At least it's slightly less cringe worthy because it's all in Japanese. Their banter is almost as painfully forced as Asoka's and Anakin's banter in that new Clone Wars CG movie! And that's pretty damn forced. All they've done so far was complain about having to work with each other. Well, fine then! Thus far these Akatsuki guys are still far off from being as threatening as Deidara (exploding clay guy with Vampire Hunter D mouths in his hands) and Sasori (immortal bishounen puppet dude). Other than a rather hilarious scene where Hidan and Kakuzu get bitch slapped like pansies (more on that later), these fights were once again totally passed over. So when the manga skipped over Hidan and Kakuzu's capturing of the two tailed Jinchurriki, as well as the massacre of the fire temple, I figured the anime would deliver on what must've been some totally badass action! Once again the anime delivered these unseen fights, and, although not particularly thrilling, at least filled in the gaps from the manga. Then, during the manga storyline when Team Gai had to face off against their dopplegangers, the manga showed only that they'd overcome their evil clones, but skipped the fight. I thought "damn, I wish I'd gotten to see that fight!" and the anime actually delivered on that! In fact, it delivered quite competently, because it was one of the coolest chunin prelim fights to see animated, and it didn't even have a flashback in the middle of it! Ten Ten and then the very next page was ten ten sprawled unconcious across the top of temari's fan. You know, I remember back in the chunin exam when the manga showed Temari Vs. Then at least there'd be some martial arts or something! i'd rather watch Goku train in that time chamber thing he's always training in. Looks, uh, hard, I guess." Honestly, Naruto training scenes are some of the most tedious training scenes of any anime ever. The only problem with watching Naruto train, though, is that there's NO WAY to relate to his methods! I mean, we look at Rock Lee and go "a thousand pushups, holy shit!", but we look at naruto and go "ok, he's palming a waterfall.
But I digress (or do I? That was kind of on topic, wasn't it?), this episode was basically all about Naruto taking another step forward in his training. Honestly, this is a show about freakin' ninjas, all I ask is a stealth assassination at LEAST once an episode. I really haven't much to say about this episode. Actually, that's probably the best thing about this whole episode! Hey, they modified the opening so it's got a nicely animated fight between Asuma, Shikimaru, and the Akatsuki guys! Pretty badass.