This OVA will always hold a special place in my heart since it was at the origin of my venture into being a Naruto fan. I always get a retro feeling from watching this film (Even if this is only my second time watching it) and the climax never disappoints. It’s a fun venture back into the old Naruto days and they did a good job with it. It had its flaws of course, but the pros outweigh the cons.

Naruto and friends have been assigned to protect a man named Shibuki. Shibuki is the leader of the Hidden Waterfall village. The very location of this place is a secret from just about everyone for security reasons. Shibuki then convinces Kakashi to have his team pick up the trash for some extra money. Kakashi gladly agrees to this and he quickly heads back to the Leaf Village. Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura are to follow once they have completed their mission, but the three shinobi are attacked by some rogue ninja. Will our heroes really be able to deal with this?

Well, it’s pretty interesting to see them try to fight these guys since our heroes were very inexperienced back then. From their power levels and the way that they fight, you would guess that this was either right after Zabuza or right before the Chunin Exams. (Not much of a gap there anyway……) Sasuke has mastered his Sharingan, but he definitely doesn’t have the speed that he acquired to fight Gaara. Naruto is in his clone spamming days and he doesn’t seem to know the Rasengan at this time. This was probably the toughest point in Team 7’s career. The heroes were actually more grounded than the average main characters after 5 or so volumes. (Bleach volume 5- Ichigo is already a supersonic warrior of legend, Yu Yu Hakusho volume 5- Yusuke is already getting familiar with his spirit gun and his abilities would possibly be around Kakashi level or slightly lower, etc) Sakura doesn’t fight at all so it’s hard to gauge just how prepared for action she is.

Nevertheless, the villains couldn’t have picked a better time to attack. It’s unfortunate for the Waterfall Village because the secret location is pretty easy to guess. The village is….behind the local waterfall!!! I don’t know whether that’s ingenius or just sad, but it evidently tricks most ninja. The villains only find out about this because the main one used to be a ninja there. The location of the village also provides a lot of questions. How can kids and seniors be expected to hold their breath for the reeeeeally long swim to and from the village? We see a possible answer since one of the old ladies just walks out of a forest claiming that she’s from the village, but then what’s the point of the shortcut? It seems like you can enter the secret way or you can just go all around through the forest. If that is the case, the writers really didn’t plan this out…..at all.

Back on point, the villains aren’t very interesting. Suien is the main villain and he’s just a corrupt ninja who fled when the going got tough. He wants the Hero’s Water so that he can live a glorious (and short) life. It increases a person’s chakra levels by 10X after all. (It also shortens a person’s life by 10X) We are never given any scenes to develop the villain, which aren’t typically necessary, but then the villain at least needs a cool design to fall back on. This guy has none of that and I can’t say that he’s that impressive without the enhancement. Once he has it, Suien’s super strength certainly looks good…which I found to be interesting to say the least. I’ll make the DBZ comparisons in a moment.

Suien had some partners, but none of them really appear all that much and they look terrible by the end. A single shot takes them down in an instant. The main filler character of the film is Shibuki and he’s pretty bad. He doesn’t want to risk his life and he’s the type of guy who won’t admit it either. He’ll act pretty ungrateful all the time and it’s really hard to root for him. He’s clearly not much of a fighter and he only became the leader because his father was the former (cooler) leader. He has his big moment towards the end, but he still almost let one of the kids die about 3-4 times before he stepped in. That’s pretty unacceptable so he gets a thumbs down from me.

Naruto looks pretty great here and it reminds me that he always has the potential to be a great character even if he doesn’t always live up to that. He stays determined to win and save everyone even while he is being pounded into the ground. It’s hard not to root for Naruto since he really looks great here. I dare say that he is probably the best character if we’re just judging from this OVA. He looks pretty weak if we’re talking about power, but he doesn’t let that stop him. Naturally, Sasuke will always be the better character….

Sasuke still looks pretty great as you would expect. He’s very confident and his abilities speak for themselves. He’s considerably stronger than Naruto at this point in time, but that also means that he has to lose since that will give the film some shock value. I don’t really agree with how he lost, but at least Sasuke dealt a lot of damage first. I have no problems with his portrayal and it was as good as you would expect from him.

Sakura doesn’t look very good and her fans will certainly be disappointed with her portrayal. She doesn’t fight at all and even the villains comment on how weak she is. That’s not what we expect from someone in the Haruno clan! Luckily she got some abilities after the 3 year timeskip, but this was certainly a tough time to be a Sakura fan. It’s hard to find any positives for her in this OVA….better luck next time I guess.

I felt like the writers had watched more DBZ than Naruto before they made this OVA. Chakra levels are treated completely like Ki from DBZ. The more chakra that you have, the greater that your speed and power increases. Suien is practically able to fly by the end and his punches can send his opponents into the distance with ease. He punches Naruto through a mountain and he can break someone’s bones by casually stepping on them. Chakra is good to have, but it doesn’t necessarily increase your physical stats or at least not by such a noticeable amount. It just means that you can use more ninjutsu, which is why your chakra level isn’t a downright huge factor. It’s still fun to see how much chakra a person has since it tends to show how skilled they are, but this felt more like sheer aura power than chakra.

My only negative would probably be in how much the villains get to pound on the heroes because it really makes you wince at Kakashi’s decision to leave. The heroes really take a beating in this OVA and the villagers are not safe either. The kids actually absorb their share of damage, which was a bit much. We don’t need to see the villains hurting the kids do we? Keep it to the ninja! (Who are kids, but they’re fighters so it’s different) That’s the only real negative for the film and the rest of it was classic popcorn fun.

The OVA also follows the concept of Naruto a little more than the show did. Team 7 basically act as mercenaries who simply aren’t holding back. Sasuke terminated nearly 10 of the enemy shinobi without a second thought. It’s not unheard of since that’s what ninja do, but it’s not something that you expect to see from them. Luckily, Naruto doesn’t destroy anyone so he’s still on the path to heroism while Sasuke’s foreshadowing got to start a little earlier than expected.

The animation is pretty good, but it’s not great. It’s basically at the TV show’s level and it looks better than the Zabuza arc, but not as good as the Chunin Exams. The fight scene between the two sword fighters at the end was pretty great and I liked the final battle as well. They were brief, but the animation really gets to shine in the fights. The soundtrack is from the show so it’s pretty great. I think that an OVA for a show should always get an original soundtrack or at least a few new tunes, but you still can’t fault the classic themes. They help to get you pumped up for the battles that are ahead.

Overall, This was a pretty fun OVA. It would have been nice to see Naruto put up a better fight in round 1, but he made up for that performance by the end. The animation is good and the soundtrack is pretty solid as well. It’s not very long (around 40 minutes) so the special will be over before you know it. This is a decent way to get into the Naruto franchise and I recommend it to any action fan. Just try not to wince when Kakashi leaves the main characters to fend themselves off in an unknown land while he heads all the way back to the village by himself…

Overall 7/10