Anime: Gekijouban Naruto: Dai Gekitotsu! Maboroshi no Chitei Iseki Datte ba yo!

This is the second Naruto movie, made around the time the dreaded fillers began. You can clearly see how the franchise is starting to saturate by now and just rehashes the same old stuff just for the sake of making them and keeping up with a dying trend. As far as movies go, you can of course expect far better production values and flashier battles than the main series, along with much less effort to tell a story or have interesting characters. Other than that, it is just another passable filler mission.

The basic plot is about our heroes trying to stop the members of a mechanical ship from getting their hands on some magic stones of immerse power that will help them rule the world. So in a way it is like a rehash of what the Akatsuki want in the main series, although in a much cheaper and boring way. Later on you get some Nausicaa vibes, as if they are trying to pass a anti-war, pro-ecology message regarding the power of the stones but it is all completely dried up.

I guess the makers received complaints about the first movie having too much plot and not enough action and as such sacrificed everything for an 80% action flick with cheesy drama. “The kids who watch this don’t care about dramatic princesses, they just want to see action” is what they told them. Thus they replace a character with some basic interest such as a frail girl like Yukihime with an emo fighter boy named Temujin. They also try to have as less twists as possible that will eat up precious screen time from the action, and thus you get this cheesefest. I liked the part with the filming in the first movie for offering something slightly smart in the otherwise straightforward story. But this “in your face” plot is just boring and on top of that one of the same as always when it comes to the themes of Naruto. Emo kids with tragic childhoods fighting for a better future is something you get all the time in the main series so there is no innovation here; unlike what they did with the first movie and apparently were scolded for it. Some of course may say there is some innovation because there is a blending of other civilizations and technology. Seriously, the villains appear to be European knights who transform to European monsters, their weaponry appears to be steampunk, and the village near the ruins has murals that resemble those of the Aztecs. Well I was not convinced all these fit in the setting. I got the part how the mechanical ship is supposed to symbolize the westerners invading Japan but it wasn’t relevant to the plot. And what the devil are Aztecs doing in a Japanese-like world?

Anyways, Temujin is a very boring character and just a slight variation of practically half the other moody characters in the show. The other 3 villains are shallow as hell and you just don’t care about them either. As for the good guys, aside from Naruto they are all there just because the movie is supposed to be mostly action and needed more people to fill in the fights. Furthermore, the scriptwriter didn’t care much for the canon teams and picked the characters based on popularity and not on proper team structure. So we get Shikamaru without the others of his team and Gaara with Kanguro without the girl of their team. Sadly, the real protagonist of the show, Gaysuke, is now gone from the main team and could not be present, and even Kakashi is no longer their leader to be present with his coolness. And even sadder than that, there is absolutely no attempt to somehow bridge what is going in the story with some canon character. Remember how Kakashi had ties with Snow Country and was giving off a feeling of familiarity? Well forget that, over here we get this ancient civilization nobody knew anything about and some village nobody had ties to. Plus they threw in Europe and South America for kicks. Basically, they didn’t even try, because trying means adding some context which makes the target audience (10 year old kids) to have to think and makes them bored. Unless of course telling them once again how the monstrous westerners invaded the super cool ninja country that is Japan counts as educational. Anyways, they are there for the action and not for the story.

As far as the action goes it is spectacular for the year it was made. There is so much of it, and it is all pretty dynamic and cool for a shonen anime. Definitely much more exciting than the first film and basically the only thing it did better than it. It still ends the usual way though (Rasengan on the villain’s face and Naruto giving his motivational monologue to the emo kid that makes everything feel right). Down to it I liked the movie for the action and disliked everything else. A very passable and forgettable chapter in the franchise.

Story-6/10-Plot is a simple bad guys trying to take over other villages in hopes of creating utopia. The story is easy to predict and nothing is every suprising.

Animation-4/10-The characters look horrible. There is no way to describe how bad it is... Even the scenery and background seemed simple and crappy. The fight scenes may be slightly better than the TV series... but not by much. They tried too hard to make everything look "cool", and almost did for most of the action scenes, but the ugly characters really destroyed and enjoyment of visuals.

Music-6/10-Not many good songs at all, or atleast not many that were different from the TV series.The voices sounded a little weird too..

Character-6/10-The enemies are predictable and boring. The original characters from the TV show don't do much besides fight the evil villans.

Value/Enjoyment-11/20-I never expected much.. but some how i still managed to be dissapointed..with crappy animation and music and a terrible storyline.. it was a pain to watch. It reminded me of those stupid american cartoon shows..

First of, I'd start by saying that out of the animes I've watched, Naruto is the series that has made me get REALLY into anime, so after the last movie (I actually liked that one) ,and the constant set of fillers that never seem to stop, I was really looking forward to a fresh story.

