Naruto: Shippuuden Movie 3 - Hi no Ishi wo Tsugu Mono

First of all, don’t watch this movie unless you’re interested in Naruto because it’s a movie that mainly appeals to Naruto fans. I’ll assume you’ve watched to at least episode 120, Kakashi Chronicles, of Naruto Shippuden because there are references to Kakashi’s old friend. There are also references to Asuma. Just like the previous movies, Naruto goes crazy with his rasengan and shadow clone techniques in this movie too. But this is the best Naruto movie that’s been released so far.

The main enemy of this movie is Hiruko, some ex-leaf ninja that wants to become the perfect ninja by absorbing ninja with bloodline limits. ... He starts out having four out of five bloodline limits, but he needs one more ninja with a bloodline limit to become the perfect ninja, and that’s Kakashi. Kakashi decides to sacrifice himself for the Leaf in order to defeat Hiruko. But guess who doesn’t want Kakashi to die? Naruto, of course. “Those that break the rules and regulations are scum. But those that abandon their comrades are worse than scum.” That’s pretty much Naruto’s reason for trying to stop Kakashi. Friends over mission.

If you’re a fan of Kakashi or Shikamaru, you might like some of the lines they say in this movie. Of course, Naruto has some good ones, as well as cheesy lines too. Many of the other characters have their lines too, but nothing that great.

There are some light comedy, some good references to Naruto Shippuden, characters going all out with their ninja techniques, and of course the animation is good. You’d be able to tell how much effort was put into the animation if you compared it to Naruto Shippuden. All of that in one package makes a good Naruto movie.

The music was great. The music of the movie soundtrack fit well with the background to fit the mood of the scene. "Dareka Ga" by Puffy, the opening song, was pretty good to listen to.

The strong point of this movie is the references they make in this movie. The involvement of many characters is also a plus in this movie. This movie is a good watch for Naruto fans.

I had relatively low expectations for this movie, seeing how all the previous ones were pretty bad. They all followed the same formula, which is to say Naruto preaches his views onto some filler character causing them to change their ideals and it would always end with Naruto rasengan-ing the big baddie. It was alright the first time, but it got stale after the 2nd movie and became absolutely abysmal for the next 3. Needless to say that asides from maybe a couple cool moments, all the Naruto movies have been bad, definitely not worth a watch. But than this movie came along and sorta ... changed things up making it slightly more fresh and enjoyable.

The story is pretty much standard fare, a disgruntled ninja named Hiruko is hunting down ninjas with Bloodline Limits and absorbing their abilities to become the perfect ninja and start the 4th Ninja War. He soon has his eyes set on Kakashi, and the next thing you know the movie becomes a Kakashi rescue arc. Now this isn't really a bad thing since there are no filler characters and Kakashi is a pretty likable guy (unlike Sasuke) so its easy to empathize with Naruto's gung-ho attitude about the whole thing. There are no real twists to speak of, so don't go in expecting a really good plot because you won't find one. This movie caters to the fans, so people who aren't really into Naruto won't like it either.

However that's not to say that they're isn't any meaningful dialogue or characterization. Sure Naruto is the same and preaches his ideals to anyone who bothers to listen but its still pretty entertaining. There's quite of bit of cheesy lines but some of the dialogue between Naruto, Shikamaru and Kakashi is well written and delivered. Naruto actually thinks his actions out and his speech towards the end is inspiring enough for us to get behind him, ignoring all the fat in between.

Anyway the biggest reason why anyone of us would watch this is for the fights, animation and production values, since hey, this is shounen after all. The animation is MUCH better this time around compared to the last two movies. The fights are good and the Konoha 9 get plenty of screen time. If you're someone who likes the side characters, you'll probably enjoy the movie quite a bit. Though the final fight is kinda disappointing, the animation is good enough to keep it together.

The music was surprisingly good. I didn't expect much at all from Pierrot, but they did a good job in creating a solid soundtrack for the movie. There are plenty of epic orchestrated pieces that that add quite a bit to the mood, especially during the fights. There's also a lot of good typical "Naruto rock", which is to say up beat songs, which are hot-blooded enough to get the job done.

In the end, I enjoyed this movie quite a bit. If you're a Naruto fan than its worth checking out, its definitely the best out of all 6. If you don't like Naruto than this movie isn't going to change your mind. Not that they could ever make a legitimately excellent Naruto movie, but its good mindless fun.

"Naruto Shippuuden: The Inheritors of the Will of Fire" is the third installment of "Naruto Shippuuden" movie and sixth overall.

