Naruto may not have always had the best movies in the past but things have been shaping up. The first Shippuden film was a lot better than I had expected and Bonds was decently good as well. It wasn’t until the third Shippuden film that I saw true greatness in what will probably stay as the best Naruto film of all time. With things looking up, could this film truly make it in the big leagues?

I should mention that I did not have very high hopes for this film. I figured that it would definitely be one of the worst Naruto films since it involved time travel and there wouldn’t be a really tough humanoid for Naruto to fight. Turns out that I underestimated this film and it ended up being one of the best Naruto films of all time…one of the best films of all time period! Avengers, Titanic, Man of Steel…and even Godzilla pale in comparison to this film. This film completely decimated my guesses of how good it would be on every level and should serve as a staple for how to do things right in several areas.

The plot involves Naruto and Squad 7 (Minus Kakashi while adding in Sai and Yamato.) (I’ll never count those two as members of Squad 7!) as they head off to stop Mukade. Right from the start you can tell that this villain means business and he does his best to destroy Naruto and friends. With the help of Sakura, Naruto makes quick work of the first enemy and they head into the shrine…but they’re too late! Mukade has already started to absorb the seal and now he can rule the entire universe! Naruto quickly chases after him along with Yamato. (Who’s basically copying Naruto) Sakura also attempts to go in with them, but Sai stops her and keeps on proving me right when I say that he’s an awful character. They won’t appear again until the very ending of the film.

Naruto lands in a place that is filled with giant towers and he’s attacked by a group of mecha robots. (Not all robots are mecha so it’s not redundant…I hope!) Naruto is quickly overwhelmed due to major plot hax and the fact that he was slightly unprepared for this battle. He’s saved by fellow Leaf Shinobi who quickly run away and leave him to fend for himself. Naruto ends up saving a queen by the name of Sara and fears for her safety. Can he protect her and save the world universe from Mukade?

This film doesn’t waste any time and there are fight scenes basically every 10 minutes or less. The film opens up with a great action scene involving Squad 7 fighting a puppet master. Afterwards, we get a very emotional and epic moment where the seal starts to unravel and Naruto quickly charges in. Then we’re lead into another fight with the puppet robots and fight after fight after fight. The final battle starts at around the halfway mark of the film and lasts until the end which is around 40+ minutes. That’s pretty impressive for any film that isn’t DBZ!

The soundtrack in this film is one of the highlights as it may be the best soundtrack that I’ve encountered in any film. Yugioh 3D Bonds Beyond Time may give it some competition in that regard, but this film may actually take the title. Every fight scene has a great theme to go along with it and the seal unraveling scene also had a great opera theme. There’s also a piece that is basically techno mixed with rock and it sounds awesome on all levels. I can’t think of any bad themes in the film and nearly all of them were battle themes anyway. This is one of the few films that you can almost watch purely for the soundtrack. It’s just that good!

The animation is pretty solid and it feels a lot higher budget than the other Naruto films. This one actually felt like it could have been a theater film and you could tell that they put a lot of effort into it this time. That explains why there aren’t any scenes where the film really drags on and why the fight scenes are so good. This film has enemies that can shoot lasers!!!!

Character wise this may have been one of Naruto’s best appearances ever. Even his canon moments would have a hard time competing with his scenes in this film. This film encompasses all of Naruto’s good traits while leaving out all of the annoying ones and I dare say that he’s essentially a perfect main character in this film. Naruto was definitely under powered in this film, but he never gave up and continued to try his best. I wish we could see more of that in some of the other current stuff out there. Sakura started out as a pretty good character and she was on pace to have her best appearance in a long time, but Sai wrecked her epic moment and then she spoiled the ending. If not for the ending, then she definitely had a solid role, but we can’t just forget the ending. Yamoto was pretty awful, but he’s never been a good character anyway so that’s hardly surprising.

Sara is the character added for this film and I wouldn’t say that she was a great character either. She refused to believe things even when they were perfectly obvious and not even hidden from her. That was pretty disappointing and the fact that she didn’t really put up a fight just made things worse. When you can’t tell that the people cheering for you are puppets, it’s time to put on the glasses and retire from being a Queen. Considering the suspicious circumstances, I don’t understand how she got to be so close to Mukade and I don’t know why she waited so long until she decided to close out the energy. That seemed like it should have been obvious to her from the beginning since she could see energy and all.

A lot of the hype for the film was because of the 4th Hokage appearing which is why I’m glad that I wasn’t exactly thrilled for this. The 4th Hokage looks pretty bad and very weak as well. His partners weren’t likable character either and Minato’s final scene is pretty awful. He spends the whole film hiding from the villains and he’s just not a cool character. He was completely out of character and it was a little disappointing but this film can’t be perfect in all areas I suppose.

This is a film that I highly recommend to everyone. Naruto finally looks like a true main character and aside from the fact that his abilities are toned down, he’s a very solid character. The battles are really good and while the enemies aren’t humanoid, the music makes up for that easily. The film isn’t very long, but you’ll love every minute of it. You haven’t watched a truly epic Naruto film with 5 Star music until you’ve watched this one!

Overall 8/10