Please keep in mind that this is my first review!

Animation:
The animation is one of the good points in this series, and together with the scenery it makes this movie seem quite good. If this was the only thing taken into consideration, this movie would get a good score from me.

Sound:
This is the BIG drag-down in this movie, it kills every single emotion that is possible to feel during this movie. The series had quite the good soundtrack, and the same goes for the first movie, but this was rather weak.

Story: -Might ontain spoilers!-
This story seems to be getting overused.
Naruto and his team is at a mission, they meet some unknown boy (I thought that was a girl on first sight, but we all remember Haku, don't we?), they fight, none wins. And to mix it all up, and maybe make the viewer cry out in anger, the bad guy takes a liking in Naruto and tries to mix him into the little scheme he's trying to get going.
This is NOT something I would wish for in any of the coming stories of Naruto!

Characters:
The characters is what you'd expect from Naruto...
The characters made for the movie is rather boring, but realistic (that's why I rated it 5).

Value:
"I would never watch this movie again", that's what I said after watching it for the first time, and nothing has changed my mind until now. (and I reccomend others to take note)!

Enjoyment:
I didn't enjoy anything special in this movie, but hardcore naruto-fans (People that only watch Naruto, and no other anime) may find some enjoyment in this.

This is the second Naruto movie. Once again, this is something thatruns in parallel to the series, not in sequence. However, due to thelack of Sasuke, as well as the development state of the characters, itis supposed to be viewed between episodes 140 and 180. My personalrecommendation is between episode 141 and 142.[br][br]Note that I amreviewing from the point of view of someone who is up to date with theepisodes of the series, and has seen the first movie.[br][br]Visuals: 9 (1st Movie = 8)[br]Ingeneral terms, the visual quality of the movie is a definite step upfrom the series, as well as the first movie. The action is oftenbreathtaking, and moves with tremendous fluidity in the animation. Thestyle is familiar yet more epic than the series, and the colours andartwork are vibrant and engaging.[br][br]Since movies are 'expected' tobe of a higher visual standard than their series counterparts, Iwatched this movie with a harsher and more analytical eye than theseries. When the series peaked in its visual quality (episode 133), Ifound that it surpassed the visual quality of the first movie.(Fortunately, the first movie was supposed to be viewed just afterabout episode 101, meaning its visuals were perfectly fine for thattime.) And now for this second movie, the makers once again push thevisuals further, keeping its standard better than the series at thecurrent time, (including episode 133).[br][br]The majority of the movieis lavish and beautiful to watch. The action is done 'right', and thescenery and surroundings of the settings are well presented andcrafted. The one flaw in the visuals, which keeps it from receiving aperfect score, is the texture quality and details on the characters andsome of the foreground objects. Especially on the characters, there isa bland tone to their appearance where better texturing would havereally helped.[br][br]Sound: 9 (1st Movie = 9)[br]The effectsare of top calibre in this movie. Explosions, twangs of weapons, even'movement' is sonically well presented. The voice acting is also great,with most of the key voices being from the series. Musically this movieis VERY VERY different to the first movie and the series. There arealmost no recognisable tunes, and this brings about the one minor flawof the sound: whilst the music IS acceptable (not brilliant in myopinion though), and DOES fit the events, it feels odd for it to be ina Naruto adventure. The music of Naruto has shaped the series into aparticular way, and the first movie fit that original feel. This onedoes not. If a few of the Naruto characters weren't in this movie, Iwouldn't be able to tell it was a Naruto-based anime from the music (aswell as other aspects - see below).[br][br]Story: 4 (1st Movie = 7)[br]Andnow for something completely different. In no way did I ever reallyfeel I was watching a Naruto story. To me, this movie felt similar tothe Full Metal Alchemist Movie that was recently made. The plot wassurrounded by technology - new and ancient - being part of the Narutoworld. But "Naruto" as an anime has never quite indicated this degreeof technology exists in the Naruto world. It was as though someonewrote a script for an anime movie involving technology anddictatorship, and then scribbled in 5 Naruto characters for the leads.I was not convinced that this story belonged in Naruto's repertoire - itjust blatantly never fit.[br][br]Another thing is the scale of thestory: The main countries of the Naruto world are being slowly invaded.Sounds like a really big deal to me. Surely the leaders of the affectedcountries would launch a defensive assault with their top people? Alasno - the kids have to try and sort it all out on their own. Once againthe feeling of a random script with rushed Naruto characters creepsinto the back of my mind. Trying to take something that's alreadyestablished and squeezing it to try and make it fit something else,does not result in something believable. [br][br]Ignoring for amoment, the fact that this is a story involving Naruto, one canobjectively see that the plot itself isn't particularly terrible, but ISsomewhat clichéd and predictable. The are some small but definite plotholes, and lack of explanation involving a few things that aren't tooimportant to the story but still make you curious. There aren't toomany slow areas in the movie, but when there are, they are DULL. Thismay perhaps be due to the action being so spectacular most of the timethat it contrasts the slower parts of the movie too much.