English Dub Review: Naruto Shippuden “The Fourth Hokage’s Death Match”

Minato gets down to business with Madara, with both Kushina and Naruto’s life on the line!

Spoilers Below!

Kushina is in her hole, giving birth to Naruto, who is in some of the worst pain of her life. However, she finally gives birth to a very happy Naruto. Minato thanks her for a very healthy kid, and is about to seal up the Nine-Tails. Madara kills the two maids, and steals Naruto. He threatens to kill Naruto, just to separate Minato from Kushina. He succeeds, and has Kushina ready to extract the Nine-Tails.

Madara uses his Sharingan to break the seal, and let the beast free. Kushina collapses, but doesn’t die right away. So, Madara gets the beast to kill her. Minato saves her just in time, but she is really weak. He teleports Kushina back to the house to have her close to Naruto while he tries to save the village. Minato puts on his jacket, and prepares to fight.

It’s the calm before the storm in the Leaf Village, where people are looking at stars and sleeping and enjoying the night. Even Ichiraku is bustling tonight. Gai and Kakashi are still going on their competitions, until Kakashi realizes there is something wrong. Even little Itachi with baby Sasuke senses something wrong. Sarutobi senses a problem, and that’s when Madara summons the Nine-Tails into the village. Madara commands it to do as much destruction as possible. When it attacks, the animation switches to a really awesome style that reminds me of ancient Japanese paintings. You have to see it to believe it.

One of the ANBU go to tell the Hokage, but Sarutobi is already gearing up for battle. Nothing anyone is doing is really helping the village. Luckily, Minato shows up to save the day. Nine-Tails powers up an attack, but Minato teleports the attacks out of the village. When Minato prepares the attack, Madara shows up, and tries to get Minato with Kamui. Minato uses his Flying Thunder God technique to teleport out, though. Madara follows him, and Minato deduces that the masked man isn’t actually Madara, but isn’t sure. Minato can’t teleport to the Nine-Tails, because the masked man will teleport with him.

They start to fight, and Madara makes Minato’s physical attacks useless. So, as they go in again, Minato throws his kunai. As it flies through Madara, he goes in for his attack on Minato. Minato powers his Rasengan, and teleports behind Madara as the kunai exits the back of Madara’s head. He hits Madara with the Rasengan, causing his arm to fall off. He hits him again with a contract jutsu, causing Madara to lose his control over the Nine-Tails as the episode ends.

This episode was one of the better Naruto episodes, not just because of the backstory, but for the wonderful change in art direction at the onset of the Nine-Tails attack. It blew me away. It wasn’t awkward like when Naruto fought Pain, where things just kind of muddled together. This had direction, and it was like they learned their lesson. I was very impressed, and the fight translated very well from manga to animation. The animators did a really good job here.

Another thing that the episode did really well was show how desperate the times were. Voices do a lot here, and the cast nailed it. The nuances here showed how carefree everyone was before the Nine-Tails attacked, and then the chaos after. Tobi/Madara’s voice actor, Neil Kaplan, deserves some time to shine. He nails Madara here. I haven’t heard him in the dub until today, and it was just like I expected Madara to be when I read this chapter. He probably stole this great episode.