Hmm. So, I don't know if anyone here is keeping up with the anime, but apparently they are going off a tad bit from the main storyline. Right now in the anime they are at the point where all the old kage have been sealed and Naruto has shown up at the battlefield with Gaara.
I don't think I like this version as much. If I remember right, in the manga, Naruto appears at every battlefield at the same time and effectively eliminates every white zetsu. Well, in the anime he's only had one clone show up and that was with Gaara. Now apparently he's still running to the other battlefields where his friends are. The Sound Ninja Four were resurrected (which I think happened in the manga too, but to little effect, though I can't remember for sure) and this recent episode was basically about Neji, Choji, Shikimaru, and Kiba meeting the sound ninja they fought back when they were attempting to rescue Sasuke as kids, only of course they are a lot stronger and smarter now.
That much makes sense and I kind of liked it with exception to the flashbacks, because of course, we need to have flashbacks to remember what happened last time they fought, right? Not like we can generally remember this huge arc in the show where they had these really long fights and almost everyone nearly died, no that's too hard to remember.
Anyway, there seems to be a much longer and drawn out battle between those 8 this time around, in the form of a side filler. While the 4 sound ninja were defeated, they were filled with such hatred and vengeance that apparently Kabuto enabled them their desires and gave them some kind of special transportation jutsu to unleash on their victims. So next week there is a filler episode, it may even be a short (god I hope so) filler arc where the 4 sound ninja apparently have been super enhanced or something (I have no idea) and apparently from what I gather from the teaser at the end it appears that all of the non-main character Konoha ninja teams will be joining up to fight. Not sure I understand it, at all. But It showed the ones who had been transported, as well as the others (like Shino, Hinata, and Ino) who had not been transported to the special "Hell" zone.
I've actually enjoyed nearly all of the Shippuuden fillers they've had due to the fact that they still technically could have happened given the time table of the manga and that it doesn't cover everything, and also because the fillers usually gave more story on some characters that were otherwise not shown or explored in the manga.
I'll even go as far as to say the last filler arc that aired in many ways was much better than the standard of the normal anime in nearly every way. (I guess they had a different studio working on it or something, but the animation was much more crisp, background music was slightly different and it incorporated a great story with all the elements that a great anime needs)
All that being said, and returning to where the anime is currently, I feel like the moment of epic-ness that was when Naruto just appears everywhere to help everyone and turn the tide and boost moral with the war is lost on the anime. As much as I normally greatly enjoy the side characters getting their own time to shine, this is one of those moments where Naruto should be in the spot light. (because we all know he takes a back seat many times to come as other plots, typically with Sasuke, occur)
) are more appealing than debby downers. Seriously. No one likes a debby downer :O
