[Anime-only] Shippuden Episode 167 Discussion

[bombyethan1000]

-wow pain knows some massive water and wood release jutsu
-pain's face is seriously distorted

[zaxthezax]

Originally Posted by Fukitsu Naruto

-Oh my dear God. This is just...unbelievable. As entertaining as the whole fight was, I could not take it seriously. It felt like I was watching a Tom&Jerry cartoon from the early days, mixed in with some Road Runner and Daffy Duck for some spice.

This is exactly what i felt. The animation team was going epic hax on this, prolly to troll every1 ever watching this episode. And all these plotholish fillers (element spaming wtf!). Hell i hate fillers but this was so intense, driven by the super fluid animations.
Episode 167 is definetly epic at one hand and a giant troll at the other. Im sure!

[chickdigger802]

This eps had so much win, but the face distortion was a little too much. The dude could animate it well without distortion (3rd hokage vs orichimaru fight?), maybe he was just drinking too much =)

But dont worry next week animation is shit once again so all ya fanboys will be happy.

[Bombo]

Great episode with soundtra the art ruined it =\
And they return sakura back to ED /sigh ..
anyway waiting for next episode

[willyvereb]

First off: Why this thread didn't became sticky? This is an actual episode description so...Maybe the mods need some time to catch up. Probably.

Second: Making an avatar from that hammering scene would be gold. It looked so hilarious especially coupled with Pain's out of character expressions. I laughed for the whole first half of the episode. Also I guess Pain is made out of iron...crashing through solid rocks, hammered into the ground, punched for hundreds of meters and he still keeps his appearance and monotone. Welcome to the world of Terminator.

[inspirations365]

Originally Posted by willyvereb

Also I guess Pain is made out of iron...crashing through solid rocks, hammered into the ground, punched for hundreds of meters and he still keeps his appearance and monotone. Welcome to the world of Terminator.

Remember, he's dead, right? And the same happened to Naruto during the fight in Part 1 with Sasuke. And he wasn't even using the curse seal. I dunno why the DragonBall Z-style attacks make me feel satisfied, but alas, they do...

Also: 2nd to the hammering avatar. I kind of expected it to already be here....

[james0246]

Originally Posted by Jehuty

[edit] I wonder, does anyone know what the fan reactions in Japan were for the Naruto / Sasuke fight? Are there any polls about this episode? I'm just curious more than anything.

I couldn't really tell you what specifically the Japanese audience felt concerning the episode, but I can tell you the viewer ratings (percentage viewed in their time slot):
03/30 - 8.4% (episode 128, start of the fight)
04/06 - 7.5%
04/13 - 7.7%
04/20 - 8.0%
04/27 - 8.3%
05/04 - 6.5% - the last episode Atsushi Wakabayashi worked on (133)...
05/11 - 8.0%
05/18 - 8.2% (episode 135, the end of the fight)

So, Wakabayashi's episode had the worst rating of the entire fight. But, let's look up his other episodes: 30 - 8.6% (this was part of an upswing after Naruto moved from Thursday to Wednesday (it's changed now), that lead to several 10.0+ ratings); 71 - 6.8% (this was the start of the Sarutobi v. Orochimaru battle, so there was a ratings drop due to the fact that Naruto wasn't on screen that much). I am unsure what the ratings for last night’s episode will be, but I don’t expect anything above 5.0% (which is the standard for the past few years - last weeks episode only received a 5.0%).

Guess the Japanese don't really like Wakabayashi . (Note: I'm being factitious more than anything. As I mentioned, I have no idea how the Japanese view Wakabayashi...)


As for Animesuki fan reactions: Hunter and Monir will speak for me... (30 and 131 are lost to the ages).


In other news, no Naruto next week…

[iBeast]

Man the last 3 minutes and the ending is what made this episode for me.

[yakumo-chan]

what are you guys saying???

the animation was great!!

i wish they wont stop making this animation until the end!

it looks like hinata is still alive! yey!!!

I hope Hinata would stop blushing in the future episodes!

