Naruto: Shippuuden Movie 6 - Road to Ninja

Returning home to Konohagakure, the young ninja celebrate defeating a group of supposed Akatsuki members. Naruto Uzumaki and Sakura Haruno, however, feel differently. Naruto is jealous of his comrades' congratulatory families, wishing for the presence of his own parents. Sakura, on the other hand, is angry at her embarrassing parents, and wishes for no parents at all. The two clash over their opposing ideals, but are faced with a more pressing matter when the masked Madara Uchiha suddenly appears and transports them to an alternate world.

In this world, Sakura's parents are considered heroes—for they gave their lives to protect Konohagakure from the Nine-Tailed Fox attack 10 years ago. Consequently, Naruto's parents, Minato Namikaze and Kushina Uzumaki, are alive and well. Unable to return home or find the masked Madara, Naruto and Sakura stay in this new world and enjoy the changes they have always longed for. All seems well for the two ninja, until an unexpected threat emerges that pushes Naruto and Sakura to not only fight for the Konohagakure of the alternate world, but also to find a way back to their own.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Uzumaki, Naruto Main

Takeuchi, Junko Japanese

Namikaze, Minato Main

Morikawa, Toshiyuki Japanese

Haruno, Sakura Main

Nakamura, Chie Japanese

Uzumaki, Kushina Main

Shinohara, Emi Japanese

Uchiha, Itachi Supporting

Ishikawa, Hideo Japanese

Hatake, Kakashi Supporting

Inoue, Kazuhiko Japanese

Uchiha, Sasuke Supporting

Sugiyama, Noriaki Japanese

Nara, Shikamaru Supporting

Morikubo, Shoutarou Japanese

Jiraiya Supporting

Ootsuka, Houchuu Japanese

Hyuuga, Hinata Supporting

Mizuki, Nana Japanese

Shiraishi, Makoto Producer

Date, Hayato Director, Storyboard

Ebina, Yasunori Sound Director

Oizaki, Fumitoshi Episode Director

Reviews

Apr 27, 2024

Cersil

Recommended

The morality of the Naruto universe is a major weakness of the entire series and its sub-products. You can't just stop indoctrinating the viewer in the ideas of family, defence of the homeland and other important things. Admittedly, not everyone can sit through hours of ranting from the most superficial ninja of all time and fandom.
But this movie makes you realise why Kishimoto is so into this idea. Why Naruto himself is against the idea of family and eternal friendship. It's an unbelievable loneliness when you don't understand the meaning of life, when you don't see any prospects and you're looking for a way to ... hold on to something in this world. What is it like to be completely alone? You can save the village, become the Hokage, but will it save you? What's the point when there's no one at home, no one waiting and nothing to wait for?

The tragedy of Naruto's life finally unfolds in full in this particular OVA, and in such a powerful and brutal way that many fans will be unable to hold back their tears. It was a good move to give the fans precious footage of Naruto's possible future life with his parents and to show the characters of Kushina and Minato quite well. Bright scenes of everyday life, full of silly but relatable humour, can give much more pleasure than all the action scenes of the most epic moments of the series.
In addition, the dreams of fans of all categories, including fan fiction writers, are partially realised. Changed characters, fetishes of girls (and no longer girls), formed during 10 years of worshipping the series, are suddenly shown in all their glory, so that even the most delusional delirium lives and thrives.

However, all this nostalgia, which you can feel with your guts, is accompanied by mediocre ideas about the main antagonists and the character of the final battle, which is painful to watch. It's obvious that both the directors and the mangaka have long since run out of ideas: they can't come up with a worthy opponent for the protagonist, who is leveled up to the breaking point and now unstoppable. The best has been squeezed out of Kishimoto's muse and sick imagination. Don't expect a strong shounen component from Naruto anymore. Now it's a good domestic drama with decent music and decent ideas, but please don't give anyone else a sword or a scroll. Let Konoha live in peace and don't fight anyone.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Dec 4, 2020

lethargilistic

Mixed Feelings

They did it. They finally fucking did it. This is a real, actual movie with real, actual stakes for the characters and without a fucking escort mission. It's not even half bad!

