I remember watching this movie 10 years ago and strongly disliking it. This was back in a time where I really started to dislike Naruto considering how bad the story was getting and much filler hell the Shippuden anime was going through at the time, it wouldn't even end until 3 years later after this movie came out. Now that I'm kind of softer on Naruto, the original series is really good and have finished Shippuden all the way to the end while skipping as much filler and mixed canon as possible, I still definely think this movie is bad. Expecting great writing out of an anime movie based on a TV series is too much, I know but even judging the Last Naruto movie on that standard, it's still awful. I don't like to complain about the anime I watch, I really don't. I would rather talk about anime that I think is really good or at the very least flawed in a stimulating way. The Naruto Shippuden anime is the latter btw. This movie isn't this, I was either bored or zoning out and was just waiting for it to end.
What makes this movie especially grating to watch is the amount of production value that was put into the movie. The animation is quite nice and has clearly more budget put into it and looks better than the anime is based on is. The fights are okay even if it lacks the clear fist fighting choreography that some fights in the anime did. What makes The Last Naruto movie more sad to watch is that unlike say something like Tekken: The Motion Picture, this movie has a budget and a lot of the animators worked hard to make the movie.
To sum up The Last Naruto movie in a few words, it's basically, "Naruto x Hinata" ship the movie. Sure the movie may try to fool you into thinking that it isn't with it's doomsday plot of the world coming to an end but this is very much a romance movie at heart.
Before I get into why the romance doesn't really work for me, if you aren't a Hinata Hyuga fan well guess what? This movie just isn't going to be for you. In many ways, if you aren't a fan of Hinata I struggle to figure out who this movie is even for, if you are a new comer to Naruto and just want to come to this movie for the production values and fights, you won't get that here. If you are a Naruto fan and don't like or care for Hinata, you won't get much out of this all the other characters like Kakashi, Shikimaru, Sai, Rock Lee, Sasuke, and any other character not Naruto and Hinata are basically just side characters with nothing to do. At least stuff like the Dragon Ball Z movies before Battle of Gods took place in their own universe and were all about the fights and Battle of Gods at least had more going on than canonizing the world's most uninteresting ship.
Hinata Hyuga was a character I never once liked. To me she is everything bad about the whole, "hardwork vs natural talent" narrative and dicussion people love to have about Naruto. I really want to say this movie did an incredible job at having her character win me over but it didn't. Hinata is a character that is as bad if not worse than characters like Kaguya and Black Zetsu. At least with them, they get beaten in a few episodes and leave the story after. Hinata on the other hand has this movie and the last 7 episodes of Shippuden dedicated to her and everything post war arc related is the creators really wanting to shove this "ship" down your throat.
Everything about the movie is connected to Hinata and hinges on how much you like her, her sister gets captured, the main villain wants to marry her, the movie makes a big deal about the scarf Hinata makes for Naruto, the Hyuga clan are suddenly important again after hundreds of episodes of being irrelevant. What annoys me about all this is that they had hundreds of chapters and anime episodes to make all this seem important and create possible set up for the movie but instead everything comes out of left field.
With Hinata and the romance itself, everything about it is painfully uninteresting. The character herself becomes a main character out of nowhere without ever earning her keep. This just sums up Hinata in general. When Neji defeated her in the Chunin Exams, the Leaf Jonin came to protect her. What does she do after? Nothing until she confesses her love to Naruto in one of the dumbest ways you can do it, and almost gets killed, then she does absolutely nothing until Neji dies protecting her and Naruto. Does she contribute anything to the War arc? No, she ends up becoming one of the many characters Naruto babysits during that arc and ends up in the dream world Madara created.
Now the movie centered around Hinata should win me over right? Nope, its just her usual character interactions of her being incredibly nervous around Naruto and being incredibly shy and quiet(what riveting character development after hundreds of episodes) and then she surrenders herself to the enemy while Sakura is the one to heal Naruto and Shikimaru is the one talk Naruto out of doubting himself. What did Hinata do? Nothing. The only thing of worth she does in the almost 2 hour movie help Naruto destroy an orb. How impressive. This just sums up her up in general. She becomes an important character without earning any of it. Her character interactions despite confessing her love in the Pain arc, she still can't say how she feels. This might sound ranty, but everything about Hinata I just detest, she's not even clingy character in an interesting way. She was a one note character from the start and she still is with this movie.
Overall, I did want to like the Last Naruto movie and have some enjoyment out of it like I did with Shippuden. The Naruto story post timeskip had many highs and many lows but this movie is nothing but lows. I can't think of many high points and it might've been a mistake watching this movie again at all knowing what it's really all about.
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