14 years ago this week Naruto Shippuden Ep 167 directed by Atsushi Wakabayashi aired and got very mixed reception among anime fans. Sadly, probably due to the backlash he received from this ep, this marks the last time Atsushi Wakabayashi directed a high-priority ep/major project.[Naruto Shippuden]
by Electrical_Chance991
19 Comments
Underrated episoded, loved They way It was done, It had Its own charm
Yes, this was the unfortunate turning point of Atsushi Wakabayashi’s career. Imagine spending like half a year on the most high profile and the most important episode of the entire franchise, you’re carrying the hopes and dreams of the series director, fans and the entire production. All of those resources to put out an episode that is widely regarded as a “Bad episode”.
Im not saying that he is not working now. No, he is still storyboarding episodes but one of the most talented directors who tried to push the boundaries of animation and gave animators 100% creative freedom, now only gets to work on “low priority episodes” with minimal resources. Wakabayashi has done storyboards for 29 Boruto episodes, I didn’t even know they existed until I looked them up. It’s just that he is no longer getting any opportunity to do any high profile work and there’s no way of telling whether that’s his own choice or because his reputation has gone down to a point where no studio is willing to give him that opportunity. Its just a sad situation overall.
He did storyboarded Bleach Tybw cour 2 episode 5 and here you were able to see hints of his greatness. Its still nothing compared to what he did 10-20 years back. I really hope he gets more chances like that in future and gets a chance to make a major comeback.
Animation would have been fine for any other moment. Why the fuck did they choose pain vs Naruto I have no idea.
I believe it was the awkward animations regarding the movements which people still make fun of, I didn’t really notice the ‘drop’ in quality until I saw some memes regarding it.
It’s some very impressive animation … that doesn’t capture the vibe of the scene from the manga *at all*. Rewatching the clip now I feel the same way as I did back when it originally aired.
Truly unfortunate, if this were Luffy vs Kaido people would be shouting his name from the roofs.
How do I stop laughing?? Halp!!
I am in the camp that absolutely loves that episode.
The insanity of everything made me feel like I shouldn’t be anywhere near that place. That if I was there, I’d die before I can react by the speed of these characters cutting wind. It gave me the feeling of thrill that I got when watching something like Godzilla. Monsters, they were monsters.
Say what you want about the awkward frames.
Direction, music and animation were god tier.
The 9 tails shooting those fire balls were probably the best 5 seconds I’ve seen in anime.
Honestly, while I think its good animation in a technical sense, it feels really mismatched with the vibe of the fight. Naruto and Pain simply looked too cartoony for how high the stakes were. Pain turning into the road runner always comes to mind. Even if you dont pause at all, it still looks funny.
Does it mean that the director deserved to be blacklisted by the industry for more than a decade? No.
I’m honestly glad I enjoyed Naruto to its fullest without ever stepping a foot into online communities.
I don’t remember anything about this episode other than that I had fun watching it.
The only times I ever remember about thinking about animation was when I first started watching it, and the first episodes felt a bit dated to me at the time. But soon that stopped being an issue and I never thought about production values in any way ever again.
just finished demon slayer last ep .. YEP welcome to reality
To be fully honest, the fight is EPIC.
However the artstyle they chose for animation is so cartoonish and so goofy, it’s hard to take the fight for how serious it should have been
Animation is great, its just that what is happening is nonsense and wildly out of tone. Looks more like a One Piece G5 Luffy fight than Naruto.
Pain is getting hammered like a nail into solid rock and thrown through walls. Nothing about his abilities gives him that kind of endurance, his other bodies were going down to pretty basic attacks. He is meant to have pull push/powers, that’s it. Everything here is weightless and strangely… comedic? This loony toons fight could be okay but it is not what people were expecting for the climax of an arc where the antagonist killed both naruto’s mentors, blew up his entire village and just killed his love interest right in front of him. Naruto has given in to his inner demon entirely here and the show should be at its darkest tonally.
This is still probably the best part of Shippuden and the more grounded parts of the fight are top tier. Just felt like this part is a generic over the top fight scene could have been put into any other anime
Im finding out now that im the only person who loved this fight. Was a living corpse v a raging monster, fuck it let them get weird with it.
I remember downloading this from dattebayo as a 13 year old after school, being blown away then going on /a/ to see all the hype threads only to realize in horror it was being dunked on mercilessly. There was no room at all to defend it cause you’d just get spammed by pain smear faces. What a day!
This is always a fun episode to go back from time to time. Two guys filed with rage throw everything at each other. The part with Yamato and Chibaku Tensei is still the best.
No matter what anyone say, the pain arc is peak anime for me!
I didn’t watch Naruto . So , maybe I lack context .
But , I cannot tell if this is supposed to be serious fight or not . They speak like very edgy stuff , but the animation is so boinky (When he gets hit on the head , or when the rock he smashes into leaves his perfect silhouet) , very cartoonish , that I can’t take it 100% seriously .
It feels fluid and well drawn if a bit flat, but what with the atmosphere .
1:06 and 2:24 in particular where the animation looks real sloppy. Too many frames dedicated to motions that when you’re stretching things for impact is supposed to be quick so you can’t see the stretching so clearly in real time. As a result, it instead looks really bad, when. If they used 1/2 or 1/4 of the frames used, it might look a lot better (even if paused frames still look weird, that’s fine).
Even outside of those, a lot of the moments feel weird and disjointed. They don’t always quite connect in a way that I full understand why and wtf is going on.
But then from 2:30 onwards it’s easy to follow as it’s one continuation of action. Even as camera angles change here, you have a firmer grasp of what’s going on, and the animation is paced better therefore also looks better than a lot of what came before it.