10 Second Anime - Naruto Shippuuden - Episode 457

Itachi Shippuuden continues. Itachi helps recruit Deidara and Hidan, completing the roster for Akatsuki.

Episode 457 - "Itachi's Story: Light and Darkness - Partner"

Heh.

Yay! My favorite Akatsuki member Deidara joins the band. I've always gotten a kick out of whenever he does his little verbal tic for emphasis. Mhm.

His pairing with Sasori was brilliant too. We had two artists with antipodal views of art: the ephemeral versus the eternal. Both are right, but I just love Deidara's enthusiastic cry of "Art is an explosion!"

Deidara and Sasori had the task of killing Orochimaru, but the scene was mainly there to show Orochimaru perfecting the reanimation jutsu from the 2nd Hokage.

It was an interesting question: who would win between Sasori's puppet version of the 3rd Kazekage or Orochimaru's reanimated one which could keep putting itself back together? The weakness of the reanimation jutsu was always whether a strong mind could break the mind control. We only learned about its other shortcoming, that one who already knew the reanimation jutsu could break all its controls, when Itachi was brought back by Kabuto during the 4th Great Ninja War.

Of course, Hidan and Kakuzu had to be paired up. They were the only ones who couldn't kill each other. Hidan was immortal because of his Jashin worship and Kakuzu had all those hearts from strong ninjas he had killed.

Hidan was hilarious thinking that Kanon, Itachi and Kakuzu were in some kind of band.

I didn't quite agree with Kanon's explanation that she joined Kakuzu and Itachi to investigate this "immortal" killer because she was also a sensory type ninja in addition to looking almost like a normal person to play a decoy. Itachi's sharingan would be one the most powerful sensory jutsus in the Naruto world. But she was right about all the other Akatsuki guys looking like freaks. No offense, Itachi.

The end of the episode takes us up to the timeline where Itachi meets Sasuke in the aftermath of the Chuunin exams. Is Itachi Shippuuden ending next week? Are we finally going back to the main story? Please let it be so.