Hiruko, a former Konoha ninja who abandoned the village a decade ago, declares war against all five major nations in the name of Konoha Village. He had perfected the "Chimera Technique", which absorbs opponent chakra and skills, and starts kidnapping ninjas with Blood Line Limits. The final target of Blood Line users is Kakashi, who possesses the Sharingan from Obito. To prevent the impending 4th Ninja War, Tsunade sends Kakashi on a suicidal mission to stop Hiruko.

ANIMATION: 7/10
The animation is impressive. I would describe it as ... `extreme fluidity`. In fact, this film probably has the smoothest character movement I have ever seen. Battle scenes and leafs/wind effects were stunning. Unfortunately, the drawings of characters are very simple, and backgrounds lack detail. Some scenes were so bad that it seemed like the poor drawings from the original series filler episodes.
Still the director Murata Masahiko did a great job in this film, with some breathtaking scenes with CG-assisted camera movement, and wonderfully choreographed action sequences.

SOUND: 5/10
The voices are same as the original series, and generally fine. Kakashi`s voice was exceptionally well done.
There was very little music, and not very effective. I still have no idea why they replaced MUSASHI for musical scores since the flute and drum instrumentals in the original Naruto series was epic in my opinion.
Theme song is also very weak despite being sang by Puffy. I miss the days when top artists like Hamasaki Ayumi and Every Little Thing sang those touching and memorable songs for anime films. Even the theme song for the first Naruto movie by YUKI was better than anything I`ve heard from anime movies in the past 3 years.

STORY: 6/10
The theme for this movie is pretty good: the clash of moral values. Is sacrificing one person for the welfare of the village a right thing to do? This is what the entire story is centered around. Pretty much the whole movie is about Naruto and Sakura chasing after Kakashi to stop him from sacrificing himself to save the village.
There were couple of major plot holes.

==============SPOILER==============

- Why did Sand Village advance its troop to the border? Sand Village has a strategic alliance with Konoha, and Gaara of all people should know that Hiruko had nothing to do with Konoha, and that Tsunade would never try to invade other countries. The whole thing was just an excuse to bring out the popular Gaara to the movie, since he had a very limited appearance in "Shippuuden" series so far.

- Why did Hiruko have a child-form? Tsunade even mentioned he should be much older by now, but it was never explained to the end. We are left guessing that maybe it had something to do with the Chimera technique, but there is no apparent advantages in having a child-form.

- Isn`t `give your life for the village` an honorable thing to do and what all the great Konoha ninjas did? The Third Hokage gave up his life to stop Orochimaru`s invasion. The Fourth sacrificed his life to seal the Kyuubi. Itachi gave up his life and lived as a traitor for a secret ANBU mission. Jiraiya also died on a clearly suicidal mission. In fact, Naruto himself was sacrificed as a vessel for the Kyuubi as a baby. I`m sure there are more that I can`t think of at the moment, but it seems to me like sacrificing one`s life for the village is what Konoha is all about. It also creates heroic and legendary figures that children can look up to. Naruto`s argument was severely flawed.

- Wasn`t Fuuton: Rasen Shuriken devastating to Naruto`s arm? I can understand him using the forbidden technique in that situation, but he seemed to be completely fine after using it.

- I understand Kakashi's desire to leave a keepsake for his apprentice, but with everything those bells stood for, it was like saying 'please break the rules and come after me'. Just a dumb thing to do if he really wanted the mission to succeed.
=============================
The story also repeated the same old theatrical Naruto battle formula: Three villain ninjas ending up in head-to-head battles to buy time for the last boss. Only this time they were 1v3s instead of head-to-head, and some Kuchiyose (summoning) were used.

Still, the story is well-structured with an introduction, story development, climax, and a comical ending. Following through the central theme. Flashbacks from the anime series were used very effectively, with the animation completely redone from story board. 'Will of Fire' and 'Obito' cards were played especially well.

CHARACTERS: 2/10
There are very little character developments in movies for series. In fact, I don`t really expect too much from them. "Will of Fire" still managed to completely bomb this section.
They made a fatal mistake for movies: Making every single character in the series appear. Pretty much all the ninjas in Naruto`s generation showed up, only to make their signature move and used as action fillers. They ate away precious screen time that could`ve been used to develop the main characters or the story. As a result, the main characters remained paper-thin, with Naruto acting like a stubborn child and Sakura a tsundere who kept beating up Naruto and Sai.
I did like Gaara`s involvement though, since his action sequence was very cool, and his role supported Naruto`s determination.

ENJOYMENT/OVERALL 7.5/10
Theatrical releases of continuous series (as opposed to episodic series like "Doraemon" or "Crayon Shin-chan") are always going to be a side-story, and should be expected as such. There will never be a good animated movie for series.
Despite all the criticisms, "Naruto/Shippuuden" is my favorite 100+ episode anime series after "Yuu Yuu Hakusho". The 3rd Shippuuden movie "Will of Fire" was a great side story for me, even though the story and characters would be terrible for a stand-alone film.

