Sea Slugs! Anime Blog

Deidara now finds himself in a semi-bind having run into Gaara, so he escapes back into the sky. Given that Gaara is now the Kazekage, the one thing that bothered me was the fact that his sand attacks seemed too slow versus Deidara’s bird. Maybe I’m not giving Deidara enough credit given that he’s an Akatsuki member and S-ranked ninja, or maybe Gaara was just trying to feel out his opponent, but that bird Deidara’s flying in shouldn’t have been able to avoid that many sand attacks. Deidara tries to counterattack, but his initial bird explosive attacks were similar to a hunter taking down an elephant with a pea-shooter. At the end of the episode, Deidara makes a better final attempt of attack by sending cruise-missile speed birds directly at Gaara, but Gaara encapsulates himself inside his sand-tank ball and starts to engulf Deidara in his desert coffin. Unfortunately, the animators seemed to have taken a vacation on this episode as the movement on Gaara’s sand attacks looked quite choppy, and the arm movements that Gaara made to direct the sand looked un-natural and contorted at times.

Meanwhile, back in Konoha, Kakashi shows his expansive ninjutsu knowledge as he utilizes fire, earth and water jutsus with lightning fast hand seals. However, having to push himself to use all those jutsus has strained his stamina, and while he’s off hiding and recovering, Naruto comes up with a silly but clever plan for both of them to charge at Kakashi while Naruto gives away the ending to Make-out Tactics. In doing that, Kakashi covers his ears with hands and closes his Sharingan eye (to keep from reading Naruto’s lips) so that he wouldn’t get any spoilers, and Naruto and Sakura easily capture the bells right after that. I guess Kakashi could have made a better attempt to get away, but the inital shock of knowing Make-out Tactics’ ending was too much for him :P Similarly in Gaara’s battle, the animation sequence in this battle took a back seat, and the sound studio forgot to add the echo effect when Kakashi uses Katon, Goukakyuu no Jutsu. Hopefully the animation will pick up later down the road…