English Dub Review: Naruto Shippuden “The Allied Mom Force”

This can’t be real. I don’t believe it.

I don’t ask this very often when it comes to Naruto Shippuden, but what the hell did I just watch? With an episode titled “The Allied Mom Force,” I was expecting two things. For starters, I was expecting the mothers to be the focus of the episode. Instead, “The Allied Mom Force” focused on Konohamaru, Udon, and and Moegi. The moms were featured in a meeting in the beginning, and at the end for about a minute as well.

They weren’t even the saviors of the episode, because Konohamaru was the one to finally take out the invaders.  I like Konohamaru, because he’s close to Naruto in temperament. But Udon and Moegi are definitely not Sakura and Sasuke. I think this should have been titled a bit differently, because the misleading title is off-putting to what is actually going on.

The second thing I was expecting, was for the Allied Mom Force to be able to do things other than the stereotypical tropey things like hitting someone with a frying pan or rolling pin.  I know that this is the easiest way to go, because it’s been done in cartoons for years. But we’re watching a show about ninjas here. Are you trying to show me that one of the writers could actually think of funny and comedic ways of making them more appealing instead of resorting to pans and rolling pins?

“Allied Mom Force” just seemed lazy. The plot of the episode revolved around kids blowing things out of proportion. The kids first thought that there were ninjas, someone with the ability to use the rasengan with his feet, and a tailed beast bear. All of this turned out to be a circus troupe. The only threat were a bunch of delinquent sumo wrestlers on the other side of the village. Like I said, this was just really lazy. I feel a sense of security knowing that Naruto fillers have the same quality that canon episodes of Bleach does. We get one episode that was done really well, then shit goes south the next week.

What should have been known as “Enter: Konohamaru Sarutobi” wasn’t a good episode. However, it wasn’t the worst, either. “Allied Mom Force” just seemed very middle of the road, relying on tropes to get by. To be honest, this is a good example of why anime should take breaks instead of running every week. Well, at least there’s a silver lining, and it looks like we’re getting back on the canon train next week!  Now, I need to watch something to get this bitter sight out of my eyes.