I didin't really agree with Naruto's decision that could've destroyed the entire village over one person, but I guess as a movie, they had to push the friendship over responsibility.

Sometimes I feel these movies are targeted toward younger audiences than series or manga itself due to their corniness and deliberate attempts for inspiration, but compared to all previous Naruto movies, "Will of Fire" was by far the most well-directed, and personally the best Naruto film since the very first Naruto movie "Snow Princess".

The plot is very lousy, seriously. Here's a very breif summary...

Tsuade, Jiraya and Orochimaru had a weak childhood friend we didn't know about. This person later becomes and evil villan, a threat to all nations.

When Kakashi was a teenager, this person put a curse on him, a curse he still carries to this day. Kakashi is destined to die! He undertakes a kamakaze mission.
It's up to the Hidden Leaf's youth to save the day.


What's lousy you may ask?

... It's unoriginal:
- Like Orochimaru, this character becomes a 'mad scientist', carrying out inhumane experiments in order to get strong
- This villian is 'invincable' and 'immortal', just like most villians who end up getting killed
- Yet another person after the shiringan
- The 'curse mark' has been done before

What else lets the film down?:
- Sakura's typical 'violence toward friends, useless in battle' trait
- Chemeria's are the theme great, time to get creative? NO, all the chemeras seem to look more robotic then organic
- Outright silly stuff occure also, such as Naruto creating a chain bridge of shadow clones, Tsunade knowing how to tamper with the shiringan, Naruto having a mild heal/repair ability


I'll leave you on a high not however, what's good about the movie...
- The fight scenes are great; each team gets some attention
- Naruto's determination to "Bring Kakashi back" is realistic (don't we know)
- We get to see what Gaara can do without the 1 tailed badger
These elements make it worth watching and are the reason I gave it a good score.;)

By far my favorite Naruto Movie to date in my opinion. This one involves the whole of Konoha 11 and allows us to see more of the other characters as well as their combination of jutsu's that I just love and seeing all of them work together.

A really good movie that has a good amount of action and focuses on nakama power which I always love.

I haven't been a huge fan of many of the Naruto movies. I find the missions have felt pretty pointless, even though most of them deliver with regards to flashy fights and don't take forever to finish. Naruto Shippuuden 3: Inheritors of Will of Fire feels like the first good Naruto movie, which would be their sixth attempt at doing so.

Story: Naruto Shippuuden 3: Inheritors of Will of Fire would see Hiruko, an Ex-Hidden Leaf ninja, who was essentially exiled due to the experiments he was performing in order to create the perfect body - which should sound familiar to some older Naruto ... fans. In order to do so, he found that he could attain a desirable body by absorbing the bodies of five ninjas with Bloodline Limits, also known as Kekkei Genkai. When they were younger, Hiruko put a curse on Kakashi that would forcibly draw him to Haruko's location. He finally decides to use this to try and obtain Kakashi's Sharingan, which would complete his fifth Kekkei Genkai. Kakashi gives into this curse, but Naruto can't believe his ears when he gets word of this. This is due to the belif that Kakashi instilling in him years ago: Those who abandon their teammates are worse than scum. So Naruto tries to drag Kakashi back to the Hidden Leaf, even though his opinion in doing so sit in the minority.

The story itself is pretty straight forward, but I need to be honest, much of the fun in this movie is the fact that you get to see basically Naruto's entire gang engage the enemy at the same time. There are multiple villains, even though the early ones kind of only act as a body in the way. The storytelling from Kakashi's viewpoint was well told though, and there were points that involved his old friend Obito Uchiha. This gave the story more meaning.

It wasn't flawless though. There were story elements surrounding Hiruko that causes the Hidden Leaf and Sand Villages to almost engage in a large scale fight, and I really thought the entire thing was completely overblown. It's not terribly laid out to us, and it almost feels like it was done just to give certain characters more screen time. They could have done away with the entire thing and audiences wouldn't have felt like anything was missing. It just feels overdramatic. (7/10)

Characters: They really do push Naruto's belief's in this movie, supporting that he cares about his friends so much. Many of the other chuunin from his year also get brought into this ordeal, and Naruto acts as the beacon of hope when some of them don't believe in what he does. Hiruko is a fine character, but will likely remind audiences of Orochimaru a little too much. Regardless, I loved the abilities they introduced into this character, and that's one of the key reasons I enjoyed this movie - they're just so much fun to watch. His followers Ichi, Ni and San don't have any background story to them so it would have been nice if they both they gave them more story, and involvement into what was going on here. I liked their abilities in general, but considering how much thought gets put into other villains in the series, I would have liked to see more from them, and with slightly longer fights. (7/10)

