Can Orochimaru become a normal member of the village? What They Say:
An encounter with the Sand siblings turns ugly when Temari insults Tenten, igniting the Leaf ninja’s desire for a Chuunin Exam rematch. Orochimaru begins to long for a normal life after being barred from entering a family-oriented shopping market.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With some fun crossdressing out of th eway, the show does what it does best in just moving on to the next thing. While it may replay gags and character traits as it goes along across the seasons, that’s pretty much par for the course with any series. And with a comedy series, you don’t really expect growth or anything when you get down to it, especially one like this where it can’t supplant what’s going on in the main ongoing series. The fun here continues to be using characters we haven’t either seen before or seen all that much of, which is why it’s a treat when we get Gaara for a bit at the beginning here while the gang is out on another mission.
While we do get Gaara, we also get Temari and she and Tenten continue to spar verbally with each other. We get a look back at their past relationship during the exam, something that really took Tenten down a few notches, and it makes sense why she harbors a grudge and craves a rematch. Naturally, everything turns to a new match between them and it has some additional fun since Kankuro is brought into it to help out so we get the puppets as well. It’s the kind of story where everything just spills into play and a concerted effort is made against Temari, both physically and psychologically. And it doesn’t help that Guy gets involved a bit too, making matters more complicated.
The second half pivots in a different direction as we see Orochimaru seeing how the public at large operates when it comes to a very busy shopping market that he’s not allowed to get into. It’s enough to get him to question his path and think about returning to just being a regular ninja once again. Amusingly, he becomes accepted in the village rather quickly as the guys get all buddy buddy with him and try to come up with cute new names for him. His dreams of a normal salaryman life (albeit in ninja form) is comical and you can see how he just wants something more relaxing for a bit. There’s some real cute stuff to this as everyone gets along with him so well and “Orochy” ends up getting some amusing dating advice and gags as well. Of course, everything goes back to normal, but seeing how he tries so hard is just enderaing.
In Summary:
Rock Lee and His Ninja Pals plays with some fun stuff here with the cast and those that guest star in the episode, especially with Orochimaru as he tries to find a normal life. The first half gives us a bit of a rematch for Tenten when she ends up coming across Temari along with Gaara and that gives us some really cute and funny action sequences and attacks that definitely made me laugh. The second half shifts to Orochimaru just wanting a normal life in the village and it’s rather adorable to see him try it so earnestly and yet be so disconnected from what it means to be normal. He wants it so much but just can’t seem to be what’s needed without it coming across as creepy or wrong. It makes him pretty sympathetic in this version but also just fun to watch.
Grade: B-
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
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