Naruto: Shippuden Season 4 (2008)
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Naruto: Shippuden Season 4 Review
The fourth season of Naruto: Shippuden is an improvement over its predecessor thanks to an inclusion of very powerful and cool villains.
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“Even hell runs on money“
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The third season of the show is basically almost all comprised of fillers so that’s why I skipped it. As for the fourth season, I found the beginning rather rough and overly slow in pacing and too uneventful in the overall story. The plot just kind of stopped for a while and those transitions between arcs remain a problem for the overall series.
But once Naruto starts training with Kakashi, we get to the more interesting stuff. I actually loved the finally explained Chakra properties and him learning that he has the wind one. That was all very interesting and the combination of them and the waterfall cutting part was very engaging and fun.
But the meat of the story is of course Shikamaru and his team fighting with Kakuzu and Hidan. Hidan yells too much and is a goof, but still a fun character and a very strong fighter as well. But Kakuzu himself is the highlight with an impressive usage of many Chakra properties plus those monsters inside him with their own hearts and lives reminded me pleasantly of Horcruxes from the Harry Potter series.
The two fights that we got with them are both absolutely excellent and the improved action continues to impress me in Shippuden. Yes, the fights were prolonged with too much exposition, but then again they were quite tactical and very interesting to follow plus they consisted of a wide variety of memorable twists and turns.
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As for Shikamaru, he continues to grow on me despite at first seeming boring and uninteresting. He here has to cope with Asuma’s death and those scenes is where this season definitely reached dark and impressively depressing and tragic moments, but he also has to grow as a person and I just loved his journey here. But Ino and Choji are simply too weak themselves whereas Kakashi disappointed me a bit and Naruto was overly strengthened in this season.
Overall, the fights are great and the new villains are simply superb that the weaker start of the season did not bother me too much. I loved the training sequences too and the more sad scenes with Shikamaru are also very strong leading to a very good season/arc.
Worst Episodes: The Quietly Approaching Threat and The Judgment.
Best Episodes: Last Words and Kakuzu’s Abilities.