[AnbuItachi]

why was the animation so bad. i know its the style but seriously it looks like garbage... really messy looking and blown out of proportions, i did not remember pain making those crazy faces in the manga.. also didn't like the AHHHs that pain did when he palmed stuff. the animation when naruto first started was sooo much better

[straferd]

Best... episode.... ever? maybe !

However the amount of punishment that Pain could handle was ridiculous.

[poolfan]

If the animators would just follow the manga panels exactly and padded it out with lots of staring and talking, it'd have been a much much better episode. Nagato suffers pain and negative emotions but Tendo himself doesn't. Why would there be such distorted facial animations of Tendo? 1st 10 minutes of the episode seems like some kind of masturbative insanity from the animators.

[Kafriel]

Hmm, emotions don't fit the Pain...they should have just stuck to his absolute cold stare and deadly attacks (chibaku tensei sent the coolometer readings off the charts, but watching Pain and Nagato struggling so much was kinda underwhelming). If it was any other character, then I wouldn't mind the super flashy battle, because it looked great...just felt out of place for me.
I see that Hinata has left the ending along with the story, double punishment from the studio! Still, Sakura in double pigtails looks nice, would be even better if she became the next Tsunade:P Oh, another thing that let me down: the music selection for the unsealing of nine-tails. It's supposed to be the end of the world and they gave it a "godsent" piece? Talk about bad placing! I'll give this episode an 84/100, the animation was astounding and this is an important plot point;however the art needs a lot of work and a few choices could have been made otherwise.

[kitten320]

I guess I'm the ony one who wanted to laugh through the whole thing 0_o
WTF is wrong with Pein expressions? His moves look ridiculous, I will be quiet about how he got "nailed"... only instead of hammer kyubi had used piece of earth... And since when he knows Kung Fu?
The whole Kyubi animation was ridiculos, some random head and hands popping out from his body and those huge Kyubi arms coming out of ground...
I'll be quiet about Pein the dolphin!

Though go Pein for straight jaw hit! And he has no burns left!

Oh my! Pein is a superman now! He can fly!
And why is Pein fat?!
Oh, now we have doggie Kyubi!
Lazer blast!

Though I won't lie it did have some nice move flow and towards the end it looked really cool, backgrounds and the whole catching of Kyubi... but if each episode would be like this, I would stop watching Naruto...

The whole thing really reminded me of Gurren Lagan...

[sayde]

Originally Posted by dickdatduck

If you don't like the art in this episode that is understandable but the animation was amazing.

Yeah, seriously. To be honest, this was my favorite Shippuden episode. I didn't think I'd like anything more than the previous one (since I'm a major Hinata fanboy), but the shear amount of action complimented by such extremely solid animation made it awesome to watch. While the art of the episode was noticeably off, I just chalk it up to the fact that it's a part of this particular animation teams style. And since things like that didn't bother me in the Naruto vs Sasuke fight, it certainly didn't bother me now.

[poolfan]

LOL at 04:44 to 04:50, Tendo was running so fast that his calves got separated from his thighs and spun around in circles.

[neshru]

Originally Posted by kitten320

The whole Kyubi animation was ridiculos, some random head and hands popping out from his body and those huge Kyubi arms coming out of ground...

All stuff that we've seen when Naruto went four tails for the first time in episode 42.

[yakumo-chan]

I dont agree with the guys who dont like the animation.......

for me this is much better..... because the movement quality of the characters are top notch....

the only thing bad here was their faces.... but i dont care.... I love this...... especially the battle music!

[drt23]

Long time reader of these forums, but finally making an account to comment on the animation.

It was downright horrid and laughable during the serious scenes. How are you they supposed to convey the fear, the emotion, the epic storyline when the animation cracks you up?

Definitely loved the music at the end though when the 8th tail/4th hokage appears.

[kitten320]

^That's exactly my point! Yes the fight was great at one point and I was waiting for it but instead of being excited I was laughing like maniac! I actually didn't know if I should laugh of cry from what I saw.

Originally Posted by neshru

All stuff that we've seen when Naruto went four tails for the first time in episode 42.

At least it didn't look that dumb and ridiculouse as in this episode.

EDIT: Huh? Sakura centred ED? And why did she get one now?
Well at least it looks better than the one with Hinata...