10 Second Anime - Naruto Shippuuden - Episode 469

Filler Shippuuden goes all the way back to Team 7's next series of attempts to see Kakashi's face beneath the mask.

Episode 469 - "Special Mission"

Heh.

This filler episode felt like a DVD extra. While the other filler arcs this past two years have been related to the overall plot (let's forget how tangentially related the AlterNaruto plot of Tsunade's dream was), this pre-time-skip episode felt like clearing the decks. Revealing the last secrets of the entire Naruto Universe. Mind you, Kakashi's real face has been, as the travelling photojournalist Sukea said, "the biggest scoop in the history of Konoha."

The whole episode was nostalgic. The music was the same, the pacing, the kids' acting. It was great. Too bad the art direction for the characters was obviously from the B-Team and looked like many of the filler arcs and movies. That was a missed opportunity for maximum nostalgia, but I suppose the A-Team is busy with the final Kaguya arc.

Sasuke wanted in on Naruto's idea to spend the rest of their day going after Kakashi's mask. Unexpected!

Kyaa! Inner Sakura! I always thought she was a great addition to Sakura's early character and how it was a great device to never see her after the time skip to show that the confident violent inner voice had merged with the outer Sakura.

Adding to the nostalgic feeling were Naruto's throwaway lines showing how dumb he used to be. The photojournalist Sukea introduced himself as someone searching for news from East to West, but Naruto wonders why not North and South. Naruto has come a long way too.

Oh man. Sakura told Sukea after he skipped out on their infiltration of the ninja hall of records that she "can't stand handsome men who do nasty things." Explain Sasuke, Sakura!

All the kids from Naruto's class eventually got involved. It turned out this was a miscalculation on Kakashi's part.

Of course Naruto's shadow clone of a damsel in distress is still ultra sexy.

Hinata was blushingly worried that Kakashi was going to kiss Naruto when he performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Bullet dodged! Too bad for her that Sasuke already got Naruto's first kiss...

There was a great twist in the comedy of escalating interruptions for taking off Kakashi's mask. Earlier, Kiba and Akamaru interrupted the dango eating operation. Later, a frog jumped in front of Ino's mind transfer jutsu. And then Team Guy causing a ruckus broke Shikamaru's shadow possession.

But those kids were actually Kakashi's shadow clones! It was pretty funny to see him talk to them as if they were debriefing a mission.

The first couple of hints that the photojournalist was not who he seemed was when it seemed that Kakashi was disrupting the kids' and Sukea's plans for his mask with the shadow clones, but then he disappeared himself when he dismissed them. In the next scene, Sukea was very nervous around Guy, who was sure he had seen that Sukea guy somewhere before.

The whole thing was Kakashi's plot from the very beginning. But the best part of Kakashi's revelation of how deep and long was his con job, was when he revealed his full face on television.

Many years ago during the original Naruto broadcast when the kids tried to get underneath his mask the first time, they showed Kakashi eating ramen after the kids gave up and both Ichiraku Father and Daughter blushed at how handsome Kakashi was purported to be. Adding the beauty mark was the perfect topping to the hot guy beefcake.

Like I mentioned above, the filler episode felt like a case of digging into the bottom of the box of all the leftover Naruto files. The only other reason I can see putting this episode in between the Sage Filler arc and getting back to the main story was to show how the teamwork of Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura had grown and how it would be relevant in the final battle. I'll be looking out to see if there's any reference to this past Special Mission.