Love
hurts, especially for a ninja. Getting your chakra ripped out also kind of
stings. Poor Naruto Uzumaki will just have to go through these things as a rite
of passage (although he maybe could have skipped the latter). In fact, he is a
bit older and perhaps fractionally wiser in the canonical capstone anime
feature The Last: Naruto the Movie (trailer here), which opens tomorrow
in select cities.
For
fans of the Naruto franchise, The Last pays off in a major way. This
is no mere one-off shoehorned between the 72 volumes (or 700 chapters of
manga), six hundred some television episodes, and ten feature films. It
explains the manga’s final epilogue that was generally well received by fans,
but came as a bit of a surprise nonetheless. What transpires in The Last will have a direct bearing on
the course of Uzumaki’s life, but if that were not enough, the stakes are also
apocalyptically high.
As
the film opens, Uzumaki basks in his newfound popularity resulting from his
heroic war service. Girls are finally talking to him—they are even getting
pushy competing for his attention. This rather distresses the shy Hirata Hyuga,
who has long carried a torch for the oblivious Uzumaki. Yet, when Hyuga’s
younger sister Hanabi is kidnapped, she and Uzumaki are thrown together in the
rescue party.
It
seems her abduction is related to a doomsday plot launched by Toneri Otsutsuki the
last descendent of one of the great ancient clan leaders of the series’
intricate mythology. He intends to crash the moon into the Earth with the help
of the Hyuga clan’s superhumanly enhanced eyes. Obviously, Uzumaki is
super-motivated to stop Otsutsuki, especially when he realizes he is falling
for his former classmate, Hyuga.
Unlike
the previous Naruto film, The Road to Ninja, there is no jetting off to an alternate reality and back before
anyone is the wiser. Everything counts this time around in a big way. It fills
a major remaining gap in Naruto’s saga, wrapping it up in a way that keeps
faith with the characters and their fans. For longtime readers and viewers, The Last is more closely akin to the MASH’s emotional sign-off than the
wimpering final episode of Seinfeld.
There
is considerable character development in The
Last (especially by series shōnen anime standards) and a good deal of
action. However, the old school hand-to-hand combat always looks far better on
screen than the big fiery cosmic clashes, which all sort of blend together
after a while. Nonetheless, the focus in The
Last is particularly personal, freezing out many long-term supporting
players in favor of Uzumaki and Hyuga.