[br][br]On afinal note concerning the action scenes in the story, it feels peculiarand somewhat disappointing to see the Naruto characters fight with thesame old moves and same old tricks. Naruto doesn't really show any moveor strategy that hasn't already been shown countless times in theseries and other movie, and the same goes for the other characters. Itseems very indulgent of the creators to do this. It's like, this moviecould have just as well been released a week after the first one, andthe characters would have been at the same stage of abilitydevelopment. It would have been better to either have shown moreintelligence in the ability progression during the course of the movie;or have not made the movie at all, and instead waited until the serieswas further along enough to have progressed the development of thecharacters.[br][br]Characters: 3 (1st Movie = 7)[br]The herocharacters from the Naruto series featured in this movie are: Naruto,Sakura and Shikamaru. Also featured as secondary characters, are two ofthe Sand Village trio: Gaara and Kankurou. The rest of the cast arelocal to the movie.[br][br]Not much has changed with the main castsince we last saw any of them in the series. Their personalities arethe same, and no one develops during the movie. Gaara, Kankurou andeven Shikamaru too, seem only to be engaged in fight or actionsequences whenever we see them. I suppose a nice thing here is that weget to see these characters' abilities in high-quality visuals at thevery least. But what originally made you gawk at these skills in theseries - i.e. discovering them and their power - is not a factor here.Nothing is new. All skills are known by any Naruto viewer and justapplied to a different surrounding and different enemies. [br][br]Thenew and supporting cast of characters in Naruto are as predictable asthe storyline, and to a degree, just as annoying. The characters are inno way complex, with stereotypes placed in at least two of the keyroles: the deluded dictator, who thinks he's doing the right thing butis obviously not; and the opponent who repents and turns to the side ofgood in the end. If you think these are spoilers, think again - it's apainfully obvious quality from the first moment you meet thesecharacters in the movie.[br][br]Some of the characters, in this casethe "baddies", had the ill-established ability to basically turn intovampires. It was something that seemed so far-fetched from the plot thatI began to actually watch the movie with more concentration in case Ihad missed something.[br][br]The main flaw of the characters though,was the lack of development, and whatever characters DID develop, Ithought had boring stories anyway. All in all, the characters aspectwas a bit of a shambles.[br][br]Value: 5 (1st Movie = 7)[br]I'dwatch this movie again when I re-watch the series - that's just a given.If I watch it again away from the series, it would be solely for thevisuals in the fight scenes.[br][br]Enjoyment: 6 (1st Movie = 8)[br]Yes,I DID enjoy this movie more than not, regardless of what I thought ofit's plot and characters. Of course, this is mainly because itsatisfied that shounen aspect I craved, with its action scenes andfight sequences. When it comes down to it, there is only one thing Iwould have wished for to make me enjoy it more: a more involving andinteresting story premise that includes the Naruto world that we are so accustomed to. Setting itself too far away from the familiar Narutoworld, we see little character development of the characters we arefond of, and subsequently less significant action. Having Narutoperform the Rasengan move on a random bad guy is less interesting andless significant than say, if Naruto were to do it to Gaara (forexample).[br][br]Sure, I enjoy watching a random fight in Naruto, but IREALLY enjoy it if it MEANS something. This movie just wasn't able togive it that significance to make it amazing, unlike the first movie,which covered more of its bases with slightly better characterdevelopment.

First of all i'd like to point out that my Ratings and the comments will differ. The reason is that my review is based on comparing this Movie 2 and the Naruto TV. The Rating was given by comparing Naruto Movie 2 and all the other animes i've ever seen. Even thou "2nd movie" Sucks compared to Naruto TV it's still a good anime compared to a non-naruto ones.

The Animation is... weird. It's hard to describe it more pricisely. IMO it's worse then in the TV version. Especially movements animation remind of FLCL. While running it seems characters can't control their hands and heads. The Animation of the walls is awful.

I liked the Sound. But nothing special here. Definately a 7-8. Great OST.

I was really looking forward to this movie. I really hoped it'll have a really good Story. I guess that's why I was completly disappointed. Every single moment is predictable. Absolutely no twists.

Speaking about the Characters Gaara and the villain are the only bright lights in the whole anime. Oh wait! My bad! You get to see another RASENGAN! (c) by Naruto
*rolleyes*
Really, no offense but it starts to get boring...

While writing a review Value and Enjoyment are the hardest to rate. For the Naruto-Fans this Movie is a must. Not because it's all that good, but because it's a part of the naruto-saga. I did enjoy this movie but i will definatly wont see it again :)