English Dub Review: Naruto Shippuden “Killer Bee and Motoi”

After the jump, find out why Motoi wanted Bee killed, and how they resolved their differences!

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Naruto’s training ramps up this week, with the first of two new episodes on Hulu. This episode leans heavily on the backstory of Bee, and his time in the Cloud Village. It also deals with how his village deals with the Eight Tails’s destruction, and the repercussions after.

Naruto is still at the waterfall, trying to figure out how to defeat his darker side. He turns to Motoi, asking for insight on how  Bee lived at his age. While Bee was feared and resented by the villagers, he was always upbeat and cheerful. He never let anyone get him down. He turned it into a positive, always taking pride in himself. He attributes that to A, the Raikage, and his brother. In the end, Motoi believes Bee’s motivation was to protect A, and to be the ultimate show of A’s force. When Naruto tries to get Motoi to get hints from Bee on his behalf, Motoi says no, because he once tried to kill Bee.

Motoi goes into detail about the circumstances surrounding him trying to kill Bee. The Eight Tails is on a destructive path through the village’s ninjas, because that jinchuriki was not able to control the tailed beast. The third Raikage appeared, and whenever this happened, he was able to control the situation by force. He was going to use a sealing urn to trap the beast, but we all know these plans won’t work. The ninja chain up the Eight Tails, until it breaks the chains. A ninja got a chain around it’s horn, sending a lightning jutsu up the chain. The beast fought back, sending its horn through a ninja. A chopped a piece of the horn off, which distracted the beast long enough to seal it. Unfortunately, Motoi’s father were among the casualties.

Bee and Motoi used to be friends, until Bee was chosen to be the next jinchuriki. His anger with the beast just meant he was angry with Bee, and that drove Motoi to revenge. Motoi felt like Bee didn’t care about his father’s death, so that drove him to trying to kill Bee. He attacked Bee from behind, and failed horribly. Motoi was scared off, but kept following Bee, until he realized that Bee’s suffering was worse than anything that Motoi can feel. After hearing this, Naruto walks off for a while.

Naruto is looking out over the spikes, comparing his life to Bee’s. They go through his shunning, the celebration after defeating Pain, and Gaara’s resurrection. He then dwells on his darker half, who keeps bringing up all of his hate and anger. Naruto still feels like he doesn’t have the trust of everyone in the village. Yamato and Motoi try to find Naruto, but they are attacked by the giant squid again. Naruto, again, thinks the squid is Bee. As Naruto powers up the Rasengan, Bee appears in Eight-Tails form, and punches out the squid, again. Motoi thinks Bee knew all along about his attack, but Bee only remembers the good times between the two.

This episode was heavy on back story, which is something that can be notorious with Naruto. We get a lot of insight as to who Bee is, and how he was brought up. That’s good, because outside of him fighting Sasuke and his time at the Cloud Village, we know next to nothing. Going with the trends, this will either set up Bee to be a major player going forward, or he’s going to die horribly. This is also a going trend with Naruto.

This episode served its purpose well, in giving us more about Bee, and giving Naruto the motivation he needs to get shit done in the next episode. Bee really is a bad-ass, isn’t he? Watch it here.