English Dub Review: Naruto Shippuden “Medic Ninja in Danger”

Spoilers!

“Medic Ninja in Danger” is an episode that goes a completely different route than the past episodes of Shippuden. The pace slowed down a bit, and turned into a bit of a murder mystery. The enemy has disguised themselves as Alliance Ninja, and no one can tell the difference.

This classic take on the “whodunit” felt fresh. Not only because it was a show about ninja doing it, but it was a show about ninja doing it that had the balls to stray from its formula, even it it were for a week or two. The tone was marked by how dark it was, both outside and the somewhat art house blood splatter you see during the episode. The first one was rather impactful, because it looked like something you’d see in an older samurai movie.

I know this is because of White Zetsu, but I love how Neji looks so sinister throughout “Medic Ninja in Danger.” There is a lot of improvements that this had over the manga. Giving the manga respect, they took the chapters and turned it into good television. The manga just made the White Zetsu invasion seem like just another invasion. It was great to see something new to come out of the writers. This is almost a perfect way to show how to a writer can take the source material, and make it their own. Lastly, it was smart to keep Naruto out of this episode completely, just so the suspense kept getting built up while the characters try to figure out who’s real and who’s a Zetsu.

There was a second story, and that was Itachi and Nagato playing the roles of the wandering swordsmen, so to speak. It’s an obvious preview of what’s to come with them, showing that they will be fighting. Having the two most prominent dojutsu (eye technique) users in the show together means exciting things, for sure. It’s going to be a while, because it seems like the filler returns next week. At least it looks like the writers are keeping with the theme this time and keeping the filler episodes within the war.

The reason I like “Medic Ninja in Danger” is that this easily could have been botched, but we got a really well done episode. We could have had this treated like a mini-filler arc, with a terrible transition. But the writers took over, and made this week’s episode something different. The writers spun a whodunit mystery that was able to compete with the rest of the series in terms of creativity. Even though Sakura was able to take down the fake Neji, the ninja camp in is terrible shape, and it makes for great television!

You can check out “Medic Ninja in Danger” here.