Ranked #1494

Naruto: Shippuuden Movie 4 - The Lost Tower

After seeing the trailer for this movie nearly a year ago, I'll be honest and say I thought it looked really awesome! It seemed like a great idea for a Naruto movie! Now, I've seen the long awaited Naruto Movie 4 The Lost Tower, and I am, to say the least, very disappointed with it.

It wasn't the worst Naruto movie I've seen, but it was the one that I was most excited about and that's what bothers me the most.
Here is what I thought of it:


Story: 4
From the trailer and the description, I thought for sure that this movie would be about Naruto going into the past and meeting his dad and they would have a father-son sort of bonding (without knowing that they were related). I wanted to see Minato and Naruto as the main focus of the movie. And what do I get? All together, Minato showed up in the movie for about 10 minutes. I wouldn't even consider him a main character. Instead of Minato taking up the spotlight, we meet a new character named Sara. The only good parts of the movie were when Minato was there; in other words, there were only about 10 minutes of the movie that I enjoyed.

Focusing on other details - In the first few seconds, this movie starts off with a fight that includes Naruto, Sakura, Sai and Kakashi. I'll admit, it was a decent fight to catch the audience's attention. But after, it basically went downhill.
The first ten minutes of the movie do a quick intro to what will happen throughout the film, but those ten or so minutes were definitely not enough! Everything was extremely fast paced, especially at the beginning. There were also several gaps in the plot that made me wonder if I had missed something. That alone just spells doom for the rest of the film. The plot doesn't matter because it wasn't any good, the only decent parts were the fighting, and even then, it wasn't incredible.


Art: 7
The art in The Lost Tower wasn't terrible, but the characters didn't have all that many details, just average anime art.
The background on the other hand was very beautiful and nicely detailed! During this movie, we see many buildings and sky-scraping towers. I feel like the majority of the budget for this movie went to making the background pretty. But most people focus on the characters rather than the objects behind them.

Something that bugged me a little bit was the random and most ridiculous faces or body-twists that Naruto has ever made. I have never really seen his face distort like that in the show. This little addition made it similar to One Piece expressions (as in, the eyes grow extremely wide and the mouth extends longer than is humanly possible). I am aware that anime doesn't follow the laws of physics, but in previous naruto movies and the show, they have kept things relatively realistic. But like I mentioned, it only bothered me a little bit.


Sound: 7
Junko Takeuchi is a great voice actress! She is able to voice emotions very well and that's part of what makes Naruto's character interesting and fun. So I don't have anything bad to say about her.

Toshiyuki Morikawa voices Minato Namikaze in The Lost Tower. He is also a very talented voice actor and I think the creators would have been smart to include Minato in the movie more and by doing that, give Toshiyuki Morikawa more time to talk!

Saori Hayami is the voice of the new character Sara (or Saara) in this movie. She isn't a terrible voice actress, but nothing about her stood out to me. Rather than being emotional and dedicated to the voice, she sounded a bit too scripted.

The music in the Lost Tower was decent enough. The only song that stood out to me though was the ending fight song! The other songs used in the movie just seemed like background noise that nobody thinks twice about.


Character: 5

Naruto - for some reason, I felt like Naruto was acting too childish. Remember Naruto from the first series where he complains and whines a lot? That's what he acted like. The Naruto in Naruto Shippuuden is more mature (in some ways) and a bit more calm. I think the writers would have done better to have Naruto more cool-headed and rational.

Minato - as I have said a couple times, he is NOT a main character in this movie. So I am not able to talk much about him. But from what I saw, he is how I would picture him to act.

Sara - We always need a "Damsel in Distress" right? That's basically all Sara does in this movie. She tries to help several times, but really doesn't do much. She got a much larger part in the movie than I would have preferred.

Kakashi - in this movie, we get to see young Kakashi. However, we see him even less than Minato. He wasn't really even necessary for this movie. I love Kakashi and I really wanted him to be more involved! I would have loved to see his young self fight alongside Minato and Naruto. But sadly, all he really did was take up screen space.

Mukade - Can I even put this guy into a "villain" category? He really wasn't a very intimidating bad guy. I could hardly even remember his name. His goals weren't impressive and his actions were, to be honest, boring. "Madara", "Pain" or "Orochimaru" are names that people can remember because the characters DID something worth remembering. Mukade doesn't even come close to a decent villain.


Enjoyment: 5
Definitely not a movie that I would want to go buy or even watch again. For that entire 1 hour and 25 minutes, I was waiting for something epic to happen, but nothing did.
My 'enjoyment' is often based on the Story and Character, and after giving those low scores, you can imagine that my enjoyment was also relatively low.

Overall: 6
I really wish I could give this a better score. But I felt the need to be harshly honest about this movie. I didn't like it, it was a disappointment in every way possible.
I can only hope that the next Naruto movie is better written than this one.
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Compared to the other movies, this one wasn't that good. I mean, as a movie or time killer its fine but it's nothing to get hyped up over. As usual Naruto being the main character runs around doing things his way like in every other movie. Theres nothing new here. Also the main female is NOT Naruto's mom. Naruto's mother's name is Kushina. This lady is Sara. They just look alike.

Story: 7/10
The concept of time travel is interesting itself. I mean, Naruto going back into time to meet Minato and a few others? Who wouldn't want to see that?. Unfortunately this hope was dropped a little (tell you why soon) and is why it fell short of 8 for me.

This "present" Naruto and this "past" Minato barely ever collided timelines in conversation. I understand that during time travel, contact between past, present and future beings should avoid communication as much as possible in case of destroying space and time but I think they followed this concept too well to the point where you shouldn't even bother getting your hopes up over this idea.

I also feel like the story was a bit rushed in that they found the enemy too quickly and that the second half of the movie just consisted of everyone trying to defeat the bad guy.

Art: 8/10
The art was good. I like all the art in Naruto movies. Hell, I like anime movie art in general. But there is no jump of quality since the last movie. So whatever you saw there, its no different from this one.

Sound: 6/10
Sound was fine. Nothing memorable.

Character: 7/10
Characters were pretty good. Naruto being his charging forward self. I felt that there was a lack of focus on Minato though. I felt like the way they showed him made him look weak as the only move he uses in the entire movie is Shuriken Kage Bunshin no Jutsu and his Flying Thunder God Technique via Flying Thunder God Kunai.

Enjoyment: 6/10
I enjoyed it as a time killer but compared it falls short of being on par with the other movies. Like every Naruto movie, Naruto pulls out a super-special-movie-only Rasengan. Yes, he does in this movie too. You will laugh at the name.

Overall: 7/10
The movie was good, not great, but good. I should also warn you, whatever you see in the trailer, forget it. Not once is the word "son" or "dad" or "father" used in the movie. The trailers lie. Also... either the enemy is very very powerful, or Naruto got weaker. He never even goes beyond 25-30 clones.

Btw... this is my first review.
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