The theme they picked (Yes! A real, actual theme!) was the dangers of taking our relationships for granted. I don't relate to it super well, because my parents were awful, but I liked the direction for Naruto. The scenes with his folks were excellent. The bits they allowed Sakura to have with her parents were nice, too.

Sakura gets the short end of the stick, as expected. Despite participating in the isekai plot as much ... as Naruto, it felt like she had far fewer scenes. That was a shame because it didn't have her engage much with the loneliness without her parents that we would expect to see. But it was there. I would have preferred that she actively confront the mirror world's Sasuke over his womanizing, but that would be a dangerous sort of scene that I wouldn't necessarily trust the Naruto team to pull off well without being misogynistic. I mean, the scene at the beginning, after the movie had established that Naruto would be extra emo about his dead parents for the duration of this, where Sakura said "sometimes I wish I didn't have parents." It read to me like they thought Sakura was a thoughtless person, especially when she escalated it to "Why are you even here? If Sasuke was here..." Because. Like. Damn. I was laughing for the wrong reasons.

The movie's shortcomings are that it sidelined most of the cast to focus on Naruto, even if it did so better than any of the other movies by being an isekai. It could be argued that the scenes we got with the rest of the cast were "enough" to play out the mirror world joke. I would have still preferred that they be the ones to come to Naruto and Sakura's aid rather than the series' villains. But having the villains turn up as good guys in the mirror world was valid, too.

I also wasn't a fan of forcing the climax of the movie to escalate so far afield of the theme. It was an excuse to have two tailed-beast hosts fight to the death, and it was unnecessary. The fight itself was fine, but I didn't think it meant anything. If anything, they should have had the final conflict be between Naruto and his parents—not necessarily a fight—so it would be an extension of his arc about learning to accept their love.

The inciting incident, where the Leaf Village characters' parents all write letters of recommendation to promote their children to jonin was perfunctory and weird, unnecessary nepotism that made no sense. But the movie got rid of that plot in less than a second because it was just an excuse anyway. Fair dinkum.

In 2012, they finally decided that a Naruto movie didn't have to be just an excuse plot. My expectations for the rest of the series has been suitably raised, and that rules.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Sep 29, 2024

VanVeleca

Not Recommended

Every bit of good that was in this film was squandered and/or wasted potential. It brings in interesting concepts but doesn't do shit with them as we instead follow one of the worst plotlines yet in these movies.

The concept of an alternate universe where everyone is more carefree and goofy is interesting, I would've liked to seen more of these different versions from our cast...BUT, instead of doing that, this is a movie in which Naruto grows to respect what his parents have done for him????? Like do I even need to explain how absolutely fucking stupid and out of character this is?

At first I ... though it's because the movie took place before the pain arc, but NO we get a flash back to Naruto meeting Minato in the big sparkly soul room so this HAS to take place afterwards. Did he just...forget? Did he forget everything they talked about? Look he should be used to seeing other happy families at this point, seriously where did this sudden bitterness come from???

This is also the first movie where Sakura has some sort of plot relevance, specifically she learns to appreciate her own parents...her parents, which don't fucking exist. THEY ARE NOT PART OF THE MAIN STORY, WE NEVER MEET SAKURA'S PARENTS UNTIL THIS FUCKING MOVIE AND SOME SHIPPUDEN FILLERS. Why should we care? Legitimately why should we care about these literal whos?

Beyond that she's basically just the token damsel in distress that appears in like every single one of these movies. It was nice getting a character we actually know in trouble rather than some rando but ultimately I just didn't find myself caring about either character's plotline because of how fucking stupid they are.

I can't say much about this last bit, as to avoid spoilers, but the villain really pissed me off too. We NEVER learn what his exact motivations are and why he is commiting war crimes, he is just evil for the sake of being evil because...it would be cool, I guess. To be fair, he was kinda cool, but also just so damn shallow.

Couldn't they sprinkle in something? That perhaps someone close to him died or something basic like that? It's better than literally nothing.

It's bad, if you are interested in a Naruto multiverse perhaps this may be interesting to you but ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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