Socra’s Naruto Shippuden liveblog, Ep. 21-30
-yoooo the reveal of Sasori’s real voice was good. I like the kind of detached way he talks
-annnnnd there’s the puppet twink at last
-whoaaaa crazyyyy Sasori was the reason for the third Kazekage’s disappearance? Who could have seen this cominggggg?
-oh Chiyo is fucking PISSED
-oh hell yeah this guitar battle theme is so sick
-ok so I was looking up Sasori’s age and saw that Deidara is only 19… he should be at the club😔
-I really don’t like the chewing sounds Deidara’s hands make. It reminds me of eating ASMR, which is my least favorite ASMR
-hm I wonder where Deidara gets his detonating clay from
-yippee for Sakura getting a nice little character moment showing her determination!
-okay Sakura’s voice actor was kinda popping off when she was yelling at Sasori
-yo Chiyo is using puppets of Sasori’s PARENTS???? Idk what I was expecting but it wasn’t that. And they look pretty indistinguishable from Sasori’s human puppets so I actually thought for a moment that it was the literal bodies of his parents, which would have been majorly fucked-up
-(speaking of which, I wish the human puppets were more visually distinct from the regular puppets. The concept of turning real human bodies into puppets is SO dark, and I kinda wish the designs of the human puppets conveyed the horror of it better)
-okay the animation towards the end of this episode of Sasori and Chiyo going at it was kinda hilariously wonky
-I’m really not too sure how Sasori is able to have his human puppet use jutsu that Sasori himself can’t use. Like I get that the puppet is made out of the third Kazekage’s body, but how does that allow Sasori to make use of the Kazekage’s jutsu?
-okay they answered my question pretty much immediately but tbh im not super satisfied with the answer
-holy shit Chiyo’s also got puppet parts???? I actually wasn’t expecting that
-I know Sasori is going to be defeated but the fact that he’s getting so much backstory is making me think he’s going to straight-up die
-I’m kinda wondering how Kankuro learned puppet jutsu now. It seems like a bit of a protected art
-oh shit the music that kicks in when Sakura starts becoming determined was hype as hell
-Sakura really said “I may not have a bunch of fancy puppet weapons but I can throw hands” (and she was so real for that)
-the animation of this opening battle scene is a lil goofy. Everything seems to be moving pretty slowly
-why is Sakura’s hair long in the flashback of Tsunade teaching her? Unless she grew out her hair and then chopped it again pre-Shippuden, she should only ever have had short hair since meeting Tsunade
-also I definitely do want to see more of Sakura’s time training with Tsunade
-I find it funny that the 3rd Kazekage puppet is just constantly T-posing
-okayyyyyy pop off Sakura
-okay so if Sakura only has three minutes to act while the antidote is working, why is she exposition-dumping to Chiyo? (Yes I know it’s so the audience understands what happened but in-universe it’s a little silly)
-so like is Chiyo a medical ninja or not??? Because I thought she was but Sasori is making it sound like she isn’t
-I know it will likely never be explained but why does Deidara even have hand mouths in the first place? Is he from some clan with hand mouths or something?
-Deidara is kinda a pro ragebaiter actually
-damn Sasori is starting to look unhinged
-I’m somewhat torn on this Sakura and Chiyo versus Sasori fight because on one hand it’s good to see Sakura fighting and it wouldn’t make sense for Sasori to go down quickly, but on the other hand I feel like the fight has been dragging on forever
-…is it weird that the song playing in this episode is giving me pirate-y vibes
-damnnnnn okay Sakura holy shit!!!!! Also Sasori’s puppet body being knocked into pieces was a cool visual
-yeah I knew Sasori wasn’t going to go down so easily but like… can this fight be over already
-sooooo is the implication here that all 100 of Sasori’s red-cloaked puppets are people he killed and made into puppets? Because if so… Jesus Christ, dude
-god puppetry is just so cool
-also I forgot to write this down earlier but I understand now why Deidara was hyping up Sasori’s strength so much. I definitely underestimated him
-okay that slowed-down ending scene of Sasori going to kill Chiyo and Sakura taking the hit instead went SO hard actually. I was actually on the edge of my seat a little
-holy shit Sakura took that sword like a champ
-I knew Chiyo would give Sakura the antidote and now I’m almost positive she’s going to die. Oh Lady Chiyo you were a real one :(
-wow of course the puppets that Chiyo uses to kill Sasori are his parents
-how tf is Sasori bleeding???? He’s a puppet????
-anyways the expression on Sasori’s face when he first realizes that his core has been stabbed is so good
-so Chiyo IS a medical ninja, which makes me retroactively annoyed again that Sakura could make an antidote to Sasori’s poisons when Chiyo couldn’t
-okay Sakura punching Sasori in the face out of nowhere made me giggle
-Sasori just cutting off mid-sentence and dying was not what I expected at all but damn the scene of Sakura and Chiyo realizing he was dead was really good. Overall I liked the latter half/ending of the fight a lot more than the first half
-look I love Team Gai but I really can’t find it in me to care much about their doppelganger fights
-yeah Chiyo is absolutely gonna die sacrificing her life to bring Gaara back
-soooo are they going to explain how Kakashi was able to activate a new sharingan or…???
-the animation in the doppelganger fights is uh… not very good
-aw the Team Gai flashback was cute tho
-see Team Gai doesn’t win with the power of friendship, they win with the power of YOUTH! It was absolutely a cop-out victory tho
-also I can’t lie I wanted Team Gai to defeat the doppelgangers by switching opponents (their doppelgangers could match them perfectly since they “thought” exactly like them, so switching up who’s fighting who would let the team be able to make moves the doppelgangers couldn’t predict). Also it would be rewarding to see Tenten find a way to take down a Lee or Neji doppelganger
-Neji’s hair is so dramatic lol
-I really don’t understand what going on with Kakashi and his sharingan and his fuckin black hole jutsu
-welp rip BOTH of Deidara’s arms. Bro still doesn’t seem to care much about that tho
-oh Team Gai I may not have liked your last battle but your silliness never fails to amuse me
-there’s no way Kakashi’s visual jutsu is as powerful as Itachi’s like Deidara says it is. That’s just making him too OP at this point
-holy fuck Naruto bloodying his knuckles beating the shit out of Deidara was crazy. Also he was straight up going to KILL him with a Rasengan to the chest (not that I blame him tho)
-so yes I know the bubbling orange chakra is the Nine Tails chakra and it’s forming tails n shit but also it kinda looks like Naruto is releasing one hell of a fart
-wow Naruto is going full furry
-there’s absolutely no way Sakura and Chiyo would have caught up to Naruto and Kakashi so quickly but I’ll suspend my disbelief I guess
-what I’m NOT going to suspend my disbelief for, though, is armless/jutsuless Deidara evading all of Team Gai
-so far Deidara’s two biggest moves have been 1) making a nuke and 2) blowing himself up
-god Naruto has really matured so much. Idk the calmness of his voice when he checked on Kakashi and asked Sakura to look at Gaara really stuck out to me for some reason
-honestly Naruto is having a very well-deserved crashout and it’s hitting me like a truck (also I gotta give Naruto’s VA some kudos for this bc they really sold his breakdown)
-I really wish the shot had focused in on Neji when Naruto asked “who are you to decide someone else’s fate?”