http://myanimelist.net/blog/WhatsifsowhatsitMyAnimeList.net Blogs http://myanimelist.net/blog.php?eid=42681 Hey all! This time, I&#039;m reviewing the 39th episode of Naruto. Please note, as always: <em>SPOILER</em> alert! <strong>Summary</strong> The fight between Sasuke and Yoroi is continued! The last time, we left Sasuke as he was being drained of his chakra by the nefarious Yoroi. We see this going on and Orochimaru gloating that Yoroi was the perfect opponent for Sasuke, because with this jutsu, Sasuke would have to rely on his own sharingan ability, which would cause the curse seal Orochimaru gave him to activate and Sasuke to become all evil again. However, Sasuke still has some strength left, and he kicks Yoroi off him and keeps him away for a while until he is reminded of his earlier fight against fuzzy eyebrow guy. He half-copies his ability and adds to it by himself to give birth to the &quot;Lion combo&quot;. As he is executing this technique however, the curse seal activates again and starts to spread. Sasuke fights it with his will and thus deactivates it, then continues to win the fight. Just about every one of the spectators has their own thoughts about the whole thing, some of which are shared out loud. Naruto asks Sakura about the seal, that he briefly saw in Sasuke&#039;s neck during the fight, but Sasuke doesn&#039;t want Sakura to tell him about. Sakura lies and says she doesn&#039;t know. Sasuke is then taken away by Kakashi so that he can seal his seal. In the meantime, the next fight is fought between Zaku - the guy whose arms Sasuke broke in an earlier episode under the control of his curse seal - and Shino. Shino is a member of the rookie team that also contains Hinata (the girl that has a crush on Naruto) and Kiba (the dude with the dog). Naruto has told the viewer before about Shino, saying that he doesn&#039;t really know much about him, but he&#039;s not Naruto&#039;s kind of guy. Kakashi finishes sealing Sasuke&#039;s curse seal, but warns Sasuke that the anti-evil spell that he cast on it is fueled mainly by Sasuke&#039;s will, so he must never stop believing in himself. Sasuke then passes out, leaving Kakashi alone to be approached by Orochimaru, thus ending the episode. <strong>The review</strong> ACTION - 8/10 Pretty solid action in this episode. I liked the fight between Sasuke and Yoroi, although nothing happened in it that was too spectacularly appealing to me. The fight at the end didn&#039;t really flare up quite yet, so I won&#039;t count that very much. Of course, action in Naruto is rather good overall, so it won&#039;t get lower than an 8 from me in this case. CHARACTERS - 6/10 Much of the episode is about the fight between Sasuke and Yoroi and Sasuke mainly shows his character when he suppresses the seal and stops it from taking him over. This is nice and shows again that he is strong in many ways, in this case mentally (although of course he displays physical strength and talent in the rest of the fight as well). A whole bunch of characters got focussed on briefly through-out the episode, like just after the fight. Sakura is shown as being quite relieved after Sasuke won the fight without allowing his curse seal to overcome him. Rock Lee admires Sasuke and the way he adapted his own ability so quickly, after seeing it only once. Not a lot of special was going on this time, psychologically, I think. What was going on was all pretty solid, and a little straightforward. I&#039;d say this episode gets a 6 in this regard. ENJOYMENT - 9/10 This episode really got into the fights in the preliminaries, which as I&#039;ve noted in my review of episode 38, I find very appealing. As I hoped, it seems like none of them will be skipped due to lack of really important characters participating, as shown in the end when Zaku and Shino got it on (although of course, those might end up being more important than they have seemed to be so far - Zaku of course has ties with Orochimaru, after all, and Shino is one of the rookie nine, I believe). This was all rather enjoyable, and I liked at the end how Kakashi was thrown into a different role than just an observatory one. And although Naruto again wasn&#039;t featured too much, his interjections and emotions, especially towards Sasuke, are always fun to watch. 