Art: Naruto Shippuuden has a long history of very lazy animations, especially late in the long series. That shows up much less here, which is good to see. Fights in the series are always really fun to watch and match some of the best in history, if you can ignore the fact that some of them drag on forever. The movie obviously doesn't have this limitation, and the result is one reason I liked this movie so much, especially when Hiruko gets involved. It's not stunning, top of the line animation, no, but there's something that makes me love these fights that make them special. (9/10)

Sound: The OST has typical Naruto music, though the ED, Dareka Ga by Puffy wasn't one to my liking. I have had problems with the casting for Naruto for years, but that's obviously not something meant for this review. Instead, somehow, they got all of Todd Haberkorn (Hiruko), Patrick Seitz (Ichi), Laura Bailey (Ni) and Matthew Mercer (San) voicing the villains. All four of these are top notch VOs with long histories of outstanding performances. It's just a shame that the latter three didn't have a ton of voice lines. (9/10)

Overall Enjoyment: Despite some weird things going on with the story in the middle, Naruto Shippuuden 3: Inheritors of Will of Fire is a ton of fun to watch. I'll be honest, much of my enjoyment comes from the fights in this movie, and that brings it above the previous movies, for me. You won't find any deep storytelling here, but fans of the series should give this a try. (8/10)

Note: Before you watch this movie, I suggest you get caught up with the series up to the Kakashi Chronicles and after the Asuma vs. Hidan fight because the movie makes quite a few references towards these incidents.

Now, I personally thought that this movie had a pretty good mix of all the components of a Naruto movie: character development, action, and dialogue meant to move the watcher. There are also many cameo shots of nearly every minor and major character in the series... except Sasuke ((sigh)).

The plot of the movie is to follow Naruto and the rest of the gang as the chase ... after Kakashi who has been possessed by a problem child looking for power through bloodline limits. At first, Tsunade orders for no one to subdue Kakashi, but of course, Naruto goes after him anyways, taking Sakura and Sai along with him. Shikamaru and the rest of the happy-go-lucky Konoha gang go along after them, planning to stop him from rescuing Kakashi.

I liked the plot of the story, what having it to do with friendship and all, but maybe that's just me being a sappy girl. Nonetheless, the plot kept me attached to the screen and didn't make me pause and do other stuff, which is usually what Naruto movies make me do.

The art is standard, but there's some A+ animation along with fight scenes from your favorite Konoha ninja and even come action cameos from the Kazekage himself. The 3rd Naruto Shippuden movie was by far my favorite and I encourage you all to take a gander at it whenever you can.

At first I wasn't going to this movie because all the previous ones were pretty bad, but I saw it anyway. I had relatively low expectations however I was pleasantly surprised! The story was good; it was different from the other movies (they had the same plot with different characters). I really liked how it involved most (if not all) of the characters from the series. What I enjoyed most is that the movie ties in with the main story of the series unlike the other Naruto movies.

The one complaint I have is that this movie follows the formula as the other Naruto movies. ... Overall I recommend this film to every Naruto and Naruto Shippuden fan, It is the best Naruto yet!

A breath of fresh air in the series of Naruto films.

This movie had an original plot and an original threat to the village. Although I knew the characters would ultimately be safe, I was curious to see how they would get out of this dilemma.

Great mix of characters where everyone gets some screentime. You get to see essentially all of the leaf shinobi get in on some of the action.

The film posed a moral and ethical dilemma that caused the shinobi to question where their loyalties lie. It had hints of a civil war.

I didn't understand the immediate tension caused between nations. They see a ... big hologram in the sky and immediately point their ballistas at their neighbor? It's clear the leaf does not associate with that man.

In this film, Kakashi was like a second Sasuke. Another one of Naruto's friends under evil influence that he feels he must rescue when it feels like everyone else has given up on them.

I felt that the leaf village and Tsunade were too quick to give up Kakashi. Why send the man that the enemy desires straight to them? They should've been locking Kakashi up in that cell instead.

The villain was like a reenvisioned mashup of previous villains. They had Orochimaru's experimental hunger for power, and multiple abilities like Pain. Although the villain was interesting in concept, their motive fell short with the generic desire to be all powerful with no real plan if they were to get what they want.

The villain's defeat was cheap and coincidental. They made him too powerful, so he could only be defeated be breaking the logic they created.

The ending bit was too ridiculous, but funny. I know it was meant to be, but it's not like they could have seen through his mask and they were taking it a bit far. A stretch for a comedic relief.