I have a soft spot for Naruto, which is one of the most popular anime series with some great action and a particular charm that won me over. Now that the first series is almost at an end, can these episodes keep the audience interested or are they becoming dull and unnecessary?

The first episode carries on from the previous set. Naruto and Rock Lee's team are on a mission to rescue Might Guy who is trapped in a wooden cage surrounded by chakra. A technique is used to confuse Lee and Guy into a duel so that they will kill each other. After this episode's conclusion, we are given two main story arcs and two separate episodes.

The first arc involves a mysterious ninja who steals plans from Naruto's home (the Village Hidden In The Leaves.) After the older ninja are alerted of a threat outside the village, Naruto and the main young ninja characters are sent on a mission to look for clues about the identity of the missing culprit. This arc focuses more on a detective story which contains a lot of talk and theories; rather than making it fast paced and exciting, it can be a bit boring at times.

The other arc has a different tone; it involves a girl called Yakomo who causes a lighting strike on Tsunade's mansion by painting a picture of the mansion itself. This causes the leader of Team 8 'Kurenai Yuhi' to unexpectedly resign her post, provoking Naruto and the Team 8 ninjas to find out why she resigned and uncover the mystery of Yakomo's power. This arc is better, giving the episodes a mysterious feel and some good action to go with it; the only problem I had is that there was little suspense, making the ending feel disappointing.

The other one-parters contain a fan-made 'Top 5' Naruto fights which is a reminder of previous major key battles of the main story, and an escort mission to help a man transport a rare and valuable artifact; this serves up more of a comedic tone but failed to hold my attention.

When these arcs end, there is no development of the main story of Naruto, so they only serve as filler.

However I have to say that these episodes are massively creative: flying wooden spikes, Genjutsu mind games that are great to watch, and beautiful and fantastic use of paintings. All these things kept me entertained and what action there was proved fun to watch.

Everything in the DVDs was fine with me. I had no problems selecting the Japanese audio, and the English subtitles look spot on; my only problem was that when I wanted to skip the opening intro, it went straight to the middle of the episode. It took me around four episodes to figure that out.

Extra content only includes Naruto movie trailers for 'Legend of the Stone of Gelel' and 'Ninja Clash in the Land of Snow.'

In Summary

If you're a Naruto fan, then I'm guessing that you may already have this; for everyone else, these episodes aren't bad but can prove boring and predictable at times. It's definitely above average, though.