9/10. <strong>Overall: 7.6/10</strong> Mon, 14 Sep 2009 14:50:46 -0700 http://myanimelist.net/blog.php?eid=42674 Hey everyone, I decided to start a thing where I write a quick review in the form of a blog entry about certain episodes of anime that I watch :) Unlike I would for a whole anime, I will only review the characters (development/psychology etc.) and the overall enjoyment, since the rest is best left to reviews of entire anime. I&#039;ll be starting with Naruto episode 38! <em><strong>SPOILERS</strong></em> will be included, by the way - be forewarned. <strong>Summary</strong> As in most anime, one episode of Naruto doesn&#039;t necessarily seem to move the plot very much. But if you look for it, there&#039;s often quite a lot of things happening. In this episode, for instance, the explanation was given for the preliminaries of the third exam of the chuunin selection, which was necessary because too many people were left after the first two exams. The preliminaries would consist of ten one-on-one matches, with the combatants randomly chosen from the twenty remaining contenders. Kabuto-san stepped away from the preliminaries (so it was actually twenty-one remaining before) and through his inner thoughts revealed some things, the most startling of which being the fact that Orochimaru was watching in what I think is a disguise to keep his eye on Sasuke. Sasuke, in turn, was having more trouble with the pains his curse seal was causing him, and Sakura being Sakura wanted to get him out of the selection program to keep him safe. Sasuke was chosen to fight first and his opponent would be Yoroi, one of the co-spies of Kabuto-san. The episode ended when Sasuke appeared to be losing from having his strength being apparently sucked out by some ingenious jutsu of Yoroi&#039;s. <strong>The review</strong> ACTION - 6/10 Well, so there wasn&#039;t a lot of action in this one. But what there was was fine, so it still gets a 6 here. CHARACTERS - 7/10 Sasuke once again was the main character of this episode. I quite like how they&#039;re keeping Naruto, despite him being the title character, rather on the background - it creates a feeling of anticipation, I feel. And a bit of vicarious jealousy, perhaps. He played a good role, this episode. Nothing too novel: he hinted at his being an avenger and fought Sakura to stay in the chuunin selection program. I like how he feels almost like a villain at times, or at least a bit of an anti-hero. His seiyuu talks like the character is evil at times, like when he&#039;s about to start his fight with Yoroi and says something like, &#039;Now then, how shall I fight?&#039; Also, he can look quite attractive at times. There&#039;s something to his eyes. Sakura has a way of annoying me at times. I suppose it makes sense that she figures what&#039;s happening to Sasuke is dangerous and should be taken care of before anything else (and certainly before he risks his life in a life-or-death battle with a strong opponent)... but to have him drop out of the preliminaries and with that, the whole chuunin selection exam? ...Hm, I suppose it still makes some sense. Still, somehow she annoys me. She also seems to not really understand how to be a kunoichi. In that episode where she supposedly &quot;blossomed&quot; (according to the title), all she did was get badly beaten... and bite a bad guy&#039;s arm, for pity&#039;s sake. Still, that&#039;s nothing against the anime itself, and so far they&#039;ve done a good job at passing her automatically with her much more capable team-mates. I wonder how she&#039;ll do in these preliminaries, as the set-up of it suggests they will all have to fight by themselves, one on one. Naruto wasn&#039;t too prominently featured this episode. His feelings of rivalry towards Sasuke came flaring up when Sasuke suggested he wanted to fight Naruto later on as well, which was nice. Overall, the characters earned a 7/10 for okay and in-character behavior, but nothing too special. ENJOYMENT - 8/10 The entire anime has been rather enjoyable to me so far, and the chuunin selection exam especially. It&#039;s been getting better and better for a while, with the first exam not being all that interesting, but the second one being a brilliant setting that I might have imagined as a child. One of those amazing &quot;game&quot; scenarios, almost a bit like that time when we were divided into several groups with cards of a rock-paper-scissors type variety and we had to go find a hide-out, then from there on out go into the woods carrying one such card until we met someone from a different group and then take their card or have our card be taken based on which of us won, and thus try to gather as many cards as possible. And though we haven&#039;t seen the specifics of the third exam yet, the preliminaries alone are very entertaining to me. Finally, a chance to see them all fighting one on one and discover even more about their strengths, fighting styles and personalities. Still, this episode mostly created a lot of anticipation and didn&#039;t really get into the actual preliminaries or anything of the kind just yet. It&#039;s gonna be an 8/10. <strong>Overall: 7.2/10</strong> Mon, 14 Sep 2009 12:58:27 -0700