. We did our job. Can we get our yen and go home now?"

Seriously, you know there is a problem with the anime when the manga was 10x more exciting to read than the show, and it's just a bunch of still colourless images. Words can't describe how disappointed I am with these episodes, so fuck whoever's responsible for ruining one of the best series in anime.

[Starrk]

I can't believe people are actually arguing for the crappy animation, even going so far as to say that this shitty joke of animation was better than the Hidan/Kakuzu episodes? LOL how could that even be possible? You clearly do not know what you are talking about, and have absolutely no taste in animation whatsoever, if you believe that.

Hidan/Kakuzu was one of the best animated arcs in the whole series, and remains one of the most popular. You would be a fool to even compare them to this ungodly junk they are putting out right now.

[james0246]

^You still didn't dislike it as much as Fishman ...then again, maybe Fishman is just a big Duel Masters fan .

This is average Shippuden animation (slightly better than the filler arcs, not as good as the best episodes), in fact this is better animation than several anime shows (Shippuden at its worst is still average overall with the majority of animation out there), and within the arc itself the last episode had worse animation.

[ntherblast]

Originally Posted by Starrk

This is literally the worst-animated episode of anything I have ever seen in my entire life. So much untapped potential... why couldn't they make it like Sasuke's fight against Deidara, Itachi, or Hidan/Kakuzu fight? They literally have a prejudice against Naruto, I can't remember one time they gave him good animation since Zabuza unless it had Sasuke in it. The animators all have a boner for Sasuke, yet don't give a shit about Naruto, even during his most important fight ever. When the fight happens, everyone's just standing there watching each other do things. Naruto throws his Rasen-shuriken (they don't even show how it is formed, too lazy to animate that) and the Pains are just standing there for 2+ seconds, waiting to get hit. Ridiculous. In the manga they are literally scampering for their lives, moving as fast as they can, and they still get hit. In this anime it looks like they are playing a slow, boring chess game, no sense of urgency, action or skill at all. When I read the anime, I was utterly flabbergasted by Naruto's sheer display of power, speed and wits, and truly got convinced that he was one of the strongest people in the ninja world. Here when I watch it it is like everyone else just died against Pain because they weren't competent enough, and Naruto's just scoring hits because he's lucky and and he has slightly more of a hax power now. No sense of dynamics, I actually want to see the villagers slightly appreciating what's going on, instead of sitting there all wounded and broken whenever we see them. Why the f**k did they just do a play-by-play scene of the manga?! In every good animated fight that was ever done in this anime, they just used the manga as a rough guideline, focusing on the action and translating it into real-world dynamics. In this show I feel like I am reading a bad portrayal of the manga, practically color-version still shots while having slight pockets of animation just so they can say "oh yeah, we animated it. We did our job. Can we get our yen and go home now?"

Seriously, you know there is a problem with the anime when the manga was 10x more exciting to read than the show, and it's just a bunch of still colourless images. Words can't describe how disappointed I am with these episodes, so fuck whoever's responsible for ruining one of the best series in anime.

i definalty have to agree with you on when naruto threw the rasen shuriken. The peins just stared at it for like 5 seconds and then tried to dodge when it was already close.

[neshru]

Originally Posted by DeDe

Hirofumi Suzuki, who is the top animation guy for Naruto, is all about fluidity.

Not really. It's not like you have to sacrifice the quality of the drawings to get solid animation. Sometimes it happens, depending on how a particular animator did a particular scene, but the drawings in any Suzuki episode look great 90% of the time. That's what Suzuki does, as an animation director. He doesn't come up with the animation, he just goes over the drawings and gives them his personal touch.

[Starrk]

Originally Posted by ntherblast

i definalty have to agree with you on when naruto threw the rasen shuriken. The peins just stared at it for like 5 seconds and then tried to dodge when it was already close.

In the manga there was a sense of surprise and utter incredulity in the air when Naruto threw his rasen-shuriken for the first time, because it seemed like nothing like that had ever been done in the entire ninja-world. In this show it looked like a boring chess move.

[kk2extreme]

Originally Posted by kitten320

Ah yeh, poor Katsuya

poor katsuya indeed